Eiichiro Oda

• 1. Introduction

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  Eiichiro Oda was born on the 1st of January 1975 in Kumamoto, Japan, and by the age of four he had already made a career decision. He would become a manga artist, so that he would never need a "real job". That childhood escape plan grew into One Piece, a pirate adventure with more than 600 million collected volumes in circulation worldwide. Few writers of fiction anywhere have sold so many books. This documentary asks how a small boy with a plan to avoid ordinary work became that author. It asks who trained him, how a pair of short stories turned into a long-running series, and what the figures look like once they are counted volume by volume. It also asks what a creator does with so much reach, and what the pace of the work demands of him.

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• 2. Assistant to Author

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  Wanted! was the story Oda submitted at the age of 17, and it won several awards. One of them was second place in the Tezuka Award, a coveted prize, in the second half of 1992. That result led to a job at the magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump. There he first worked as an assistant to Shinobu Kaitani on the series Suizan Police Gang.

  His next post was with Masaya Tokuhiro, on Jungle King Tar-chan and Mizu no Tomodachi Kappaman. Those jobs gave Oda an unexpected influence on his own artistic style.

  Akira Toriyama and his series Dragon Ball were Oda's biggest influence. His fascination with pirates, by his own recollection, was probably sparked by a television animation called Vicky the Viking.

  At the age of 19, Oda began assisting Nobuhiro Watsuki on Rurouni Kenshin. He also won the Hop Step Award for new manga artists, which the awards record ties to his story Ikki Yakō. Watsuki credits Oda with helping to create the character Honjō Kamatari.

  In late 1996, Oda published two pirate-themed one-shot stories, both titled Romance Dawn. One appeared in Akamaru Jump and the other in Weekly Shōnen Jump. Their hero was Monkey D. Luffy, who then became the lead of One Piece. The full series began its run in 1997, in the same magazine where Oda had spent his apprentice years.

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• 3. Record Print Runs

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  February 2005 brought the first great milestone, when One Piece reached 100 million collected tankōbon volumes. By February 2011 the total had passed 200 million. A count from December 2014 showed 320,866,000 copies printed worldwide. The figure stood at 430 million in circulation as of October 2017. It reached 440 million sold by May 2018, and 450 million in print by March 2019.

  Individual volumes broke records in Japan as well. Volume 56 received an initial print run of 2.85 million copies in 2009, the highest ever for a manga. In 2010, volume 57 was printed at 3 million, the highest first print for any book in Japan, not just manga.

  Several later volumes beat that mark. The record is now held by volume 67, whose initial printing in 2012 was 4.05 million. Guinness World Records would later put an official stamp on the cumulative total, and it would do so twice.

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• 4. Prizes and Polls

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  A 2008 poll by the marketing research firm Oricon placed Oda fifth among Japan's favorite manga artists. He shared that place with Yoshihiro Togashi, creator of YuYu Hakusho and Hunter × Hunter. In Oricon's 2010 poll on the mangaka who changed the history of manga, Oda came in fourth.

  From 2000 to 2002, One Piece was a finalist for the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in three consecutive years. Overseas recognition followed. The Sondermann Award in the International Manga category went to One Piece in 2005, and then to volume 44 in 2008 and volume 48 in 2009. In 2006 the series was included in the Japanese Media Arts Festival 100 Manga Selection. The 41st Japan Cartoonists Association Award Grand Prize went to One Piece, shared with Kimuchi Yokoyama's Nekodarake Nice.

  In 2015, Guinness World Records recognized the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author, counting up to December 2014. The record was renewed in 2022 at 516,566,000 copies printed up until July 2022.

  The year 2019 brought the title of Most Searched Author at the Yahoo! Japan Search Awards. Newsweek Japan also put him on its list of 100 globally respected Japanese people. In 2022 he received a Special Lifetime Achievement Award at Napoli Comicon in Italy.

  The 18th Shin Watanabe Award arrived in 2023. It honors a producer or creator who has started a major movement in the entertainment business and contributed significantly to popular entertainment culture.

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• 5. Beyond the Page

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  Strong World, the tenth One Piece animated theatrical film, drew Oda in as storyteller. He created its story, did costume and creature design, served as executive producer, and drew over 120 pictures as guidance. He also insisted that the band Mr. Children provide the theme song. A special chapter was included in tankōbon volume 0, which was given free to attendees of the film and also carried his drawings for it.

  After the particular success of Strong World, Oda supplied character design and served as executive producer for Z in 2012, Gold in 2016, Stampede in 2019 and Red in 2022. For Gold he designed the Straw Hat costume and the characters Carina, Tesoro, Dice and Baccarat. On Stampede he also acted as creative supervisor, and on Red he reviewed the script.

  Cross Epoch, a 2007 one-shot, put characters from Dragon Ball and One Piece into a single story. Oda made it with Akira Toriyama, the artist who had shaped him since childhood. In 2013 the two each designed a Gaist character for the video game Gaist Crusher. In 2011 Oda and Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro made Taste of the Devil Fruit, a crossover between One Piece and Toriko. Shimabukuro said he came up with the bulk of the story while Oda gave suggestions.

  The fashion brand Gucci collaborated with Oda on a Lookbook in which Monkey D. Luffy and Roronoa Zoro strike poses in the latest Gucci line. He drew an original illustration for the President and all One Piece fans in France. He also drew karate for the official programme book of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, which covers 33 featured sports.

  In 2023, Oda was among the executive producers of the One Piece live-action series from Netflix and Tomorrow Studios. That same year the role-playing video game One Piece Odyssey arrived with a new character and monsters of his design.

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• 6. Friends and Rivals

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  Hiroyuki Takei and Mikio Itō were fellow assistants under Nobuhiro Watsuki, and Oda regarded them as both friends and rivals. Many years later, the three were still good friends.

  The 50th issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump in 2014 carried chapter 766 of One Piece. It ran alongside the final two chapters of Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto. For that chapter's title page illustration, Oda hid a message and other tributes in the art. Kishimoto answered in kind. In the ending of Naruto, the character Boruto Uzumaki draws the Straw Hat Jolly Roger on a mountain.

  When One Piece reached Chapter 1,000, several of Oda's fellow mangaka rivals paid tribute in the author's comment section of Weekly Shōnen Jump. Each congratulated him on the milestone.

  Momoko Sakura, creator of the Chibi Maruko-chan manga, died, and Oda drew an illustration in response. It showed Luffy sharing barbecue with Maruko-chan. The accompanying message said the two authors had got along well in both their professional and personal lives, and that he was praying for Sakura.

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• 7. Work and Home

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  Since the 7th of November 2004, Oda has been married to Chiaki Inaba, a former model, actress and tarento. They met in December 2003 at Jump Festa 2004, where she played the character Nami in the stage show One Piece Spectacle Stage. The couple have two daughters, one born in 2005 and the other in 2009.

  According to Oda himself and his manga editors, he is an ardent worker and a perfectionist. In a typical work week, he sleeps only three hours per day.

  In 2013, a peritonsillar abscess put him in the hospital, and he was discharged after two weeks. A year later he underwent a tonsillectomy to cure the condition completely.

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• 8. Gifts for Kumamoto

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  An earthquake struck Kumamoto Prefecture in 2016 and damaged its iconic Kumamoto Castle. Two years later, in 2018, Oda gave the prefecture ¥800 million, roughly US$8 million or £4.9 million.

  The money came as two separate gifts. The first, ¥500 million, was made under Luffy's name, matching the bounty Luffy carried in the story at the time. The second gift was ¥300 million.

  That donation was part of a long pattern. Oda has supported earthquake-stricken areas by writing supportive messages and contributing art for local products. He also took part in the ONE PIECE Kumamoto Revival Project. The Kumamoto Prefecture Honorary Prize is also dated 2018 in his list of awards.

  His works list still shows One Piece as running from 1997 to the present. The bounty behind that gift was therefore only a snapshot of a figure that could change.

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