Eiichiro Oda requested One Piece Film: RED to give “Important Role to a Female Character”

There was fascinating news coming from Comic Natalie and Anime News Network. In the Toei 2022 Film Lineup Press Conference that was held on Thursday, Producer Shinji Shimizu revealed that the One Piece Creator had two very specific requests for the upcoming One Piece Film: RED movie, “Bring in a director who isn’t involved with the Television Series, and the second request was “to give an important role to a female character.”

Shimizu said that they were able to fulfill the requests. Having interacted with the Code Geass Director, Goro Taniguchi before he reached out to the Director. It turns out that Taniguchi was an old friend of Oda’s and he immediately accepted the job. Shimizu said that although there aren’t many occasions when a director from outside Toei Animation works in the studio, he relishes the result. “I feel like we’ve got a good chemical change happening,” he said.

As for the request to give a female character an important role, Shimizu stated that it was difficult to write the script while taking that into account. He expressed his gratitude to screenwriter Tsutomu Kuroiwa for “putting it all together.” Finally, he stated that Oda is just as, if not even more heavily involved in One Piece Film Red than he was in One Piece Film Strong World, in which he wrote the story.