Where was One Piece Season 2 filmed? Filming location of the new Netflix series explored

One Piece Season 2 is back in the spotlight, and this time, the adventure doesn’t just unfold on screen; it’s deeply rooted in one real-world location. Cape Town, South Africa, served as the creative ground zero for the Netflix adaptation, offering the perfect canvas to bring the series’ vast, strange world to life.

At first glance, Cape Town might not seem like the kind of place where you’d expect to find pirate ships, floating restaurants, or snow-covered islands. But walk through the studio gates at the edge of the city, and you’ll understand why the show chose this exact corner of the world to stage its second act.

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A studio made for One Piece's imagination

Inside Cape Town Film Studios, the line between fantasy and blueprint disappears. You don’t just stumble onto a set, you step into a world. One minute you’re in Loguetown, brushing past crates of cargo and the scent of smoke from a nearby tavern set. Next, you’re looking up at the icy ridges of Drum Island, built with real texture, not just CGI placeholders.

This studio isn’t new to scale. Years ago, it was home to Black Sails, and many of the crew who worked on that production returned to help shape One Piece. That means shipbuilders who understand balance, costume techs who know how fabric behaves under saltwater, and stunt teams who know the choreography of a deck fight by heart.

And the sets aren’t just impressive, they’re immersive. You can feel the grain in the wood, hear the echo of your footsteps on the planks. Everything’s been crafted to help the cast feel the scene before performing it. That kind of physicality matters when your story revolves around grand dreams and bigger emotions, just like One Piece.

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Why Cape Town works

There’s something about the light here. It’s sharp but warm. It touches everything just right. It’s the kind of light that makes a ship glow at golden hour, or casts just enough shadow to make a cliff edge look twice as dangerous. Cinematographers notice things like that.

But it’s not just about looks. Cape Town is reliable. The crews are experienced. The infrastructure holds. You don’t have to worry about rain delays stretching for weeks or rushing off to another country because a permit expired. Everything the production of season 2 needed could be found within driving distance, equipment, people, and flexibility.

And when you’re building entire islands from scratch, you don’t want distractions. You want control. Cape Town gave the team the space and the calm they needed.

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Building One Piece's world from the ground up

Filming began in June 2024, and by February 2025, they had wrapped. At that time, the crew built (and rebuilt) settings that fans had only ever seen drawn or animated before. Reverse Mountain, for example, wasn’t just a visual effect; it had weight, slope, angles, and stairs. Actors climbed it. Cameras moved around it. Snow machines blew flurries across its peak. And suddenly, a mythical place became something that actually existed, just like One Piece has always done in the imagination.

Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, visited during production. He walked through the sets, saw what had been imagined from his pencil, and turned them into timber and stone. He didn’t just smile politely for a photo; he spoke about how deeply the crew understood the soul of the world he’d built. That matters.

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What season 2 builds on

If the first season was a test, it passed. Viewers around the world tuned in, over 70 million accounts, and more than 540 million hours were watched. And critics, surprisingly, were kind. They praised the show’s heart. It's a sense of play. Its refusal to flatten what made the source material so beloved. On Rotten Tomatoes, it landed a 95% audience score, the kind of number that tells you something clicked.

And now, season 2 wants to go further. Not just geographically, but emotionally. The Grand Line isn’t just new terrain; it’s a leap into bigger mysteries, stranger islands, and deeper questions. The foundation, though? That stays grounded. Literally, in Cape Town soil.

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A real place behind One Piece's fantasy

There’s a kind of reverence in how the team talks about Cape Town. Not like it’s a backdrop, but like it’s part of the cast. And maybe it is. Because when you spend eight months building an ocean, carving a mountain, and rigging sails in the sun, the place you do it starts to feel like home. Or, at least, like the port from which everything launches.

It’s not often that fantasy meets something so concrete. But One Piece is all about bridging that gap. And this time, the bridge starts at the southern tip of Africa.