The One Piece anime has entered a new story arc, and as is often the case with anime a new opening sequence has come with it. While that’s not new in and of itself, the way the new One Piece OP operates and is presented signals the anime’s departure from some of its previously well established habits. Even more, it’s a wonderful highlight reel of the exciting things that the Egghead Island arc has been delivering to manga readers for over a year now paired with one of the best opening songs the series has gotten in recent time – and they’ve had some great ones. Basically, this opening has become my entire personality.
One Piece’s new OP shifts style
“Uuuuus!” is the latest track contributed by Hiroshi Kitadani (of “We Are” fame), and it kicks in with a potent choir backing him up as the animation begins setting up the arc with Luffy proclaiming his true dream to the crew, a huge moment for the entire series. that leads into a montage of early sequences from the arc that stylize the title card along with them. This is a great introduction to Egghead as an arc that jumps around a lot, teasing futuristic science while at the same time hinting at the very major reveals about the history of the One Piece world that the arc also hits the audience with.
Throughout the opening is a lighter and flexible art style that is a pretty hard departure from the hard shades and dark lines of the previous Wano arc – a departure that for some has been controversial as the hope would be that One Piece would continue to become closer to the production design of popular seasonal Shonen anime like Jujutsu Kaisen, even though One Piece has shifted styles here and there as staff changes and new story arcs tend to ape a different genre. However, this shift in the OP also seems to signal a new philosophy for the anime proper – one that it desperately needs in the modern age of anime.
One Piece is an anime that comes from a very different era of the medium than its contemporaries. For a series like this, a majority of its run has been more about having a new episode out every single week, nearly every week, for 25 years now. This isn’t the same way a series like Solo Leveling is run today – where a set season of episodes are produced, then time is taken off to plan out the next season based on all the source material produced during the previous season’s run (at least, hypothetically.) One Piece has always had material for the anime to borrow from, but needing to keep a pace with that material has led to all kinds of tricks to extend out episodes, and the OPs the series uses are a grand example of this.
Setting this opening apart
Even at their best, One Piece’s OPs have been used to help fluff out an episode. Many of them, especially post time-skip, are longer than an average anime’s OP. They include great original animation but these do not comprise the entire OP, and might not even reflect the story. Instead, some of each OP is taking up playing clips of the following episode as a sort of a preview, but really just eats up runtime. This particular trick ran all the way through Wano, even as “Over the Top” and “The Peak” are otherwise wonderful.
However, “Uuuuus!” doesn’t create fluff, it doesn’t even hide episode clips. From start to finish, the entire OP is original animation that highlights what Egghead will bring to viewersN, to the point of kind of spoiling things – provided you even know what it would spoil. Directed by Megumi Ishitani, the director behind some of the best episodes of the Wano arc, “Uuuuus!” is sending the message to the audience that the anime isn’t here to waste time anymore. Instead, the One Piece anime is finally ready to play with the seasonal heavy hitters. The manga is laying its secrets bare every single week now, and the anime is stepping up to match that.
It’s time to get serious
This OP sets the tone that the staff Toei now has is fully aware that the series is closer to its end than ever before and is taking its stewardship seriously. Seeing the Straw Hats cut between the various layers of drip that they’ve gotten, then jumping from all the exciting brawls of the Egghead arc (Rob Lucci rematch!), all to the lyrics highlighting that the vast and sometimes disparate parts of the One Piece lore are starting to come together and connect to change its world – it’s a true acknowledgement of the scale that’s to come. It’s impossible for any fan of the series to not come away truly excited, which is the best thing an opening to an anime can do.
For anything to come out swinging this hard after being on the air for 25 years is a testament to the staying power of One Piece and also a testament to the talented team that has been progressively allowed to flex these past few years. “Uuuuus!” represents the anime at its own achieved peak; something that is a good reminder to have as attention turns to the planned redo with WIT Studio and Netflix. Toei’s staff has stewarded this cruise, and while there’s plenty of stumbles as they have, it’s never been for lack of talent – clearly.
One Piece airs weekly on Crunchyroll and Netflix.
Featured Images ©Eiichiro Oda/Shueshia, Toei Animation
Travis Hymas is a freelance writer and self appointed Pokémon historian out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Known to be regularly obessive over pop culture topics, gaming discourse, and trading card games, he is a published critic featured on sites such as Uppercut and The Young Folks.
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