THIS is how one piece was made
Over 40 years ago, a young child, fascinated by vikings and pirates, came up with an idea.
This child's name was Eiichiro Oda.
Eiichiro Oda was born in 1975, and as he grew up, he found a strong passion for art and
manga.
His favorite manga bieng Dragon Ball written by Akira Toriyama, which most of you are probably
very familiar with.
However his biggest inspiration for what would eventually become the greatest selling manga
of all time, was a show called Vicky the Viking.
Vicky the viking was an old cartoon that aired in japan during Oda's younger life, and featured
a young viking boy who was cunning as well as smart.
Oda would watch this kids cartoon and begin forming ideas in his head about a different
world, one full of special fruit and ancient mysteries.
It’s not hard to see the similarities between this cartoon and other running themes in one
piece, especially when it comes to the giants of elbaf.
This is why I think Elbaf will be one of, if not the most important arc in one piece
next to wano.
Before Oda was even 17 years old, he was planning one piece.
He started drawing manga and developing ideas for this pirate manga as early as junior high.
Which honestly makes so much sense in retrospect when thinking about Luffy, and his dream.
And I don’t mean being the pirate king, I mean luffy’s true dream, you know the
one everyone calls childish.
I think that this dream is something Oda came up with really early on, which is why as an
adult he can use other characters within the story to posture at the innocence and simplicity
of the dream, a vision from Oda's childhood.
Almost like Oda is talking to his younger self through the manga.
It is also due to this early conception that we can see a manga, which started off as purely
an simple adventure, turn into something so layered with political and philosophical nuance
as Oda became older and more knowledgeable.
Luffy’s dream, the ending of one piece, the fun sense of adventure, were all things
planned before Oda even became an adult, however Oda is still extremely improvisational as
a writer, a great example being the 7 warlords, and the worst generation introduced at sabaody,
which Oda crested last minute on a whim, and it’s served the manga greatly to his benefit.
One of Oda’s first recorded works was Pandaman, a character created during Oda’s school
years, that he designed for a Kinnikuman character creation contest.
Oda’s love for panda man is something we still see today, with even the new live action
using it as their project name during production, as well as constant cameos by the panda, or
man, all throughout the one piece manga and anime.
Oda would also receive an honorable mention for the Tezuka Award while still in highschool
for his clear cut manga talent.
This keen sense for storytelling and art would skyrocket his career, which started off as
being an assistant for other popular manga series like Rurouni Kenshin.
This would also lead to him winning the Hop Step Award for new manga artists, with the
author of Ruroni Kenshin, Nobuhira Watsuki, credditing Oda for coming up with a character
for his manga.
During the same time period, Oda also submitted his first one shot, WANTED, which took a second
place Tezuka award.
He also released monsters a couple years later, along with two versions of Romance Dawn, the
original concept for one piece.
The second version of Romance dawn, which featured the pirate monkey D luffy, was chosen
and serialized in weekly shonen jump in 1997, only 5 years after starting his career in
manga, Oda at the age of 22, had created a masterpiece.
However this masterpiece wouldn’t become a success until later.
One piece has been through a series of ups and downs to reach the level of growing success
it has today.
After its serialization in 1997, One piece would be adapted into an anime in 1998, which
helped spread the series to a wider audience.
After being adapted into an anime, the popularity of one piece would see a gradual and steady
incline over the next 8 years.
The series would slightly drop in popularity during skypiea, but explode after the next
arc.
During the release of the water 7, enies lobby arc, one piece saw a huge increase in sales,
leading to the series peaking in manga sales, and setting one piece on the map to become
the best selling manga of all time.
After Enies Lobby, the paramount war saga, shot one piece up to the mega charts of manga
sales, with volume 50 selling over one million copies, the 56th selling 2.85 million, and
the 57th, printing 3 million copies, which was the highest first print of any book ever
in japan.
That’s right, not just manga.
In the present, every single volume of one piece has sold over 1,000,000 copies worldwide.
Totaling 490 million copies across the globe, 400 million of them in japan alone.
As one Piece continued its take over of Japanese media, the series would go on to earn multiple
awards for its genius, including a Guinness world record for the most copies published
for the same comic book series by a single author!
But this wasn’t the only award One Piece would go on to earn.
Over the years, the series has gathered over 13 trophies for a multitude of different things
including Echiro Oda being the most searched author in Japan.
He also was elected the fifth most favorite manga authors in all of japan in a 2008 poll
conducted by oricon for marketing research.
Due to the success of the series, Eichiro oda has not only been granted so many of these
amazing awards, but has also been able to write alongside some of his favorite mangaka.
In 2007, Oda and Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball, created a cross over one shot that would
be published for weekly shonen jump.
Oda and Toriyama would also design characters together for a game in Japan known as Gaist
Crusher.
Another popular mangaka, Masashi Kishimoto, author of naruto, drew the straw hat pirate
logo during the ending of naruto, to pay homage to one piece, as well as Oda including an
illustration congratulating the mangaka on naruto’s completion.
One thing that really makes Oda shine is how charitable he can be.
Most fans may not know this, but Oda actually donated 800 million yen, about 7 million dollars,
to the city of Kumamoto to help repair infrastructure after two deadly earthquakes.
He also helped fulfill the wish of a young child suffering from cancer, who asked to
know what the one piece is, before he passed away.
The way he described what Oda told him to the press was, “One Piece is beautiful”.
Many people have speculated as to when this masterpiece will finally come to an end, and
Oda has stated multiple times that the series is close to ending.
However Since the creating one piece, he can’t seem to stop writing it.
Originally, Oda had only planned for one piece to take around 5-6 years, and end in 2002.
Well now we are in the year 2022, and only now are we starting to see the end peek out
over the horizon.
This prediction was not the only prediction made by oda about when the manga could potentially
end.
A very important thing to learn about Oda, is that although he is great at writing manga,
he is terrible at seeing the future.
For example, in 2003, Oda stated that a straw hat would die that year.
However Merry didn’t die until 2006, which again just goes to show how much Oda really
loves writing the series, and flushing out everything as much as possible.
Even now, Oda has stated multiple times that Wano was not supposed to take this long, but
it just turned out that way because of how he needed to tell the story.
This is why one piece has taken 25 years plus, and not 5 years.
Here are some statements Oda has made over the years.
“My original plan was to assemble a crew of 10 within the first year and a half.
After 20 years, the story is about 80% complete, yet there are still only 9 crew members”
- 2018
He also stated in 2016 that the story was 65% done.
So the story was 65% done in 2016, 80% done in 2018, and only had 5 years left.
Yet we are in 2022, 4 years after that statement, and it still feels like we have another whole
saga to get through before the story ends.
The new prediction by Oda and his staff is that One Piece will conclude sometime between
2024-2025.
But If I were to bet on when one piece would end, I would say maybe sometime around 2027
and the 30 year anniversary.
I mean we still have Elbaf, vegapunk, lodestar, laugh tale, marijoa, the final war, going
back to reverse mountain, finishing wano, the secret of the devil fruits, souls, the
all blue, poneglyphs, joyboy, destroying fishman island, uranus, pluton, and so much more.
There ‘s no way One piece is ending in just 2 years, which would only be the equivalent
of 60 or so chapters.
To put this into perspective, wano is the longest arc in the series, totalling almost
130 chapters to date.
With all of these questions that still need to be answered, there is no way Oda can tie
up all these loose ends in less than half the amount of chapters used to tell the story
of wano.
25 years ago, One piece was released to the public.
A world shaking manga that would eventually topple anything that came before it in terms
of storytelling and world building.
The emotions captured through the pages of this series would motivate so many others
to chase their dreams, and worry less about the foibles of mankind, or stand up and make
a difference.
The impact that this series has had on the world as a collective is unprecedented, and
will only grow as time passes.
Currently, One Piece is the 2nd highest selling series of all time, right behind superman.
By the time this series ends, I fully expect it to take 1st, and become the best selling
series of all time.
Did you learn more about this awesome series by watching this video?
Is there more you’d like to add?
If so, drop a like and leave a comment.
And If you like one piece content, and want to learn more, I want to challenge you to
learn why the one piece live action, could actually work in making one piece more popular
in the west, by clicking this video right here.