Guests entering Cosm Los Angeles on Tuesday received straw hats, T-shirts and tote bags before heading into a 95,000-square-foot celebration of “One Piece.” The event combined merchandise, games, photo opportunities, live entertainment and large-scale video displays across the venue.
Held Aug. 25 and 26, One Piece Fest was the first festival of its kind for the franchise in Los Angeles. Toei Animation called it the largest “One Piece” location-based entertainment experience outside Japan, with installations based on all 19 of the anime’s story arcs, from East Blue through Elbaph.
Entering outdoor area included a merchandise bazaar with products made exclusively for the festival. Mighty Jaxx displayed collectible vinyl toys and HYPLAND sold shirts and sweatshirts at the event. The “One Piece” Card Game offered exclusive merchandise, and Team Liquid had two numbered tumblers available only at the event.
The outdoor carnival area gave fans several ways to pass the time between exhibits. They could test their strength on one of those classic punching machines you see often at arcades, play slingshot-style games and take photos with a large Tony Tony Chopper display.
The festival was self-guided. Visitors received a map and could move between areas devoted to different “One Piece” arcs in whatever order they preferred which I personally thought was intuitive.
The main attraction however was inside Cosm.
The venue’s centerpiece, The Dome, is an 87-foot-diameter LED dome with a 12K-by-10K display covering about 5,000 square feet. During the festival, screens throughout the building showed “One Piece” graphics and video before visitors entered the dome.
The size of the display was hard to appreciate from photographs. Underneath it, the images filled nearly the entire field of view.
The Dome hosted “The Elbaph Experience,” a 180-degree presentation based on the anime’s current story arc. The presentation was one of the festival’s clearest attempts to turn the series’ settings into a physical experience.
The rest of Cosm’s three floors continued the theme. Visitors could take photos with displays based on Shanks’ straw hat, Zoro’s Three Sword Style and Gear 5. Chopper appeared for photos as well, and staff members offered demonstrations of the “One Piece” Card Game for those not familiar with the TCG.
The festival also included props and costumes from Netflix’s live-action “One Piece” series, as well as a large installation based on the manga’s cover art.
There was more than most visitors could reasonably see in one trip, particularly for anyone who wanted to shop, play the games and spend time inside The Dome.
“One Piece” has accumulated a huge cast, dozens of locations and multiple storylines over more than two decades. Rather than reduce the franchise to a single jumbled exhibit, the festival spread those elements throughout the venue which truly gave the “festival” title a proper fit and not just utilized as a marketing ploy.
The event followed the franchise’s July Fourth weekend collaboration with the Los Angeles Dodgers, which brought “One Piece” to Dodger Stadium and drew large crowds. The series, which began airing in Japan more than 25 years ago, continues to find new ways to occupy large public spaces in Los Angeles.
The festival ended with a live performance of the “One Piece” theme song on the outdoor stage which brought a fun communal atmosphere to end the night. Which brought he crowd together for one last shared moment before the adventure at Cosm came to an end.
If One Piece Fest is any indication of what Toei Animation can do with experiences like this, hopefully it won’t be the last time fans get the chance to step inside the worlds they’ve spent years watching on screen.
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