The One Piece anime will be making a fresh start on Netflix thanks to Wit Studio, but the reason for its existence is a bit silly.
Have you ever met someone who says they don’t watch old movies just because they’re in black and white? I’ve always found that line of reasoning weird, why would you limit yourself in such a way when there’s so much good stuff out there that just happens to be old enough to have been shot on black and white film? Well, it seems I’ve now gotten old enough to be at a point where some might even argue that watching old anime in that classic, boxy, 4:3 format is difficult because everything is in widescreen right now. Which, again, is a similarly silly argument, but it’s kind of the reason behind why the One Piece anime is getting a remake.
In a recent interview with Japanese outlet Real Sound, Wit Studio (the studio behind the upcoming remake) and Production I.G. president Takeshi Wada touched on their upcoming take on One Piece, and how younger viewers might find it hard to watch older shows (via GamesRadar through machine translation). “For young people who are used to watching today’s animation due to technological innovation, some may find it difficult to watch the images from 25 years ago, when One Piece started its animation broadcast, because of the different [ratio] format,” Wada said. I’m not sure this line of thinking is entirely true, especially when you think of the wave of younger anime fans on TikTok posting about classics like Serial Experiments Lain and similar shows that are also in 4:3.
