The official One Piece website has released a special interview with the second person who helped work on the One Piece anime series’ new opening “Wake Up” and animator Yukiko Nakatani (. After working on the One Piece anime for several years and having been responsible for, among others, the “One Piece Episode of Nami: Kōkaishi no Namida to Nakama no Kizuna” character design, she was given the task to draw the character’s new special 15th Anniversary costumes. What follows is a compilation of certain answers given by Nakatani herself in the interview as well a report on some of the other answers she gave.

Q: How did you become in charge of this (project)?

A: Because it was pretty grandiose, we got the assignment/order to plug the 15th anniversary with a lot of pazazz.

Q: With the 15th Anniversary’s special costumes, did you first have to think of which design to go for? Also, could you tell us about the process of setting on the design, or maybe any rough drafts or ideas or the motif or concept you decided on in the end?

A: First, the two important elements that were assigned to us were “Gold” and “Pirates.” To that we added all the character’s colour themes, wanting to go for something quite prominent.

The basis was the image of them wearing extra clothes, giving it a sort middle-age sort of feel, something that wouldn’t feel too “rough” if we were to put the “gorgeousness” in the spotlight. I thought it would be good if we could show off the main elements of their “pirateness” with some small objects, swords, clothes . . . winding around their waist, hats etc. So, I just topped it off with that.

Nakatani also described how she wanted to incorporate things with a lot of parts to it that normally don’t appear in the original work, but that she had to keep in mind that she couldn’t let all that ruin the individuals’ specific silhouette. For Luffy, the clothes had to go wider towards the bottom.

Q: I believe the thing that’s especially different from their garments up until now is that the uniforms are all in the characters’ color theme. What did you have in mind when design it this way?

A: I roughly specified which parts had to be in gold, but after that I completely gave free reign to our color designer (Teppei) Horita.

Q: The jacket Zoro’s wearing has a goldfish design which looks pretty adorable, but what idea or goal in mind did you have when you designed that?

A: While doing the rough drafts I initially drew some kinds of plants, but after getting some advice from our Art Designer Yoshi’ike, I changed that to a (Indian) Lotus and goldfish design. I thought it turned out pretty cute, and kind of liked how it was a mismatch for Zoro.

Q: I have to say I especially think that the two girls’ costumes look really cute and wonderful, but could you tell us what idea or goal you had in mind for the motif?





A: I tried to express that with their silhouettes, in accordance with each individual’s image, so for Nami it was having a lot of volume on top, while for Robin it was to have it be wider a little lower. I also tried to make Nami seem energetic and cute, but have Robin look more “adult-like”, etc etc…

SOURCE: OFFICIAL ONE PIECE WEBSITE

Note: Be sure to check out the original article HERE in order to have nice comparison of the before and after.