Is One Piece Odyssey Canon?

What seems like an eternity without a new anime game, Bandai Namco recently revealed their newest entry. Revealed to be One Piece Odyssey, the trailer stated the game is a JRPG, centering largely around its story and adventure. In the trailer, it states that Eiichiro Oda participated with the game’s development. This then begs the question, is One Piece Odyssey Canon?

Analysis

The short answer is no. It is not canon whatsoever. Eiichiro Oda didn’t write the story, nor does the story tie directly in with the manga. In the One Piece Canon, the manga stands as the best representation of what is canon or not. Even the One Piece anime has a decent amount of filler, which some consider canon while others do not. Well, One Piece Odyssey doesn’t even tie into the anime, much more the manga.

[Related: Will One Piece Odyssey be worth it?]

But it does promise a certain degree of charisma. Similar to Dragon Quest, which receives Akira Toriyama’s character and monster designs, One Piece Odyssey’s characters were created by Eiichiro Oda himself. As stated by Oda, “I thought to myself – wasn’t it like 3 years ago when I designed the characters?! Hahaha!” In other words, outside of the character designs, Oda had very little to do with the game.

For those who don’t know, Akira Toriyama created the Dragonball Franchise and Eiichiro Oda created One Piece.

Take a look at the new character designed by Eiichiro Oda. The long haired One Piece Odyssey exclusive character just looks badass. Although the story may not have been written by Eiichiro Oda, having characters and monsters created by the great artist himself should help the feeling of immersion for the game. The game’s art direction seems great, displayed from the in game visual of the unique character shown below.

To draw an accurate portrayal of how canon the game is, it’s essentially as canon as the One Piece movies. In essence, the One Piece movies also have Oda’s character designs, but little to no participation in story writing. The movies attempt to tie in chronologically, but a thorough analysis of the timeline shows that they have no bearing to the overall plot.

In Conclusion

Not many story elements were revealed for One Piece Odyssey. The new character was shown, with some exploration elements that seem promising. They mentioned that One Piece Odyssey was a long term project. Although One Piece Odyssey is not canon, story is super important aspect for a JRPG. Hopefully the writers and developers impress the community. Would suck to see yet another shallow cash grab thrown to the anime gaming community.

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