‘One Piece’ Composers Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli on Jumping Into the Worlds of Beloved IPs

Composers Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli are no strangers to jumping head first into beloved franchises.

Most recently working on Netflix’s live-action adaption of the long-running and wildly popular anime One Piece, the duo have also worked on Netflix’s The Witcher adaption and the upcoming Red Sonja film. The Witcher’s breakout song “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” landed Belousova and Ostinelli on the top of Billboard’s rock sales chart, with the soundtrack breaking into the Billboard 200.

Their prolific work on season one of One Piece – the soundtrack has 79 tracks – recently earned Belousova and Ostinelli the Children’s and Family Emmy for the original song “My Sails Are Set,” which features Norwegian pop star Aurora.

“‘My Sails Are Set’ is the driving emotional force of season one, its theme evolving throughout the entire season before soaring to its most powerful and lyrical rendition in the season finale, the musical climax of the journey,” the pair said after their win. “This Emmy win is especially meaningful to us because it serves as the perfect real-world culmination and celebration of that journey.”

Below, Belousova and Ostinelli dig into the unexpected vitality of “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher,” their award-winning work on One Piece season one and how season two work is going.

One Piece is quite an undertaking given how prolific the manga and anime are and how beloved the property is. It already has its own sonic landscape in another form, so how are you coming to terms with that and then making it your own?

BELOUSOVA I think the way we approach it is that we fearlessly dive straight into it.

OSTINELLI With One Piece, we were already fans before.

BELOUSOVA That’s incredibly helpful. We were very aware of the One Piece universe. But that aside, these type of projects that require very elaborate music world building is something that’s very special for us, and we’ve been in the world-building space for so long now with The Witcher, with One Piece, with Red Sonja. Diving into a project like that is really what we’re looking for and what we’re thriving on because building that type of elaborate creative music universe. It’s like you’re building on a canvas and you’re really unlimited in your possibilities. What’s cool about it [is that] you’re not even tied necessarily to a specific geographical location or to an instrumentation that that location might dictate. You are free to make those creative choices.

OSTINELLI You can just let your creativity go wild and just dream up. It’s like when you read a book and you just imagine everything. You can just do that.

BELOUSOVA For something like One Piece, on one hand, it’s incredibly important for us to acknowledge that there is a pre-existing universe with an existing fan base, so we have to be incredibly respectful to that. Being fans of the project and of the property, that’s super helpful because we’re aware of what’s what and we’re aware of what could be important for the fans. On the other hand, it was also incredibly important for the whole team, [Eiichiro] Oda [original creator of One Piece’s manga source material] included, that the One Piece live action adaptation is it’s really its own universe.

OSTINELLI The live action is based on the manga. Obviously, there’s an anime. There are some differences between the anime and the manga, so it was like, We want to make its own sonic world for the live action.

BELOUSOVA I want to elaborate on that. The very first message that we received from Oda was we really want to make our own thing. That was number one and only directive.

OSTINELLI However, you cannot forget there are over 25 years of the musical language that the anime has created. I could compare, it’s like you do a James Bond movie and then you’re not going to use the same James Bond theme. You have to use it. We were very conscious about what’s in the anime and everybody on the team was like, “How can we incorporate [it] in the most elegant and natural way that makes sense some of it?”

One Piece in particular, is so extensive, just in terms of just what you did. Is there a specific piece of music that shines bright as the one you’re most proud of?

BELOUSOVA It’s like, who’s your favorite child? The music is so elaborate. There is score; there is songs. Score, we sway all the way from grandiose swashbuckling orchestra to fiery flamenco guitar featuring guitar virtuoso Marcin to hip hop with a little bit of rap to big band jazz funk fusion to folk to circus. Plus there is the song performed by Aurora. It’s such an unlimited canvas of creative possibilities and for me personally, writing all of that is incredibly fun because first of all, you don’t get into a tunnel vision.

OSTINELLI Also, you don’t get bored. With eight episodes of season one [it’s] pretty much eight hours of music. if you keep playing in the same sandbox, after a while it’s like, same old same old, right? With One Piece you don’t get that because you get to change gears so quickly and so often that it’s just so much fun. That’s why it’s so hard to answer which one is your favorite because it’s like-

BELOUSOVA I don’t think there is one really, because also how the project develops, how the season develops, it’s really at 200 percent at all times. In fact, it was incredibly important for everyone, Oda included, that the energy is pretty much at 200 percent. At all times, we’re just go, go, go, go, go, and having all these elaborate music genres and styles that are appropriate for very different and very unique characters, yeah, you’re never bored. It’s always different. Every single day is really fun because every single day you get to play with different tools. It’s like a giant sandbox and you get to play with different toys. In fact, you have to see the studio. We don’t even have space in the studio anymore because we have so many instruments.

When you went into The Witcher, could you have ever imagined that that would be the outcome? It is such a rarity, in a great way, that it happened, but I can’t imagine most composers going into a project imagining that’s what’s going to happen.

BELOUSOVA It’s really a little bit of both. We knew that the song was going to receive attention because of the kind of space it occupies in the episode. There’s a lot of focus and attention to it. It finishes the whole episode, it’s the climax of episode two. We knew fans were going to take notice of the song. With that said, did we know it was going to become what it did become, this viral hit and viral sensation? I don’t think so. When you go for a yoga class and at the end of the yoga class you’re there in Shavasana and in your head you have, “toss a coin to your Witcher.”

OSTINELLI I remember when we were writing it, I remember going to yoga and when you’re there relaxing, you’re thinking, they’re like, “Clear your mind.” I’m like, “Toss a coin…”

BELOUSOVA Thinking back, that might have been an indication, but we didn’t take it seriously at that point. Then the song came out and then suddenly we wake up and number one on Billboard in rock songs. Not even necessarily soundtrack charts, which was especially crazy because that was the moment when Panic! at the Disco released “High Hopes.” They were number two and “Toss a Coin” was number one. That was absolutely insane. I think right now we have over 100 million streams on Spotify alone, with the soundtrack over half a billion streams for The Witcher. I think One Piece is over 300 [million], but it hasn’t been out for as long as The Witcher, so we’ll get there. To your point, those numbers are so rare in the soundtrack space, it pretty much doesn’t happen, so me, it’s a huge testament to the fans and how awesome they are and how much invested they are.

OSTINELLI One of the best parts was once the song came out, a really good friend of mine from back home in Europe — we grew up together. One day, out of the blue, he sends me a really… You know those European dance remixes of songs? He sent me of “Toss a Coin.”

To your previous question, it brings so much joy to work on such properties because it gives you, such a canvas, and it gives you an opportunity to create something that it can connect to the public so much. When it does, it’s such a joy. On that song, I mean we worked on it, we did seven versions of it in different genres. We wrote it quickly, but then putting it in the show. That was over seven [or] eight months of work put in.

Is there anything to add about what you’re working on at the moment?

BELOUSOVA Right now, we’re deep in the middle of season two [of One Piece], and I wish we could talk about it. Fans are really in for such a treat, so that occupies a lot of our time right now. We have Red Sonja coming up in the summer, which we’re very excited about. It’s another one of those epic world-building projects based on the legendary comic character, a she-devil with a sword. It’s a beautiful film. There is both a lot of action in the film. It’s very fast-paced, but at the same time, there is a very multilayered emotional story at the heart of the film. Scoring it was a ton of fun, and guess what? There are both songs and score in that film because again, we’re building that music universe from the ground up.

BELOUSOVA I think writing both score and songs, it’s amazing to have the opportunity because it’s always like, what do you want to write that serves the story the best? Sometimes it’s score, sometimes it’s a song and being able to write a song that is deeply connected with the story and write lyrics that are deeply connected.

BELOUSOVA Let’s say you’re watching a rough cut and you’re seeing a scene, and sometimes you know that let’s say it’s a beautiful montage, you just know that it’s asking for thrilling driving, very epic type of score. Other times you’re watching a different montage and you know that if there was a song with very specific lyrics, you would be able to really punctuate and highlight the depth of that montage. Being able to make those choices in the context of this type of project is really enhancing the story.