Aurora’s One Piece song nods to anime tradition and pays off big in the Netflix show
No anime is complete without a character song or an episode-closing bop — One Piece included. Between over 1,000 episodes and a handful of movies, the animation adaptations of Eiichiro Oda’s manga have spawned over 50 singles over the years. So when it came time to write music for Netflix’s live-action take on One Piece, composers Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli (who previously composed for The Witcher and wrote “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher”) knew they had to whip up at least one total banger, even if no one asked them to.
“Being fans of the anime ourselves, we knew that we had to have a song in the show,” Belousova tells Polygon. “And as soon as we watched episode 7, literally, a song was born on the spot.”
That song is “My Sails Are Set,” released on Friday in anticipation of the One Piece’s Aug. 31 premiere on Netflix. Performed by Norwegian singer-songwriter Aurora, the ballad rocks out to a tune viewers will soon recognize as the theme to one of One Piece’s core characters: Nami. Played by actor Emily Rudd in the series, Nami is a thief who sails One Piece’s fantasy seas in search of pirate treasure before meeting the show’s hero, Monkey D. Luffy, who hopes she’ll settle down and join his pirate crew. Episode 7 struck a particular chord with Belousova because Nami’s mysterious motivations represent the “emotional arc of the season” and the penultimate episode of season 1… remains faithful to the manga. No spoilers for the uninitiated.
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Unlike most television composers who might be handed picture-locked episodes to pepper with bits of underscore, showrunners Matt Owens and Steven Maeda tasked Belousova and Ostinelli with composing a world’s worth of sounds that could be in constant conversation
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