The Original One Piece Anime

Before Toei's adaptation, another studio took a stab at an animated One Piece for the 1998 Jump Super Anime Tour. Although it has been mostly forgotten with time, it gives an interesting look into how One Piece could've looked if it was adapted by another team.

So join me today as we dive into this niche OVA - One Piece: Defeat the Pirate Ganzack!

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💿Music credits:

bladee - Be Nice To Me

Trauma Center DS 2- Gentle Breeze

Fire Force OST - Traffic

Little Witch Academia OST - Everyday At Luna Nova

Genshin Impact OST - A Sweet Smile

Little Witch Academia OST - Tension

Little Witch Academia OST - Run Away!

Kaho Matsui - idk dnb jawn wip

Code Geass- Theme Song Opening 1- Colors

Joeyy - Eminem

Genshin Impact OST - A Happy Day

Genshin Impact OST - Angel's share

Genshin Impact OST - Perilous Path

One Piece OST The Raid of the Blackbeard Pirates

Genshin Impact OST - Knighthood Excellence

Genshin Impact OST - Happy Journey

Genshin Impact OST - The Nine Olde Witches

Fire Force OST - The Mission Given
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[forgottenrelics]

Extra tidbit - Zoro's voice actor for this movie (Wataru Takagi) would return to the series later to voice Bellamy.

Ganzacks voice actor (Norio Wakamoto) voiced Cell in Dragon Ball Z

Ikuya Sawaki (Medaka's father and narrator) would play Admiral Fujitora.

And Takkou Ishimori, the VA for Skid (old dude smoking the pipe) would go on to voice Sengoku.


Also merch shill👕

Sponsor: Fandomion




►Extra 10% Off Discount Code: Relics

[mechajay]

If you ever want to see One Piece in that classic retro anime style, this is the OVA to watch.

[hoppinggnomethe]

Lots of people don't realize how superior many of the 90s anime's animations were

[mark]

I don't know if it's only nostalgia but there's always this "love" that you can feel while watching old anime.

[CogNoman]

Whoa.. that animation is so nice. Toei is getting better lately, but it would have been nice if the One Piece anime could have had this level of animation quality from the beginning.

[FrankEShaw]

I love the character animation in this, its very rare to see these characters being so expressive with their movements unless they’re fighting so seeing this is a real treat

[DeenHoward]

Forever wishing for a proper blu ray remaster of this OVA. This is a piece of animation that certainly deserves it.

[robo-nidai]

I do love how they managed to get the director of this OVA to return to direct the One Piece movie Red. In a poetic way, it feels like a moment straight out of One Piece.

[metal]

It looks so much better than the older episodes of the show. It’s kind of disappointing that we didn’t get this level of detail and such slick animation in the early episodes of the show

[christhechilled]

I love this 90s style of One Piece. So nostalgic!

[repz]

Bro took the "forgotten relics" name seriously

But honestly this is why I love your channel. Keep it up king 👑

[dyl_pickle-mta]

This was actually the first animated adaptation of One Piece that I ever watched. I’ve been reading the manga recently, and I saw Oda’s sketches for the OVA’s characters within the pages.

[kenm.a.d.]

The way they animated Luffy is so appealing my goodness!

[borsho]

The older animation looks insanely good. I never liked the actual being so colorful with weird propotions

[TheJPooka]

I really like the style older one piece had, It really made it stand out and solidify itself from other anime at the time. I remember having a cel from the ova but sadly lost it during a move in

[_MrLee]

Anime in the early 90s Late 80s will always look crisp and beautiful...

[El_Mince]

I think I actually like Kagawa’s style better than Koizumi’s

[JaseAnimates]

It's minor, but it's nice that the male characters also have light reflecting off their eyes sometimes, which I don't think happens in the series. It gives them way more life imo

[KremBotop]

So Hisashi Kagawa's involvement in the special's designs technically already gave One Piece a Toei connection thanks to his Sailor Moon background (he only did character design work in the 2nd and 3rd movies but did key animation and / or animation direction in all 5 seasons of the original series). Neat. He has shared lots of custom artworks based on the series he worked on in social media and even released an artbook. He's definitely very skilled, probably SM's best anime artist too.

Also, 98' surely had to be an odd and rough time for Toei when it comes to their blockbuster shows; as Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon have both just ended the year before while One Piece and Digimon were still a year away. Because of this I don't just wonder how things could've turned out if OP stayed at IG, but also if Toei's 98' Yu-Gi-Oh series did succeed and the series didn't migrate to NAS / Gallop shortly afterwards. A lot of things might've been different.

[slambro]

interesting to see how two different artists can depict an artstyle so different to eachother, yet both are equally faithful to the manga. V cool.