One Piece Movie 10 Rocks Theaters
The highly anticipated One Piece: Strong World 10th movie debuted in Japan this week, & it's been making unbelievable numbers. It's been known for nearly a year & a half now that One Piece manga creator Eiichiro Oda would actually be involved in the anime for the first time by coming up with an original story for the film himself, as well as overseeing production of it. So it was expected for this film to do quite well, but I don't think anyone expected it'd do this good.
In its first day alone, Strong World grossed an estimated 400 million yen (~$4.5 million), a sum unheard of for a Toei movie. Their previous one-day record was set by one of the Kamen Rider films which reached 247 million yen (~$2.75 million). As can be seen in the video above, there was quite the long lines to get into the theaters during its premiere.
By the end of its second day, the movie grossed over 1 billion yen (~$11.5 million), which is slightly higher than Ponyo's debut weekend at the Japanese box office. It should also be noted that Strong World debuted in merely 188 theaters, nearly half of the theaters the ninth One Piece movie was shown in.
Because of the high interest in the movie, all 56 volumes of the One Piece manga made it into Japan's Weekly Top 200 Manga. Over a quarter of the top selling manga last week were every volume of One Piece ever made.
Speaking of manga, a special volume 0 of the One Piece manga was given to those who saw the film early, which I'm sure helped fuel sales a bit. There wasn't really much to the special volume. A bonus chapter, some sketches, toy ads, interviews, & such. But in a piece written by Oda talking about the film, he ended it with this:
Also, this story will be Luffy’s final adventure as a 17 year old. Do keep coming to watch him.
Holy crap! This means One Piece will be getting a time-skip soon?! But what does he mean that THIS was his last adventure at 17? In both the anime & manga, he's still the same age he's been for the past 600 chapters. Could this movie somehow take place in between the forthcoming time skip? Whatever the case, it'll sure be interesting to see the Straw Hat Pirates become older. The question now is when.
Source: http://zepy.momotato.com/category/anime