Singer Hiroshi Kitadani Says ‘One Piece’ and Anime “Saved His Life”

One Piece is currently one of the longest and most popular animanga franchises of all time. Created by Eiichiro Oda, One Piece started off a s a fun pirate manga and eventually turned into a global phenomenon that people around the world simply adore.

Fans cannot wait to see how Oda is going to finish his manga, but we’re still some time from that moment. Until then, we can enjoy the manga and the anime, and one of the elements that certainly helps in that is the music.

When the anime initially premiered, the first OP was “We Are!” by Hiroshi Kitadani. Now a timeless classic among anime fans, the song actually did a lot for Kitadani personally, as it, as he said in a recent interview, saved his life.

Kitadani’s life at the time was not in the right place. After several years with the band Stagger, Kitadani was “fired” from the band as he himself said, he found himself in a very scary place as he did not know what to do. It was, at that moment, that the opportunity to do a One Piece song presented itself to him.

“I’m really lucky,” Kitadani says. “It’s the best thing to come across a song that serves as a business card and to have fans happy with it. I’m really happy to have been involved in such a long-running project for so long.”

As you know, Kitadani would go on to perform several other power pop songs for the franchise, immortalizing himself as one of the anime’s most important musical collaborators (similarly to how Aqua Timet iz associated with Bleach, Ling tosite sigure with Psycho-Pass, and LiSA with Demon Slayer).

Now, with his career evolving and him doing a cover album of famous One Piece songs, Kitadani looks back at the experience and claims that it saved his life. “I’m one of those people whose life was saved by anime,” he explains. “I was cut from the team [Stagger] and wondering what to do, but then I was picked up by this world. I’m at the halfway point in my life, but I’ll do anything to make the world of anime more popular! I want to make the fans happy, and I’m very grateful.”

This is certainly a lovely story, and we wish Kitadani even more success in the future!

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