It’s not the Grand Line, but One Piece has conquered a Guinness World Record

One of the biggest manga hits of the past 15 years is most certainly One Piece. You can talk about ninjas or titans, but the perennial favorite for top manga has been about those pirates of the Grand Line. Of the many treasures they have encountered during their journey, they have now uncovered something that is truly one of a kind, a Guinness World Record. The official One Piece website was happy to announce that author Eiichiro Oda and the manga One Piece are going in the record books as the comic book with the most issues published by a single author.

Back in 1997, Shonen Jump published a brand new manga about a stretchy boy and his quest to become the “King of Pirates”. As of December 2014, One Piece can firmly plant its flag as the “King of Comics”. On Monday June 15, a ceremony was held in Tokyo to celebrate the record.

Image: Comic Natalie

Between August 1997 and December 2014 One Piece has been printed 320,866,000 times worldwide in over 30 countries. That number was officially recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as “the comic book with the most issues published by a single author”.

Image: ©Oda Eiichirio/Shueisha

The author of One Piece was unable to attend the ceremony. However, the editor of Weekly Shonen Jump, Yoshihisa Heishi, accepted the award on his behalf. He read a statement from Oda saying, “I feel like this record number has the possibility to unite the same number of people together. I will not forget my predecessors in the world of manga, the colleagues that I work with, and my readers. I want to continue to draw a comic that will do this record proud.”

Image: Comic Natalie

To commemorate this Guinness World Record, the official free One Piece serialization app (One Piece 無料連載公式アプリ) is releasing full-color editions of chapters for free every day at 1 p.m. You can get the app on the Japanese iOS or Google Play store. Also on the Shonen Jump+ app, you can get a free digital re-mastered version of the 34th edition from 1997, which features the first appearance of One Piece. That digital copy is only available until 11:59 p.m. JST on June 29.

Oda continues to work on his epic pirate manga but is incredibly humble about the world record. He believes that manga is an amusing way to pass the time, but he is always very happy when he hears about people who made friends or found their sweethearts through One Piece. Congratulations again to Eiichiro Oda on a wonderful accomplishment!

SoraNews24 —Japan News—