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One Piece Franchise's Commemorative Short Drama Videos Announce More Cast
posted on by Egan Loo
The official website for "We Are One!" — five short drama videos commemorating the 100th One Piece manga volume and the 1,000th One Piece anime episode — announced more cast members on Monday. Joining Kengo Kōra in the main cast are Marie Iitoyo, Sōta Fukushi, and Hana Anzu. Win Morisaki, Shuntarō Yanagi, Kenichi Takitoh, Shūhei Nomura, Kenshirō Katō, Reina Minai, and Susumu Terajima round out the supporting cast.
"We Are One!" will stream a new episode daily on the website and the franchise's YouTube channel starting on August 30.
The first installment "Kigyōka Wataru-Hen" (Entrepreneur Wataru, pictured above) is a story about setting forth on a new journey. The title charcter Wataru (Kora) works around-the-clock to create something never before seen in his app development startup with his partners.
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Mika Ninagawa (live-action Helter Skelter film) is directing the dramas, which feature both live-action and animated segments (newly animated by Toei). The short dramas center on readers of the Eiichiro Oda's One Piece manga. RADWIMPS (your name., Weathering With You) performs the theme song "Twilight" for the videos.
The 100th manga volume will ship on September 3. Eiichiro Oda's One Piece manga has surpassed 490 million copies in circulation worldwide as of July. That includes over 400 million in Japan and 90 million in at least 57 countries and regions overseas.
Oda began serializing the One Piece manga in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump manga on July 19, 1997. The 57th volume had a first printing of 3 million copies, a national industry record, in March 2010. The 67th volume had a first printing of 4.05 million copies, the new national industry record, in August 2012.
The manga won the 41st Japan Cartoonist Awards in 2012, and set a Guinness World Record in 2015 for "the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author."
Oda published the 1,000th chapter in this year's combined 5th/6th issue of Weekly Shonen Jump magazine on January 4.
Oda said in an interview last August that he plans to end the story in four or five years.
Sources: We Are One! series' website, Comic Natalie
