Crunchyroll Expands One Piece Legal Streaming to UK & Ireland and many more EU/MENA territories
Streaming service Crunchyroll has announced plans to expand the legal streams for the long-running shonen anime series One Piece!
The Toei Animation anime series will be expanded to the following territories: United Kingdom, Ireland, Nordics, Netherlands, Greece, Turkey, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Italian-speaking Europe, and MENA.
Before folks get too excited, there are a couple of notes that you should be aware of. The first is that the accessibility will begin with the latest simulcast episode – Episode 923, followed by the entire current story arc Wano (episodes 892 onwards). French-speaking Europe will not be able to access these episodes.
UPDATE 25th February: Episodes 1-325 are now available to stream (HD Special Edition versions for episodes 1-206 not available). These episodes cover the East Blue, Alabasta, Sky Island, Water Seven and Enies Lobby story arcs. There’s no word on the show’s other episodes and specials being made available just yet.
The Wano story arc episodes will be available for free viewers except for Poland which is for Premium members only. The simulcast episodes are estimated to launch on Sunday at 2:00am GMT for the territories above while English speakers in Eastern Europe (excluding Poland) and Southern Europe (East of Italy, excluding Greece) will receive them on Monday at 5:00pm GMT.
Plot Synopsis (via Crunchyroll):
“Monkey. D. Luffy refuses to let anyone or anything stand in the way of his quest to become the king of all pirates. With a course charted for the treacherous waters of the Grand Line and beyond, this is one captain who’ll never give up until he’s claimed the greatest treasure on Earth: the Legendary One Piece!”
This is the first time that the series has been made available legally for streaming in any shape and form for the United Kingdom & Ireland, which is special as Toei Animation generally focuses on United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for the English subtitled streams (due to those territories being sorted by Toei US while everyone else is Toei Europe).
One Piece has been licensed in the United Kingdom and Ireland by Manga Entertainment for home video release. At the time of this post, they have released DVD collections 1 to 20 (episodes 1-492) with collection 21 coming this March (episodes 493-516). The distributor has also released the One Piece films from the first film all the way to Strong World, Film Z and Stampede.
Source: Crunchyroll
