One Piece Releases the Trailer for the Upcoming October Anime Special

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the widely watched anime series One Piece, a brand-new animation special will be released this month. The anime, titled One Piece Fan Letter, is a short film that adapts Tomohito Osaki’s collection of short stories, Straw Hat Stories. It focusses on common characters in the One Piece universe who are affected by the Straw Hat crew but are not specifically searching for the fabled treasure.

One Piece Fan Letter, which has a script by Momoka Toyoda (My Happy Marriage) and is directed by Megumi Ishitani (director of One Piece, Dragon Ball Super), features character designs by Keisuke Mori (director of One Piece animation and key animator), and is set in the Sabaody Archipelago two years after the events of the Paramount War and the death of Luffy’s brother Ace. The protagonist is a little girl from Sabaody who is obsessed with female pirates and who grows up idolising Nami.

One Piece’s New Anime Short Movie Is Based on the ‘Straw Hat Stories’ Collection

The new anime is based on a novel by Tomohito Osaki that tells the story from the viewpoint of the original, non-pirate characters. Though there are nine stories in all in the collection, it’s unclear how many will be adapted for the upcoming anime, or if other Straw Hat Stories-based works will ever be released. In July, August, and September of 2017, One Piece Magazine published the first three stories from the novel in their first three issues. The whole nine-story collection was later published by Shueisha in November of the same year.