You know how every popular IP these days has its own designated unofficial “holiday” for promotional purposes? Last Saturday, August 9, was “One Piece Day” which meant a torrent of news regarding the future of the Straw Hats in multiple media.

A big part of the visibility of One Piece in America is due to the success of the live-action series on Netflix, and the streamer confirmed on One Piece Day that a third season has been approved for production, well before we’ll ever see the second. Season 2 still has a vague 365-day release window of “2026,” but we at last got a first peek at what’s in store via the first-ever trailer:

The trailer marks the first time anyone’s seen the “real” versions of Smoker, Mss. Wednesday and (most significantly) Nico Robin, played by Callum Kerr, Charithra Chandran and Lera Abova respectively. We also get that amazing “whale” sequence to cap it all off, a creature 4Kids infamously edited into an iceberg when they had the dub rights (wow, that feels forever ago).

Production on Season 3 will start in Cape Town, South Africa this fall, with the ambition of adapting the Skypeia arc (a hovering city…good luck building the set for that one). Ian Stokes, producer of Marvel’s Luke Cage and Iron Fist, will join the crew alongside Joe Tracz as co-showrunner; Stokes is replacing Matt Owen who co-ran the first two seasons.

Moving to anime, these days there’s more than one in production: a Kai version of the main series, simply called “THE One Piece,” is underway, and now so is a spinoff centered around the female characters. One Piece Heroines will be based on the novel by Jun Esaka and Sayaka Suwa, which is a collection of short stories featuring Nami, Nico Robin, Vivi, Perona and others. The stories first ran in One Piece Magazine before being compiled into two books.

No one knows how many episodes One Piece Heroines will be (it sounds like the kind of thing that’s a miniseries), but Momoka Toyoda (One Piece: Fan Letter) is adapting the stories into scripts, Haruka Kamatani (One Piece in Love) is directing, and Takashi Kojima (Flip Flappers) is handling character designs.

The post A Day For One Piece: New Season, New Anime, New Everything appeared first on Anime Superhero News.