Since early 2015, we at The One Piece Podcast have started working behind the screens with One Piece super fan and collector Le Dok’ over at One Piece Passion. We have looked through some of his collection of One Piece anime resources including animation notes, background drawings, and more, and translated some of these documents.
If you’re interested in seeing more of this collection in their unedited and higher quality versions, be sure to check out Le Dok’s personal website filled with many more awesome One Piece anime production drawings and resources for all your favorite characters! Without further ado, here are some of the cool finds we found while working on this side project together with Le Dok’!
As you can see on this translated animation memo, the One Piece animators seem to be very reliant on certain SBS answers to get some more information on parts of One Piece chapters for upcoming anime episodes.
With the lack of details provided in certain backgrounds in the One Piece manga, it seems like a lot of the settings are up to the animators’ own guesswork. Ultimately it seems like their supervisor is still the one who decides on the final look of the backgrounds. Because the anime is so close to the manga, they also need to keep their options open in case One Piece author Eiichiro Oda decides to bring out a deus ex machina, in this case, maybe have something appear from beneath the Corrida Colosseum.
Another problem that animators seem to encounter is text. While some text is not readable in the manga, the anime needs to often fill in the gaps due to its presentation in high definition. If you were wondering how the final product, here is a screenshot of Kyros’ statue’s engraving:
A similar problems arises here.
When watching the One Piece anime you can make out the text of a lot of the signs in the background. Because a lot of this is reused imagery, it seems like they try to often obscure the text so they can reuse it later on in other scenes.
This final image concerns the biggest mystery of One Piece telecommunications: Transponder Snails. How do they work? What can they exactly do? Nobody knows exactly, and animators are just as confused as to how they work. The anime has a lot more potential close-ups of Transponder Snails, so getting the whole transformation mechanics just right seems really important for the anime. Honestly, I’m still not sure I understand…
If you enjoyed this post and would like to see more of these, be sure to leave a comment down below, and if you’re hoping to see another type of post revived, tell us!