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ONE PIECE
The TV Series
The television anime version of ONE PIECE is currently
airing in Japan, in the Fuji
Television networks. It used to show on Wednesday
nights at 7:00~7:30pm, but the current timeslot (as
of April 2001) is Sunday nights at 7:30-8:00pm.
The following Fuji network stations air the anime:
Fuji TV / Kansai TV / Toukai TV
/ TV Nishi-Nippon / Hokkaido Bunka Housou / Iwate
Menkoi TV / Sendai Housou / Akita TV / Yamagata Sakuranbo
TV / Fukushima TV / Niigata Sougou TV / Nagano Housou
/ TV Shizuoka / Toyama TV / Ishikawa TV / Fukui TV
/ Sanin Chuuou TV / Okayama Housou / TV Shin-Hiroshima
/ Ehime Housou / Kouchi Sun-Sun TV / Saga TV / TV
Nagasaki / TV Kumamoto / TV Miyazaki / Kagoshima TV
/ Okinawa TV.
If you can read Japanese, there is an official
homepage for the television version, courtesy
of Toei Animation.
So far, the TV series has created three spinoff movies
(with a fourth in the works for a March 2003 theatrical
release in Japan). The first two are available for
rental (VHS and DVD) at your local Japanese video
rental store, as well as available for purchase (VHS
and DVD) from your local import anime shop.
As of November 2000, episodes of the TV series have
been starting its slow trickle into the rental video
market. As of February 2001, they started the even
slower monthly pilgrimage into the for-sale market.
Note that at any time, the most number of episodes
available is by rental VHS, followed by the monthly
release of the for-sale VHS and both for-sale and
rental-only DVDs. Since I will be putting up release
info only for the for-sale DVD version on this site
(because that's the only version I'm getting, and
I'm sure most anime fans by now are switching to region
2 DVD's anyway), I will mention here that packaging
(and ordering) info for VHS and the rental versions
can be from the manufacturer/distributor (avex mode)'s
OP
release info website (also Japanese only).
It seems that each season, the first few volumes have
a "collect and get" item. If you purchase
all the volumes involved and send in the completed
order form with a Japanese postal money order, you
get a special goodie (offer valid only to residents
of Japan, unfortunately - so find a friend living
in Japan if you live abroad). The gift for the first
season (pieces.1-6, offer now void) was a pewter-looking
set of the first real figure gashapon series; the
second season (pieces.1-5, postmark deadline 9/30/02)
features a sea map of the Grand Line created by the
staff.
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