One Piece and Digimon tabletop games are on the way to mark the anime's 25th anniversaries
From studio behind Spy x Family card game and Sonic Roll.
‘Tis the time for massive anime series to turn 25, it seems, as One Piece, Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh! are all variously celebrating their quarter-century runs over the next 12 months or so. With Yu-Gi-Oh! already well underway in marking two-and-a-half decades of its spin-off trading card game with a massive birthday party in Tokyo last month, One Piece and Digimon are now looking to get in on the action.
The animated adventures of Monkey D. Luffy to become the King of the Pirates and the DigiDestined’s quest to save the Digital World alongside their virtual monster friends both began airing on Japanese TVs in 1999, following the respective successes of One Piece’s original manga run and the Tamagotchi-like Digital Monster toy a couple of years beforehand.
Both franchises have obviously had no shortage of success since, with One Piece recently being adapted into one of the more warmly-received live-action Netflix series last year - while its original anime sailed even further past the staggering 1,000-episode mark - and Digimon continuing to release spin-off series, films and video games. Both have also been turned into trading card games in recent years, with the One Piece Card Game and Digimon Card Game both establishing a dedicated community of players.
The two series aren’t done on the tabletop, yet, either. Los Angeles tabletop outlet Kess Entertainment, which previously turned recent anime hit Spy x Family into Love Letter-like card game Mission for Peanuts and video game stalwart Sonic the Hedgehog into a dice game (because he rolls, geddit?), revealed that it is working with anime studio Toei on new tabletop games for both One Piece and Digimon to mark their 25th anniversaries. (It’s also working on “several outdoor spring/summer toys”, if you care.)
The One Piece and Digimon tabletop games - Kess didn’t specify whether those might be board games, tabletop RPGs, card games or something else - are due to arrive sometime during the rest of 2024 and into 2025 in time for the occasion.