One Piece Set Photos Reportedly Capture First Look at Straw Hat Pirates’ Ship

 New images reportedly taken from the set of the live-action One Piece series reveal a first look at the Going Merry.

The new pictures were posted on Twitter by the @CuriosidadesOP fan account. CBR could not verify the validity of the images or their original source. Assuming the images are real, they provide the first look at the Red Force, the flagship of the Red-Haired Pirates, and the Going Merry, the tiny but sturdy ship that the Straw Hat Pirates grow to love over the course of their adventures on the high seas. The Going Merry features the ship's iconic Goat-shaped figurehead, which is carved out more realistically than its cute manga counterpart, but maintains its trademark smile.

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The vessels in the new images resemble the pirate ships that have been previously glimpsed on the set of the new live-action series. In January, a fan was able to capture some long-distance photographs of several ships being contructed at the show's Cape Town, South Africa sound stage. While the ships were being built with more realistic proportions that the somewhat stout and stylized ships featured in Eiichiro Oda's original manga, some of them displayed unique features, such as the duck-shaped mast on Iron-Mace Alvida's flagship, the Miss Love Duck, that gave away their connection to the new One Piece show.

The live-action One Piece officially began filming in South Africa earlier this year. The series is being produced as a collaboration between Netflix and Tomorrow Studios, the production company behind Cowboy Bebop's short-lived live-action series. The series will star star Iñaki Godoy (Go, Youth!) as the the straw-hatted hero Monkey D. Luffy, Taz Skylar (Boiling Point) as Sanji, Emily Rudd (Fear Street) as the fashionable Nami and Jacob Romero Gibson (Greenleaf) as Usopp. Japanese-American actor Mackenyu, who will also star in the two new upcoming live-action Fullmetal Alchemist movies, will portray the swordsman Roronoa Zoro. Netflix announced another addition to the cast on March 28, Peter Gadiot, who will be playing the role of Red-Haired Shanks, the charismatic pirate captain who inspires Luffy to take up a life on the high seas. Gadiot is best known for playing Cyrus in ABC's Once Upon A Time in Wonderland.

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One Piece kicked off its adventure on the high seas in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1998. In the 24 years since its debut, the story of Luffy and his ragtag crew of Straw Hat pirates has become the best-selling manga series of all time, with approximately half-a-billion copies in circulation around the world. The entire anime series is available for streaming on Crunchyroll, while select seasons and several of the franchise's animated features are available for streaming on Netflix.