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One Piece Manga Creator Eiichiro Oda: I Want to End Story in 5 Years
posted on by Egan Loo
Manga creator Eiichiro Oda reported in a YouTube video posted on Friday that he "wants to end [the One Piece story] in five years." Oda spoke during a video visit to his home by popular YouTubers Fischer's. The video commemorates the release of the One Piece Stampede film.
Fischer's member Ndaho asked Oda, "About how long will One Piece's [entire story] keep going?" Oda responded, "I want to end it in five years."
Oda revealed during his appearance on Fuji TV's Honma dekka!? program in January that the ending of the manga is "near" and that the manga will have "just over 100 volumes." Oda noted that he had thought about the manga's ending since he was still in college. In addition, the show's host Sanma Akashiya also asked Oda what would happen if a fan managed to guess the same ending that Oda is writing. Oda replied that he would change the ending. [After Oda's January statement, OnePiece.com and V Jump columnist Greg Werner cautioned fans against equating Oda's estimates of the story's progress to precise timeframes.]
Oda said in an interview in July 2016 that he had finished around 65% of the manga.
While he was still in high school, Oda was a runner-up for the Tezuka Award for new creators from Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1992. He began serializing the One Piece manga in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump manga on July 19, 1997. As of last year, the manga had 360 million copies in print in Japan and 70 million copies in print in over 42 other countries and territories, for a total of more than 430 million copies in print worldwide. The manga won the 41st Japan Cartoonist Awards in 2012, and set a Guinness World Record in 2015 for "the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author."
The members of Fischer's have cameos in the One Piece Stampede film. Fischer's also have a crossover manga with One Piece that debuted last year.
One Piece Stampede opened on August 9 to mark the anime's 20th anniversary. Fuji TV describes the film's story:
The world's greatest exposition of the pirates, by the pirates, for the pirates - the Pirates Festival. Luffy and the rest of the Straw Hat Crew receive an invitation from its host Buena Festa who is known as the Master of Festivities. They arrive to find a venue packed with glamorous pavilions and many pirates including the ones from the Worst Generation. The place is electric.
Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
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