For twenty-five years, One Piece has been more than a story. It’s been a shared journey — a tapestry of adventure, friendship, and the relentless pursuit of freedom that has united generations of fans around the world. This fall, that journey has taken on a breathtaking new form in the heart of New York City.
In collaboration with Toei Animation, Mercer Labs has unveiled the One Piece x Mercer Labs Immersive Experience, a groundbreaking exhibition that fuses art, technology, and storytelling to bring the Grand Line to life. For the first time, visitors can step inside the world Eiichiro Oda imagined — not as observers, but as fellow voyagers.
The experience spans eleven intricately designed rooms, each dedicated to a different emotional or narrative arc from the series. From the heat of Marineford’s battlefield to the radiant cherry blossoms of Wano, every inch of space is alive with motion, sound, and light. It’s not a static museum; it’s a living ocean of imagination.
Setting Sail: The Vision Behind the Collaboration
Mercer Labs has become known for pushing the boundaries of immersive art — their installations use light, projection, and interactive sound to make visitors part of the artwork itself. For Toei Animation, partnering with them was both a creative leap and a symbolic gesture.
“We didn’t want just a gallery or a pop-up,” said a Toei representative during the exhibit’s opening event. “We wanted an experience that captured the feeling of setting sail with the Straw Hat crew — that mix of uncertainty, discovery, and emotion that defines One Piece.”
The collaboration also marks Toei’s first major partnership with a Western art-tech institution, bridging two creative worlds. While Mercer Labs has worked with digital artists and avant-garde musicians, bringing anime into its universe posed a new challenge: translating emotional storytelling into sensory immersion.
The result is a multi-sensory odyssey — one that blurs the lines between art installation, theater, and digital cinema.
Entering the Grand Line
The exhibition begins quietly, with dimly lit corridors echoing the sounds of waves and wind. As guests move deeper inside, the walls begin to shimmer — light ripples across every surface, and the faint outline of a ship’s figurehead comes into view. You’re no longer in Manhattan; you’re aboard the Going Merry.
From there, the journey unfolds across eleven themed spaces:
1. The Age of Dreams – A room filled with fragments of maps and journal pages suspended in light, symbolizing the early days of adventure. Visitors can touch the walls to trigger whispers of famous quotes from Luffy, Roger, and Shanks.
2. East Blue Rising – The first burst of color comes here: projections of waves, fish, and the spinning compass of the Grand Line swirl around the viewer. It’s a digital ocean, reactive to footsteps.
3. The Grand Line Corridor – A massive tunnel lined with screens mimicking ocean storms and sea kings, complete with gusts of air and vibrating floor panels that simulate waves.
4. Water 7 Reflections – This section resembles a cathedral of mirrors, reflecting endless blue canals. Holographic figures of the Straw Hats appear briefly, waving or running past.
5. Enies Lobby Gate – Giant digital gates swing open as Nico Robin’s haunting “I want to live” echoes through the chamber — one of the exhibit’s most emotional moments.
6. Thriller Bark’s Shadows – A darker, fog-filled area where moving shadows of zombies and ghosts twist around the visitor, synchronized to Brook’s violin theme.
7. Marineford Inferno – The intensity peaks here. Projected fire and ice collide across 360° walls while distant shouts and clashes thunder through surround speakers. The heat is simulated with bursts of warm air — a sensory recreation of one of the series’ most devastating battles.
8. Punk Hazard to Dressrosa – This section transitions through shifting climates — from arctic chill to tropical warmth — representing the evolution of the crew’s trials.
9. Whole Cake Harmony – Scent diffusers fill the air with hints of vanilla and citrus as candy-colored lights pulse in rhythm with Big Mom’s operatic themes.
10. Wano Rebirth – A visual masterpiece. The entire room glows with cherry blossoms drifting through the air, while taiko drums and shamisen music respond to motion sensors. Every visitor leaves petals trailing in light as they move.
11. The Dawn Room – The finale. A calm, glowing white space where quotes from Oda appear briefly on the walls before dissolving into waves. The theme “We Are!” plays softly, and fans often linger here in silence, overwhelmed.
The Art of Emotion Through Technology
The One Piece x Mercer Labs exhibition isn’t just about spectacle — it’s about emotion. Mercer’s design team studied how sound frequencies, color gradients, and motion perception affect human empathy. They wanted to mimic the exact feelings Oda’s panels evoke: laughter, awe, heartbreak, and hope.
Sound design plays a central role. Each room uses an adaptive audio system that shifts in tone and tempo based on where visitors stand. If you move closer to a projection of Luffy, the music swells; if you step back, it fades into ambient sea sounds. The experience feels alive — reactive, personal, and intimate.
Light projection technology, meanwhile, transforms walls into water, skies, or flames without visible seams. Over 150 projectors and LED arrays are used across the eleven rooms, powered by AI-driven engines that adjust hue and brightness based on crowd density. The more people move, the more the world seems to breathe.
In this way, the installation mirrors one of One Piece’s greatest themes: that the world changes when people move with purpose.
A Testament to Oda’s Legacy
Eiichiro Oda’s storytelling has always been about scale — vast oceans, endless dreams, and sprawling character arcs that feel as big as the world itself. Yet, within that scale lies human intimacy: laughter, loss, friendship, and longing.
The Mercer Labs collaboration honors both. By stripping away the boundaries of page and screen, it lets fans feel what Oda has always described — the wonder of freedom and the weight of chasing it.
During the opening event, visitors shared emotional reactions. Many spoke about tearing up during the Enies Lobby segment or feeling “a real chill” in Marineford. Some compared it to the experience of reading their favorite chapter for the first time.
Oda himself, though not present, shared a recorded message played during the launch:
“The world of One Piece was always meant to be bigger than paper. It belongs to everyone who has ever set sail in their imagination.”
That message set the tone for the exhibition — not as a corporate anniversary, but as a heartfelt thank-you to the fans who have kept the Straw Hat dream alive for a quarter century.
Why It Matters
This exhibition arrives at a pivotal time. With One Piece’s anime now deep into the Egghead Arc, the live-action series renewed for two more seasons, and global streaming stronger than ever, the franchise stands as a bridge between generations and cultures.
But the Mercer Labs project does more than celebrate nostalgia — it redefines what it means to experience anime in the modern age.
Traditional exhibitions rely on props, panels, and stills. This one transforms those elements into living art. It invites participation. It asks you not to watch the Straw Hats’ journey, but to walk it.
For younger fans, it’s a gateway to understanding the emotional weight of moments they’ve only seen on screen. For longtime followers, it’s a rekindling — a reminder of why the story mattered in the first place.
The Global Reach of the Grand Line
That One Piece chose New York City for this collaboration is no coincidence. The city represents diversity, creativity, and reinvention — the very ideals Oda built his world on.
Inside the exhibit, snippets of multiple languages appear in projections: English, Japanese, Spanish, and French — acknowledging that the Straw Hat crew belongs to no single nation. The exhibition’s digital compass even spins toward “the next destination,” hinting that the installation may tour to other global cities after November.
The partnership also cements Toei Animation’s new global strategy: merging storytelling with immersive art and tourism. Similar projects are rumored to be in development in Paris and Tokyo for 2026, potentially creating a traveling network of anime-based experiential spaces.
For Mercer Labs, the collaboration is equally groundbreaking. The museum, which has hosted installations by digital artists like Refik Anadol and Ryoji Ikeda, views this project as a turning point — proof that narrative art can stand alongside contemporary digital expression.
A Living Tribute to the Fans
More than anything, the exhibition is a tribute to the community that has sustained One Piece for a quarter century.
Visitors are encouraged to leave “messages to the crew” on interactive terminals near the exit. These messages, projected in light on the walls, include words of gratitude, drawings, and even confessions of how One Piece helped people through hard times. At the end of each day, the messages fade like stars — but not before being archived for a digital time capsule to be shared during the series’ final saga.
Some visitors describe the experience as spiritual — a kind of pilgrimage through memory and emotion. The laughter of Usopp, the tears of Nami, the promise of Luffy — all resonate differently when wrapped in music, light, and presence.
The Final Room: The Dawn
The final space, known as The Dawn Room, encapsulates everything One Piece stands for. After the sensory whirlwind of earlier rooms, this one offers stillness.
The walls are pure white. A faint breeze drifts through. On the far end, a projection of the horizon glows softly, suggesting sunrise. Then, across the space, words begin to appear — lines from Oda’s interviews, fragments of dialogue, bits of laughter.
As “We Are!” plays in the background, visitors find themselves reflected in mirrored panels surrounded by light. It’s not about the characters anymore — it’s about the journey each person has taken alongside them.
The effect is powerful. Some stand silently for minutes. Others smile, whispering lines they’ve known since childhood. When you exit, you pass under an archway engraved with one sentence: “The world is vast, and so are our dreams.”
A New Era for Anime Exhibitions
The One Piece x Mercer Labs Immersive Experience represents more than a milestone — it’s a statement. It shows that anime has become an art form capable of commanding the same emotional and spatial presence as music, sculpture, or film.
It’s also a preview of what’s to come. If this model succeeds — blending technology, storytelling, and emotion into a single interactive voyage — it could transform how future generations engage with anime worldwide.
For now, though, it’s something rare: a moment when fantasy feels real, and where fans, for a fleeting instant, can walk beside their heroes.
As visitors step back into the real world from Mercer Street, the sounds of the ocean linger faintly behind them. Maybe it’s the wind from the subway vents — or maybe it’s the sea itself, calling for another adventure.
The One Piece x Mercer Labs Immersive Experience runs through November 30 in New York City.
Tickets are limited, and fans are encouraged to reserve early.
Because in the end, as Oda himself would say — the real treasure is the journey.