×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Forum - View topic
NEWS: All 100 One Piece Manga Volumes Have Each Sold Over 1 Million Copies


Goto page 1, 2  Next

Note: this is the discussion thread for this article

Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
tintor2



Joined: 11 Aug 2010
Posts: 1804
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 11:28 am Reply with quote
Wait, not even Dragon Ball get this far?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
cookiemanstah



Joined: 09 Dec 2013
Posts: 546
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 11:31 am Reply with quote
tintor2 wrote:
Wait, not even Dragon Ball get this far?

One piece has such a ravenous consumer base it’s hard to believe it was considered a joke among Western audiences in the days 4Kids mostly gave it exposure. People assumed that was One Piece.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
bluesheep02



Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Posts: 78
Location: Tokyo, Japan
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:04 pm Reply with quote
I was talking to my Japanese friend today about what manga were reading and he said he always has to read the new ONE PIECE by his obligation, even if he doesn’t really enjoy it. He feels a duty because he’s been reading it since he was a kid. I think that’s kind of how a LOT of people here feel. Lol
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
Casval Rem Deikun



Joined: 24 Feb 2021
Posts: 266
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:14 pm Reply with quote
Kinda how I feel. I've been reading since I was younger and really don't enjoy the story as much anymore but feel obligated cause of how much I've been reading of it.
Edit: more than likely will drop. If it's not worth your time it's time to move on.


Last edited by Casval Rem Deikun on Fri Sep 10, 2021 2:52 pm; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Electric Wooloo



Joined: 19 Aug 2020
Posts: 307
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:26 pm Reply with quote
Sunk Cost Fallacy
It's what kept me reading Bleach waaaay past where I enjoyed it.
Had that with one piece starting with the Zou arc and finally dropped it when Wano started.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
cchigu



Joined: 15 Feb 2020
Posts: 250
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:50 pm Reply with quote
LMAO It seems that I am the only one who has grown to like One Piece as I have grown up, didn't like it when I was young but these past four or five years especially since the whole cake arc, I have been extremely digging One Piece. Maybe I was feeling nostalgic over losing some of my favorite childhood manga in Bleach, Naruto, and Fairy Tail, who knows?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
perroloco



Joined: 10 Dec 2008
Posts: 307
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:50 pm Reply with quote
Sunk cost fallacy hahah
Contrary to the posters above me I have read and thoroughly enjoyed One Piece for almost 20 years now (Started with its serialization in American SJ).
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Shay Guy



Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 2091
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:54 pm Reply with quote
bluesheep02 wrote:
I was talking to my Japanese friend today about what manga were reading and he said he always has to read the new ONE PIECE by his obligation, even if he doesn’t really enjoy it. He feels a duty because he’s been reading it since he was a kid. I think that’s kind of how a LOT of people here feel. Lol


I can believe it. If you look at the annual Oricon charts, it sold over three million copies per volume in the early 2010s. Last year, the top volume sold 2.05 million. Which was more than anything that wasn't Demon Slayer, but still more than a third of its peak audience gone.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
AGodOfAll



Joined: 21 Jan 2017
Posts: 4
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 1:06 pm Reply with quote
A little correction to this article. One Piece volume 99 ranked 2nd behind Jujutsu Kaisen 16 back in June, 4th, it never reached first place. Also from volume 50 to volume 100 there is 51 releases.
From volume 50 to 98 (49 volumes) it ranked 1st - volume 99 2nd - and finally volume 100 back at 1st. So it is impossible for these 50 1st places to have been consecutive at first.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Touma55



Joined: 22 May 2021
Posts: 225
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 1:08 pm Reply with quote
perroloco wrote:
Sunk cost fallacy hahah
Contrary to the posters above me I have read and thoroughly enjoyed One Piece for almost 20 years now (Started with its serialization in American SJ).


Same here! I have been reading it for about 15 years and I still enjoy it immensely.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Sirsumsrince



Joined: 07 Jun 2021
Posts: 17
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 1:21 pm Reply with quote
I'm very interested to see the volume sales when the series ends. I think there will be another massive marineford level spike in the volume sales numbers from those who dropped the series over the years and want to binge the manga to see how it ends.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Thatguy3331



Joined: 18 Feb 2012
Posts: 1790
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 4:22 pm Reply with quote
The question of whether or not I think One Piece got better or worse after the timeskip is interesting because while I'd have a bit of a hard time saying I've liked any of the arcs/ sagas as intensely as I did before hand, I'd also have a hard time saying I really hated any arc, especially since Zou.

Zou was a really neat and VERY much needed short arc, Whole cake island had a lot of cool and emotional things in it and Wano, while having it's ups and downs is shaping up to end pretty strongly. I definitely prefer it to dressrossa since, even by OP standards, it went on for way too long and I was just sick of the place. Though to it's credit it also contains a lot of my favorite recent moments like Franky v senor Pink, God Ussopp, Gear 4th, & laws backstory (also I really loved Luffy's Lucy disguise, it's fun look).

The more casual adventure feel being absent and lack of arcs focusing squarely on the strawhats (closest we get is whole cake) are definitely the two things I think seem the most consistent among people who don't enjoy it as much as before hand but that's putting aside a bunch of other possible factors. I don't think One Piece really got worse but did change in subtle but meaningful ways that were just as impactful to readers, for better/worse as it was inevitable since the story was always building towards this in the first place.

Iunno. I still like it tho.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Wyvern



Joined: 01 Sep 2004
Posts: 1544
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 7:27 pm Reply with quote
I've been following One Piece since about 2005, and while its quality has gone up and down I still think that at its worst it's still better than most of the other stuff published in Jump, and at its best, it's genius. I don't buy the idea that people are only still following it out of obligation because most people will just drop a series rather than do that, not to mention that OP consistently polls near the top whenever Japanese fans are polled about their favorite series.

(There ARE cases of long running series that mostly coast by on readers who feel obligated to keep reading, but those typically experience huge drops in popularity. Bleach is probably the most famous example. Another, more recent one would be Food Wars.)

The thing is that OP's tone has changed over time, because as the plot as progressed, the Strawhats can't have these small, low-stakes adventures like they did in the early years. They were nobodies in the early volumes, but now they're major players on the world stage and everything they do tends to have global repercussions (even if Luffy might wish otherwise.) So every storyline has to be a major epic with big consequences and a large scope (unless it's something like Zou, which was setup for TWO huge arcs of that kind) because the overall thread of the series is to watch this crew go from anonymous nobodies who can't even afford a proper ship, to a world-famous pirate fleet capable of being a threat to almost anyone. And that can't work unless the author gradually ups the stakes and stops telling "small" stories.

Whether this approach works for you is a matter of opinion (I wasn't on board with it for a while, but Zou Whole Cake Island were brilliant and it made me a believer again) and an inevitable result of that approach is that some people are not going to enjoy the post-timeskip One Piece as much, and that's just fine. But I don't think it makes sense to assume that tens of millions of volumes of manga were sold out of mere obligation. Your opinion, no matter what it is, is not universal.

TL,DR: Oda made a deliberate choice to change the tone and approach of his writing after the timeskip, and not every fan is going to enjoy that, but it's essential to the type of story he's trying to tell. And a lot of people still enjoy that story. You don't become the best selling manga author in history without being at least somewhat good at making manga.


Last edited by Wyvern on Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:33 pm; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
OH&S



Joined: 15 Jul 2013
Posts: 306
Location: Sydney, Australia
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 8:52 pm Reply with quote
I'd also like to push back on the notion of sunk cost fallacy for this series which always seems to come up when One Piece (OP) achieves a milestone.

OP is still enjoyable today in 2021 as it was 15 years ago. It definitely hasn't been consistent. Fishman Island to Dressrosa induced fatigue in many of its week-to-week readers even though there are plenty of things to enjoy within those arcs. But Zou really did a good job clearing the fatigue and everything since then has been an absolute pleasure to read weekly.

There's no doubt that OP became a different beast after the timeskip in terms of how Oda developed the plot but this is mostly covered by Wyvern's above post. Pre-timeskip OP sagas were largely separate from one another with only a few plot points carrying over to the next one. Post-timeskip OP is in what can only be described as a super-saga. Almost all of the major events that have taken place throughout the sagas in the past 10 years have built up to the climax of the currently ongoing Wano Country arc. Only after its completion can we properly judge whether it was all worth it. But I think that when all is said and done, while it probably won't overtake the best arcs like Water 7 or Marineford in the eyes of most readers, post-timeskip OP sagas like Dressrosa, Whole Cake Island and Wano Country have their own distinct identity that'll allow the content to stand side by side with them; just for radically different reasons.

Another point worth mentioning is that the longer One Piece continues and the closer it gets towards its end, the more the events in the earlier arcs (the first 300 chapters) have become much more important in terms of re-examining why Oda had them play out the way they did, and why the arcs occurred when they did. No other long running series works like this: that earlier arcs get stronger the longer the story continues. This is just a testament to how Oda has structured his story.

Also a note about declining sales. Its not really as bad as doomers make it out to be. While on one hand they are most definitely declining year to year from the series peak in 2011, the rate at which it has been declining is extremely slow compared to most other popular series. OP annual Oricon sales are actually the most predictable sales figures on the list (using technical jargon: a simple linear (log-log) time series regression can explain over 99% of the data). In short, OP's sales are persistent and highly predictable and explains why even 10 years after its peak, its still selling a million copies in less than a week.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ZelosZoidberg



Joined: 23 May 2018
Posts: 630
PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 11:23 pm Reply with quote
I still like the series a lot. It's had it's up and downs (mainly with some arc's running too long) but it's still better then a lot of stuff both present and past. So far my favorite moment is when spoiler[Luffy punched that Celestial Dragon] and saddest moment is a tie between spoiler[the death of the Going Merry or the whole flashback with Trafalgar Law]. Here's hoping we are still alive to see the ending and that Oda can retire in peace.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page 1, 2  Next
Page 1 of 2

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group