A few days after Japan, One Piece: Red, a film derived from the manga phenomenon, is released today in French theaters to the delight of its fans in France, the second largest manga and Japanese animation market. Distributed in l’Hexagone by Pathé, the film should be released in the fall in the United States. This is the 15th original film from the series, which celebrated its 25th anniversary at the end of July. hero of the series, now has more than 100 volumes to his credit and is multiplying sales records. With 490 million copies sold, Eiichiro Oda (47) has even been awarded a Guinness World Record in the category “largest number of copies of the same comic strip published by a single author”. On the occasion of the release of the 100th volume in France last year, the publisher Glénat had produced a print run of 250,000 copies, like a Goncourt prize. A (too) great successScreaming, overexcited and undressing fans, the film released in preview in a cinema in Marseille has created a strange phenomenon. With each important scene, the spectators go crazy. One of them filmed the scene, giving rise to strong reactions on Twitter. In Bordeaux, the same kind of situation happened with fans who had a reaction that could be described as excessive. A success that Ryuji Kochi tried to explain. “What makes this manga so special is above all the script”, underlined the president Europe, Middle East and Africa of Toei Animation, the Japanese company which has produced the animated series since 1999, on the occasion of the release of episode 1000 last November on AFP. Excessive industrialization, racism, slavery, geopolitical intrigues… Beyond the themes addressed and its endearing characters, the immense universe of One Piece is crossed by references cultural and geographical (ancient Egypt, Venice, medieval Japan, etc.) which give it a universal dimension. Film adaptations of manga have also been very successful since the reopening of cinemas last year. The Demon Slayer phenomenon, which had broken all revenue records in Japan, had for example garnered more than 300,000 admissions in France the first week after its release in May 2021.
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