The official Jump Festa website has announced the schedule for the official Shonen Jump convention this December. According to the website, this year’s edition of Jump Festa, Jump Festa 2017, will also feature a One Piece “Super Stage Event,” but no other details about that event have been announced.

Jump Festa is an annual event organized by Japanese publisher Shueisha, will be held this year on December 17-18, 2016. Each year, Jump Festa welcomes fans of Weekly Shonen Jump and its many counterparts to Tokyo’s Makuhari Messe Exhibit Hall. The event features numerous booths which feature merchandise, games, an original manga manuscript exhibit, and the “Super Stage Events.”

These “Super Stage Events” are basically panels where manga and anime fans can see their favorite manga authors and anime voice actors in the flesh. For One Piece fans, this is the one time of the year when author Eiichiro Oda appears in public, often accompanied by the entire Straw Hat voice actor team. You can learn more about these Super Stage Events on past episodes of the One Piece Podcast featuring “One Piece mania” Greg Werner. Besides the usual games and skits, Eiichiro Oda has often revealed certain “things to come in the upcoming year” for the One Piece manga. After Jump Festa 2014, Eiichiro Oda announced in the Weekly Shonen Jump author comments:

Jump Festa’s [Super] Stage is really fun every year, but have decided for the sake of my aesthetics as a Mangaka, that this year’s appearance would be my last. Thank you.

Sure enough, Jump Festa 2015‘s One Piece “Super Stage Event” included a surprise appearance from Oda during the panel. Last year’s event also featured a video exploring the inside of Eiichiro Oda’s workspace. Oda also sent along a message during Jump Festa 2016 last year, where he proclaimed that 2016 would be the “year of Sanji.”

See comments from the voice actors (Japanese only).

This year, Jump Festa will again include a One Piece “Super Stage Event” on December 18th from 4:20 – 5:00 PM JST for its seventeenth year. The year 2017 also marks the twentieth anniversary of the One Piece manga, so there are sure to be some amazing surprises. If you happen to be in Tokyo this December, be sure to go check out Jump Festa 2017 and the “Super Stage Event” and maybe Oda (or a messenger) will break his own rule again and make another guest appearance!

As usual, we will be covering Jump Festa during our 2017 One Piece Podcast season premiere on January 5, 2017.

Source: Jump Festa website via Sandman