It’s not unheard of for manga and anime franchises to cross over from time to time; after all, we did get Jump Force a few years ago which featured all of the most popular characters from Shonen Jump getting together to battle it out amongst themselves.
What is perhaps a little less common, is for one cartoon franchise to crossover with another – but as of today, it’s at least not unheard of. One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda recently confirmed that Pokémon exists within his seafaring universe.
In his “SBS” Q&A column featured at the end of most volumes of the One Piece manga, Oda confirmed that the iconic game-turned-anime-turned-global phenomenon exists in the world of One Piece in the form of picture books (via ComicBook):
“Picture books” and “illustrated stories” do exist in One Piece. Picture books are just picture books but think of illustrated stories as the manga in the world of One Piece. Since there is no concept of speech bubbles, the story is told through text and dialogue within a frame, similar to manga. Some famous titles in the One Piece world include: “Sora, Warrior of the Sea”, “Fire Dog”, “Pokémon”, “Monkey Ball”, and “Marco-san.”
So there we have it – during some downtime while sailing the seas, there’s every chance that Luffy and his crewmates are kicking back and catching up on the latest issue of Pokémon. It almost begs the further question of whether the picture books are based on the anime and if so, whether it’s up to Ash’s farewell arc and the denizens of One Piece are just as emotional about it as we are in the real world.
It’s probably a question we won’t be getting an answer to as One Piece sails into its closing chapters. Speaking of which, there’s been rampant speculation about a potential leak of the popular manga’s ending spreading around the internet like wildfire.