Even before his successful manga One Piece, creator Eiichiro Oda worked on another manga called Monsters. Netflix has now announced that it will release this manga as an anime. Fans of One Piece may have seen the protagonist before.
What is Monsters about?
- Eiichiro Oda published the manga in 1994 as a short story, and just 3 years later he published One Piece.
- It is about the samurai Ryuma Shimotsuki, who uncovers a criminal organization. They have stolen a valuable dragon horn that can summon flying creatures.
- He encounters a real dragon throughout the story. The dragon threatens to destroy an entire village. Ryuma tries to stop the powerful creature.
- The manga is part of the One Piece storyline, as Oda revealed in SBS edition 47. The protagonist even makes an appearance with the Straw Hat Pirates.
Netflix will now release the manga under the full title Monsters: 103 Mercies Dragon Damnation. Like the manga, the anime will also be a “one-shot” with only one episode. The release date is sometime in January 2024 (via ANN).
The animation is handled by the studio E&H production. Sunghoo Park will be the director, who has also worked on the action-packed scenes in Jujutsu Kaisen.
So far, there has only been a short teaser trailer showing us the dragon:
Monsters is a must-watch for fans of One Piece
Why should fans watch the anime? Monsters is part of One Piece. In the anime, the Straw Hats have now left Wano Kuni, but for Monsters, the story returns to the land of samurai and ninjas – just many years before the events of One Piece.
The protagonist of the one-shot, Ryuma, even appears in One Piece. 23 years before the events of One Piece, Gecko Moria steals the corpse of the samurai from his grave and revives him as an undead. On Thriller Bark, Zorro then encounters the zombie general named Ryuma, who is the very same protagonist from Monsters.
To understand its backstory, One Piece fans should definitely watch the anime for Monsters. But there are also more parallels that connect One Piece and Monsters:
- The full name of the anime, Monsters: Ippyakusanjo Hiryu Jigoku (or 103 Mercies Dragon Damnation) is also the name of Zorro’s final attack against King.
- The sword Shisui is regarded as a national treasure of Wano Kuni. In Monsters, the sword is in the possession of Ryuma; in One Piece, Zorro can take the sword from the samurai in a fight.
- Both animes feature dragons. Ryuma must face a colossal dragon in Monsters, but swordsman Zorro also encounters a dragon on Punk Hazard.
Those who can’t get enough of Wano Kuni should definitely not miss Monsters. Additionally, the anime is much shorter than the One Piece anime with just one episode. If you have managed to have the patience to watch over 1,000 episodes of One Piece, Monsters should be a piece of cake for you. If you are looking for other animes with monsters, this anime might be for you: A new anime could compete with Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer in 2024 with its gigantic monsters
