Nike‘s One Piece collection puts three Air Max Plus builds into a rollout that gives almost every region its own date, starting with pop-ups in Tokyo on September 4 and ending with a global SNKRS launch on September 25. The three shoes are built around Devil Fruits from the manga, and Nike says the uppers are completely retooled rather than reprinted, which is the part that separates this from most anime collaborations.
The Air Max Plus is the right silhouette for it, and not only because it looks like something out of a comic. Sean McDowell designed it in 1998 after sketching palm trees against a Florida sunset, which is where the gradient upper came from, and Nike wrapped the whole thing in a TPU cage that reads as exoskeleton more than overlay. Tuned Air sat underneath, the brand’s attempt at zoning cushioning to different parts of the foot. What happened next was not planned in Beaverton. The shoe, known almost everywhere outside the United States as the TN, became a regional obsession in France, Australia and the UK, carried by scenes that had nothing to do with running. Nike spent years catching up to a cult it did not build. That history is why the Air Max Plus can absorb a treatment this heavy without looking costumed. It was always a shoe about surface, gradients and cages and shapes that do not appear on other runners, so a manga can sit on it more comfortably than it would on something restrained.
The three colorways map to fruits rather than characters. Gomu Gomu no Mi is Luffy’s, the rubber fruit, under style code IR0968-500. Mera Mera no Mi is the flame fruit, IW1283-800. Ope Ope no Mi is the operation fruit, IW1282-600. Nike is clear that each shoe carries an upper made for this collection, not a graphic applied to an existing one, and the accompanying apparel goes further into the source material than most licensed ranges bother to. There are jerseys and caps pulled from the Nike archive, T-shirts built around the Jolly Roger as drawn by Luffy in the story, and manga panels reworked into the style of old Nike print ads.
The quote in Nike’s release comes from Nick Remlinger, the company’s GM of Energy Gaming, and that job title is the most informative thing in the announcement. This is not the sportswear side doing a licensing deal. It sits in a part of the business Nike built specifically to reach people through games and franchises, and the Air Max Plus is the shoe they picked to carry it. That choice is smart in a way that is easy to miss. The TN already belongs to exactly the international, young, extremely online audience that One Piece does, and Nike is not trying to introduce two things at once. It is putting two existing obsessions in the same room.
The regional calendar reinforces that. Mera Mera goes to Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Indonesia and Mexico first, and Australia gets its own window in October. Those are TN strongholds and One Piece strongholds at the same time, and Nike is releasing into them on their own schedule rather than pushing everything through a single American launch day. It makes the rollout harder to follow, which is the tradeoff, but it treats the shoe’s actual geography as real instead of an afterthought.
Nike has not announced pricing on any of the three. The standard Air Max Plus sits at $190 at Nike right now, and collaboration builds with retooled uppers normally carry a premium over the general release rather than matching it, so the sensible expectation is north of that. Anyone planning around this should budget above $190 per pair and treat anything lower as a pleasant surprise.
The rollout is the complicated part, so here it is plainly. Mera Mera arrives first, September 12, at select retailers in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Indonesia and Mexico, with Australia getting it October 16 to 18. Ope Ope follows September 19 at select retailers in the United States and Europe. Gomu Gomu closes it out September 25, as a SNKRS pre-order in the US, Japan and select European countries, a standard SNKRS launch in China, Mexico and Australia, and SNKRS Exclusive Access in Korea, with the apparel landing globally the same day. Everything runs through Nike SNKRS and select retailers. Full details are in Nike’s announcement. For more, see our Nike coverage.
Where To Buy
Affiliate links open each retailer’s live search, so they always resolve. We may earn a commission.
Find This Pair
- eBaySizes Available
Live retailer stock, refreshed hourly. Stock and prices change fast. Some links are affiliate links and we may earn a commission.
