One Piece Anime Returns to Toonami

 The third show in Toonami's month-long series of new additions is none other than Eiichiro Oda's perennially popular shonen epic, One Piece.

One Piece is returning to Toonami's anime lineup.

The programming block confirmed the Straw Hat Pirates' return with an announcement on its official Facebook page. In early January, Toonami announced that it was planning on adding a new anime series to its schedule every week for the next "month or so." The programming block previously reveal two of those series: the second season of the sci-fi comedy Assassination Classroom, and the critically acclaimed fantasy adventure Made in Abyss. The series will begin its new run on American TV with the first episode of the Return to Sabaody arc, which also marks the beginning of the second half of the series. The network will air One Piece's 517th and 518th episodes back-to-back on Jan. 23 at 1:30 A.M. EST.

One Piece was previously a staple of the Toonami schedule. The series aired as part of Toonami's original afternoon lineup on Cartoon Network in 2005. The series then returned to the programming block when the Toonami branding was resurrected as part of Adult Swim's late night offerings in 2013. The series' first run in late-night came to an end in 2017, after the network aired the episode 384, the last chapter of the Spa Island arc.

Lapsed fans who are looking to catch up on the series will be able to watch truncated versions of the Arabasta and Drum Island arcs when Netflix adds two classic One Piece movies, Episode of Arabasta and Episode of Chopper: Bloom in Winter, Miracle Sakura to its streaming library in February. Both movies offer abridged versions of their respective arcs, but the Episode of Chopper offers some new content by adding in characters who didn't appear in the story originally, such as Nico Robin and Franky.

The anime's return to Toonami and Netflix appears to be a part of a renewed push to introduce the series to more mainstream audiences ahead of the premiere of the franchise's upcoming live-action reboot. The new adaptation was originally announced in 2017 and is being produced by Netflix and Tomorrow Studios, the production company behind the short-lived Cowboy Bebop live-action series. The series will star Go, Youth! and Who Killed Sara?'s Iñaki Godoy as the series' straw-hatted protagonist, Monkey D. Luffy. Series creator Eiichiro Oda is working on the remake as an executive producer.

One Piece was first published in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997 and is now the best-selling manga series of all time, with over half-a-billion copies in circulation worldwide. The full anime series, which now totals over 1000 episodes, can be streamed from Funimation and Crunchyroll, while parts of the series are available on Hulu and Netflix.