Warning: One Piece Wano Arc Spoilers
There are very few days left for the One Piece anime to reach its peak. Next Sunday, August 6, we will see animated for the first time the Gear 5 of Monkey D Luffy, a new march that will exploit the full potential of the devil fruit that our protagonist has. And although in the manga we already saw how this new technique works, it seems that Toei Animation will expand what is seen in the panels to give more depth to the fight between Luffy and Kaido.
During the One Piece Day a few days ago, the director of the chapter 1071 Tatsuya Nagamine revealed that the team wanted to bring each panel of Eiichiro Oda’s manga into a new form within animation. However, it looks like the team behind the episode will be going for something much bigger.
“We tried to make it exactly like in the manga…. But our plan started to spread. All the animators were very excited. I’m very grateful for that. There is a part about ‘liberation’, which is to break all the laws and the logic of the One Piece world. So we aim to push the boundaries with innovative and amazing voice acting.”
While Nagamine doesn’t explain exactly how the animated version will differ from the manga, he did reveal one key detail: Luffy’s laugh. According to the director, he thought that the actress behind Luffy’s voice, Mayumi Tanakahe would have a hard time getting the pirate to laugh effectively during Gear 5’s transformation. That’s why he wanted to shorten that moment a bit in the anime.
However, Tanaka’s acting and laugh was so good that the final result exceeded the expectations of the entire animation team. It must be taken into account that people from all over the world have been working for this chapter and the director of the episode himself commented in this same report that there were up to 6 different languages within the meeting to animate Gear 5. Everything indicates that, in addition to see what was seen in the manga, Toei will subject Luffy to new ways of beating Kaidomaintaining that cartoonish essence that this form represents and respecting the original material whenever they can.
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