One Piece (Page 9)
Some of the biggest stars of anime and manga are going to be spending their summer at the Osaka theme park.
Here comes a message of encouragement from the voice of one of anime’s most famous seafaring heroes.
These intricately designed, hand-made creations look like they’d be right at home in a Studio Ghibli production or fantasy game.
Have the toughest pirate team that’s ever sailed the seas decorate your official marriage paperwork.
Once again, a popular anime has been turned into a work of traditional Japanese art — with vividly stunning results!
Pirate manga pirates promptly pinched by prefectural police.
Eighteen years after making its serial debut in the Weekly Shōnen Jump Magazine, Eiichiro Oda’s internationally popular manga/anime franchise One Piece is still going strong, even being turned into a Kabuki performance this year.
Well, with the Holiday Season approaching, it seems One Piece fans will have a huge treat to look forward to just in time for Christmas. Yes, a brand new feature-length One Piece anime will air on TV next month, and details have just recently been released. The anime, titled One Piece — Adventure of Nebulandia, will be broadcast on Japanese national TV on December 19, and fans should be thrilled to see some familiar enemies from the past!
Japanese publisher Shueisha puts out a number of manga anthologies, but by far the jewel in the publisher’s crown, and really the entire Japanese comics industry, is Weekly Shonen Jump. For decades, the magazine has been home to the biggest manga hits, whose creators achieve legendary status in the hearts of legions of fans.
As a matter of fact, so many of Japan’s best-loved manga writers and artists achieved fame through Weekly Shonen Jump that Shueisha is getting self-referential with a new magazine set to launch soon, in which each issue highlights a different manga artist and comes bundled with a DVD of the creator at work and tracing paper so you can try to duplicate the results.
It’s time for another fun survey from anime informational website Charapedia!
The site recently asked 10,000 of its users to share their top picks for the top 20 manga/anime series that they would like to show to their children. If you think that the results are full of fluff and potty humor, you may be surprised at some of the more thought-provoking choices on the list.
Even 18 years after its initial publication, One Piece continues to enjoy unprecedented popularity around the world, no doubt thanks to the grueling efforts of series’ creator Eiichiro Oda. Since July, fans have been waiting with bated breath after new details emerged regarding a kabuki stage version of the beloved franchise, but that wait is now over–October 7 marked the opening performance of the play, and we’ve finally been treated to some pictures of the cast!
Man, being a professional manga artist must be a great life, right? For passionate and artistic individuals, it’s hard to imagine a sweeter deal than making a living just by dreaming and drawing, thinking up new worlds and bringing them to life.
And things must be even better if you’re the creator of a hit series, since not only are you bringing joy to thousands, or even millions, of fans, you’re also getting paid handsomely to do it. But even if you’re convinced you’ve got the skills to make it as a manga pro, before you go quitting your desk job you might want to check out the insane schedule of the most successful artist working in the industry today, One Piece’s Eiichiro Oda.
The success of One Piece really is amazing. Not only does it remain a perpetual favorite among its target demographic of young boys, the manga and anime franchise has managed to retain a surprisingly large amount of its original fanbase some 18 years after its first issue was published.
Since One Piece has held the attention of fans for so long after drawing them in as children, there must be something to creator Eiichiro Oda’s pirate tale that appeals to adult men as strongly, or maybe even more strongly, than to children. Maybe it’s the series’ core theme of long-term friendship, which grown-ups can more acutely understand. Maybe the way the stakes keeps getting higher for Luffy and his crew strikes a chord with fans who see it as a parallel to the way life throws more responsibilities and pressures at you as you get older.
Or maybe guys just like Oda’s penchant for drawing ridiculously stacked female characters which are then immortalized in plastic, as with this new Boa Hancock figure.
One of the great things about the One Piece series is how intricate the world it’s set in is. Loosely based on historical colonial times, it’s familiar enough for readers to feel comfortable with, yet different enough to create a sense of magic and intrigue. Though originally written in Japanese, the manga hints that characters in the series also speak English, Spanish, French, and a handful of other languages.
It might not seem too farfetched, then, that some fans were curious about what nationalities the characters would have been had the story taken place in our world instead, and this is exactly what one reader asked the creator of the series. The answer they received wasn’t quite what some fans had in mind, though…
One of the great things about fiction, regardless of the genre or medium, is the way it lets us envision the way we want the world to be. Fiction can have a profound effect on us and even serve as an ideal to strive for. Which, now that we think about it, is kind of like what a good boss should be — a role model for their workers!
So, taking this thinking to its natural conclusion, we have to wonder: What fictional characters would make the best bosses? Jack Sparrow might be fun to watch, but we would hate to be in his crew! A recent online poll asked a group of Japanese businessmen in their thirties which manga character would be their favorite pick for their boss. A good question, indeed. Find out how they responded below!
Determining Japan’s most popular anime or manga franchise isn’t such a cut-and-dry thing, as different criteria suggest giving the crown to different series. For example, if you’re going by longevity, pirate saga One Piece has to be in the discussion, since its manga started in 1997 and its anime in 1999, with both still going strong.
However, you could also make a case that teen idol singer story Love Live! is a contender for the title, since currently no other show’s fanbase can hold a candle to the burning passion of the Love Livers, as Love Live! fans are called.
But while the main characters of both One Piece and Love Live! and friendly, forgiving, and work well in a team, the Love Livers are feeling quite a bit more animosity towards One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda for a remark he made that many interpreted as the famous manga artist throwing shade on the way Love Live! has become a pop cultural phenomenon.
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