General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

One Piece Film: Strong World (ONE PIECE FILM STRONG WORLD)

One Piece Film: Strong World (ONE PIECE FILM STRONG WORLD, ワンピースフィルムストロングワールド) is a 2009 Japanese animated film, the tenth theatrical feature based on Eiichiro Oda's manga One Piece, and the first in the series for which Oda wrote an original movie story while serving as executive producer.¹^•² It was released in Japan on December 12, 2009, runs 113 minutes, and was produced by Toei Animation with distribution by Toei.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	December 12, 2009, on 188 screens across Japan¹^•³
Running time	113 minutes, color, 35mm¹
Director / screenplay	Sakai Munehisa (境宗久); screenplay by Kamisaka Hirohiko (上坂浩彦)¹
Oda's role	Original work, movie story, costume and creature design, executive producer⁴
Japan box office	4.8 billion yen⁵
Theme song	"fanfare" by Mr.Children; score by Kohei Tanaka²
Villain	Shiki, the "Golden Lion" (金獅子のシキ), voiced by Naoto Takenaka¹^•²
U.S. theatrical debut	November 7 (English dub) and 9 (English sub), 2021, via Fathom Events⁶

Spoilers

Story

News reaches the traveling Straw Hat Pirates that there is trouble in the peaceful waters of East Blue. As Luffy and the crew turn back, a mysterious pirate ship appears in the sky above them. Aboard the flying vessel is Shiki, a Devil Fruit user and a legendary pirate who once fought Gold Roger and escaped from the great undersea prison Impel Down, placing him alongside Roger and Whitebeard in the story's lore.⁷^•⁸

Shiki abducts the crew's navigator Nami and drops Luffy and the others from the sky onto a chain of flying islands, where ferocious animals that have undergone their own evolution fight for survival in a world of eat-or-be-eaten.⁴^•⁸ The scattered crew must reunite, uncover Shiki's ambitions, and confront him, with Nami's loyalty to her captain a central emotional thread.⁸

Production

The film was the tenth One Piece theatrical feature, made while the manga had reached 55 collected volumes and cumulative circulation of about 170 million copies in Japan.²^•⁹ Oda Eiichiro, the manga's creator, wrote a completely original story for the film and was credited with the costume and creature design and with executive production (製作総指揮), his first time in that role on a One Piece film.⁴^•¹⁰ Sakai Munehisa directed, with Masahiro Sato as character designer and animation director, Takeshi Waki as art director, and Kazuhiro Nishikawa as CG supervisor; DandeLion Animation Studio handled the CG portion of the production.⁴

The regular television cast reprised their roles: Mayumi Tanaka as Luffy, Kazuya Nakai as Zoro, Akemi Okamura as Nami, Kappei Yamaguchi as Usopp, Hiroaki Hirata as Sanji, Inuko Inuyama as Chopper, Yuriko Yamaguchi as Robin, and Kazuki Yao as Franky.¹^•¹¹ Guest voice roles went to the actor Naoto Takenaka as Shiki, the Olympic swimmer Kosuke Kitajima, and the announcer Aiko Kaito.²^•¹¹ The theme song "fanfare" was performed by Mr.Children.²

Box office

The film opened on December 12, 2009 on 188 screens and earned 1.038 billion yen in its first two days, exceeding the two-day opening of Ponyo (1.025 billion yen the previous year). Theaters gave attendees a free copy of a special manga, One Piece Volume 0, written by Oda, which drew crowds large enough to cause lines and congestion at theaters nationwide.³

By its eighth day the gross had passed 2.25 billion yen with more than 1.8 million admissions, the fastest a Toei-distributed film had reached that figure, surpassing the ten days the Aibou theatrical film needed to reach 2 billion yen, and the film held first place in the weekend rankings for two consecutive weeks.¹² After 24 days it had passed 3.01 million admissions and 3.75 billion yen, and Toei reported audience satisfaction of 98.9 percent in its own survey.¹³ Its final Japanese total was 4.8 billion yen.⁵ Box Office Mojo lists a total of $48,192,309 for the film in Japan.¹⁴

Canon status and related works

Like the other One Piece theatrical films, Strong World is not part of the main manga storyline, but it occupies a distinctive position: its villain Shiki exists in the wider One Piece world and has been involved in its backstory, while the present-day events of the film do not fit into the anime's narrative.¹⁵ A companion piece, One Piece Film Strong World Episode: 0, was also produced in 2009.¹⁶ Viewing guides commonly place the film after episode 381 of the anime.¹⁷

The film received its first-ever U.S. theatrical release on November 7 and 9, 2021, in a two-night Fathom Events screening (English dub and English subtitled versions) held to celebrate the One Piece anime's 1,000th episode, paired with the U.S. premiere of the One Piece: Mugiwara Chase featurette.⁶ It has since been available on streaming services including Netflix and Disney+.¹⁸^•¹⁹

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 89 percent Tomatometer from two critic reviews; Brian Costello of Common Sense Media rated it 3/5, noting that viewers need not know the series to follow the plot, and Brittany Vincent of IGN rated it 8/10, praising its humor and animated fight scenes.¹⁸ On the Japanese review aggregator Filmarks it averages 3.7 out of 5 from more than 60,000 user reviews.¹¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026