The official One Piece website has released a special interview with the last person of the series of “Barging in Studio Ôizumi” — one of the Tôei Animation studios — interviews, art director Ryûji Yoshi’ike.

Over the years Yoshi’ike has amassed quite a number of episodes as the One Piece anime’s art director, but he has also worked on the art design of other series such as the Dragon Ball GT anime, as well as the 1995 anime “Gulliver Boy,” “Sekai Meisaku Douwa: Wow! Maerchen Oukoku,” the classic 90’s anime “Super Bikkuriman” and more.

What follows are a compilation of Yoshi’ike’s answers to Kappei Yamaguchi’s questions from the entire original interview.

Q. So let’s get down to business, could you please explain to us what exactly your role is for the “One Piece” anime series?

A. I make drawings that follow the designs of the original One Piece manga. My role consists of something like location scouting based on the directions the producer gives me, like “A scary-looking place” or “An old-looking place”.

I make things called “colorboards” and run those past the producer to tell me whether to make the image redder, darker.

Take for example this red-burning Punk Hazard. In the manga it was obviously all in black and white.



As for the background, there’s a range of other professionals in charge of the background so they draw it all at once.

Before adding the background though, we first have to draw the general world view’s model sheets. To do that, I start with reading the manga, “Oh this scene’s probably going to have to have a scary feel to it” and then I start drawing out an example.

If you were to compare it to the theater, I kind of double as the director of photography as well as the production designer.

After that, everyone gathers up, we adjust some things, add color, and have professionals from a variety of production companies draw the background.

Otherwise, if everyone were to draw however they felt like it, the whole’d feel fragmented so that’s why I hand them the examples I drew.

Basically, if this were a restaurant (chain), I’d be the main branch’s manager of some sorts.

It’s okay to add some individual touches to the other individual branches, but it has to follow the main store, something like that.

As for the background’s coloring, I’d say I do about half digitally and the other half manually like with paint. It depends on the person, but I think it’s sometimes better to work with digitally when mixing in colors.

Q. Mr. Yoshi’ike, is there any character you like and/or enjoyed drawing? What about the Heracles Beetle* you drew a model sheet of?

A. Hmm, not sure, I did think it was awesome that Luffy didn’t come back until sunrise when going to look for insects.

Q. Mr. Yoshi’ike, what’s the part of a story you were in charge of that you especially liked?

A. Seeing as I’ve had a part in all of them, it’s hard to say.

From a production point of view I really liked the one where Chopper made his first appearance. He comes out with clopping sounds, and I was like “Wait, it’s this animal!?”

Then when I read the original manga I was really amazed.

I always hope the anime is able to convey that sort of excitement.

Not only the original, there’s also people who exclusively watch the anime, and of course also people who watch both I think.

Like with Gaimon, there’s also the kind of story that develops even though there’s no head nor tails to it. But with some of the One Piece viewers becoming adults you have to watch out with that. Though the manga isn’t that complicated, you have to make sure the explanation doesn’t get all too convoluted. I think we need to be able to create something that you can’t just take your eyes off of while eating, with your croquette getting cold.

Q. Mr. Yoshi’ike, could you tell us a bit more about these Art Model Sheet Frames?

A. Actually, I decided to, by myself, draw some Art Model Sheet frames for each season like this Punk Hazard one.

And then I just play around a bit with those frames. Like, I try to incorporate certain kinds of incidents that happened (during that arc), add an explosion here, some shining light there,… things like that.

For Punk Hazard you’ve first got the Straw Hats getting surprised by the dragon, in the back you’ve got Caesar with his cheeky laugh, the looming shadow of the gas spreading.

There’s also Kinemon and the children … And the Transponder Snails looking from the sand when Shinokuni’s outbreak started.

In contrast to that there’s the appearance of Commodore Yarisugi as well as Luffy and Law forming an alliance.

And I just have a bit of fun drawing all those individual incidents in these frames. (Laugh)

Q. And how long does it take to draw these?

A. The drawing itself doesn’t take that much time.

It all depends on how long it takes for me to get some inspiration.

Like when you’re cooking: deciding what you’re going to eat takes the longest, but once you actually get cooking it’s not all that bad.

Q. Mr. Yoshi’ike, you must be drawing background images non-stop?

A. Well, probably about 300 pages of background every week.

Well, it’s not like we draw a 30 minute film in one week’s time (Laugh)

There’s 4, 5 groups with one week difference inbetween each individual group’s work. One group’s work takes about 2 months so we have background drawings from every individual group every week.

Q. Mr. Yoshi’ike, you’ve been working on a lot of arcs now, is there one where you thought: “I really liked this!”?

A. Mmm, well I like when there’s lot of room to expand on… Let’s just say I don’ t dislike Skypiea.

Actually I prefer when we don’t get a definite answer, after all so there’s some room for thoughts for the viewers.



On this page I actually just wanted to draw a Hercules beetle*. (Laugh)

Usually here you’d file these stacks of papers with a clip, so I make drawings of the clips so people’d start wondering if these are real. I liked that kind of detail so I added this beetle* in a place where you’d only notice it if you’re really looking.

*Note: Beetles (and catching them) are very popular with boys/men in Japan. Hercules beetles used to also be the sort of beetle that Japanese boys would look up to because it was so rare and hard to get ahold of in Japan. You could compare the thrill of catching a hercules beetle for Japanese boys to finding the One Piece for pirates (in One Piece).