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One Piece

ONE PIECE is a Manga and Anime that tells the story of the adventures of a group of pirates in search of the legendary treasure, One Piece. One Piece was created by Eiichiro Oda in August 1997 in Shueisha's Shonen Jump and continues to this day. An anime version began in October 1999 and has now reached more than 500 episodes.

One Piece is the best-selling manga in Japanese history with sales of over 260 million copies. In addition, One Piece also broke the record as the manga with the most prints. One Piece received much praise among readers, especially in terms of images, characters, humor, and stories.

Histories

Eiichiro Oda was inspired by Akira Toriyama author of Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump when young. As a child, he often watched the cartoon series "Vicky the Viking" and began to be inspired to write manga about pirates. He later created Pandaman in Yudetamago's Kinnikuman. In 1992, at the age of 17, Oda submitted his first manga titled "Wanted!". This led to him being called on to become a staff member in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, where he later became an assistant to several famous authors such as; Shinobu Kitani, Masaya Tokuhiro and Nobuhiro Watsuki.

In the mid-90s, Oda submitted two separate one-shots (short stories) each titled "Romance Dawn". The core of the story introduces the character Monkey D. Luffy, a boy with a straw hat who decides to go to sea becomes a famous pirate. Some concepts such as; luffy's inspiration to become a pirate and the mysterious powers gained after eating a special fruit that turns his body into rubber (an early model of Devil Fruit), later appear in Oda's next work.

In August 1997, Oda took many of the ideas from "Romance Dawn" and began using them in a weekly series titled "One Piece". The series was first published in Weekly Shonen Jump, a weekly magazine owned by Shueisha. The series quickly caught the attention of readers and became popular from the early chapters, making it one of the featured series in the magazine.

Initially Oda planned the series to run for 5 years (meaning One Piece ended in 2002), but it turned out to run longer than scheduled until he himself could not predict when the story would be finished. But Oda stated that the end of chapter 597 marked the end of the first part of One Piece and had planned the end of the story of the second part. Although he does not know exactly how long he will finish, but Oda will finish One Piece in accordance with the plot he planned from the beginning.

Storyline

One Piece tells the story of a boy named Monkey D. Luffy aspires to be the pirate king and discovers "One Piece" after being inspired by Shanks. About 22 years before the story begins, a pirate named Gol D. Roger, or better known as the pirate king was executed in public. Just before his death, he announced to the crowd his estate, One Piece, which was claimed to be the greatest treasure ever.

Roger's death triggered the start of the "Pirate Golden Age" era, marked by the descent of countless pirates in search of treasure. Luffy is one of those who intends to find One Piece and become the next pirate king, down to the sea to start his adventure and start gathering some crew as traveling companions.

One Piece has the highest total manga sales in Japan today and is recognized as the best-selling Weekly Shonen Jump issue of all time. The manga's sales in Weekly Shonen Jump surged rapidly in the eleven years of its publication. As of the 65th volume, the total has sold over 260,000,000 copies domestically and is the fastest manga to reach sales of 100,000,000 copies.

2008: One Piece became the best-selling manga in Japan with total sales of 5,956,540 volumes. Volume 50 with 1,678,208 copies was in first place, Volume 51 with 1,646,978 copies being in 2nd place and Volume 49 with 1,544,000 copies being in 4th place.

2009: One Piece became the best-selling manga in Japan with total sales of 14,721,241 volumes. Volume 53 with 2,057,528 copies was in first place, volumes 54, 52 and 55 were in 2nd, 3rd and 4th place with 1,963,696, 1,952,551 and 1,810,410 copies sold respectively.

2010: The first part of One Piece became the best-selling manga in Japan with total sales of 15,220,095 copies. Volume 57 with 2,305,594 copies was in first place and volume 56 with 2,276,013 copies in 2nd place.

2011: One Piece is the best-selling manga in Japan with total sales of 37,996,373 copies. Volume 61 broke the sales record in Japan with 3,382,588 copies.

Trivia

At first, Oda planned that One Piece would be made around 5 years (until 2002) and he had set the ending.

The notion of the title "One Piece" has a secret meaning that only Oda himself knows.

Every week, Oda worked three days to compose the story and the next three days to draw.