The heroes of the manga anthology Shonen Jump—Luffy from One Piece, Deku from My Hero Academia, Goku from Dragon Ball Z, Naruto from Naruto, Ichigo from Bleach, etc., etc.—aren’t exactly strangers to each other, having appeared in countless video games and promotions together. But strangely, the manga anthology’s two biggest stars (that would be Luffy and Goku) have only met in animated form once, back in 2013, in a special that never made it to America. Well, not until next month, at least.
The crossover is really an episode of One Piece preceded by an episode of Toriko, another Shonen Jump manga/anime that was popular at the time, and which was also part of it. Without worrying about how the three completely unconnected series were connecting, the special featured the equally food-obsessed Luffy, Goku, and Toriko participating in a food tournament with the prize being the extremely rare meat called Carat-Sizzled Cattle. The main casts of all three series also appeared, but by the end, the story boiled down to the three leads simultaneously fighting an inevitable big bad.
The episodes aired in Japan in 2013, and there they stayed. But Toei Animation, which makes/made all three series, has announced that they’ll both finally be coming to America as the Toriko x One Piece x Dragon Ball Z Super Crossover Special, aka One Piece episode #590 (it makes sense the specials are being lumped together in the ongoing One Piece, as Toriko stopped airing back in 2014). While there’s no word on if they’ll come to a streaming service, they’ll air on Adult Swim’s Toonami block on Saturday, March 4—and with an English dub. Having put that much work in it, I’d be very surprised it the special didn’t also make it to streaming or home video sooner or later.
[Via Polygon]
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