'One Piece's Creator Suggests Revisiting the Story to Really Enjoy It

One Piece may arguably be the most popular manga and anime series in Japan, but even it has some detractors.

To alleviate these gripes, the creator of the series suggests revisiting and re-reading older story bits to really get the most out of it.

In talking with his Weekly Shonen Jump editor during the "Battle at Marineford" story arc, series creator Eiichiro Oda noted that revisiting One Piece after an arc is concluded makes the story flow better overall:

Even Oda advocates that re-reading current arcs puts them in a much better light, as opposed to what he thought may be "lacking" (or for some us, "arcs that are dragging") from OnePiece

When his editor says he didn't understand or "feel" Marineford as it was happening, Oda responded by saying "You go back and re-read it and you're like 'yeah this is good.'" and that when he drew he was "always trying to imagine what the readers reaction will be."

Even Oda, the most popular manga author in Japan, is anxious about fan reactions stating, "It's kind of scary when the readers reaction is greater than what you're expecting." In order to deal with this anxiety, Oda "imagine[s] it means you're not controlling the response to your manga cause your trying to think...this is what [he] want[s] the readers to think, this is what [he] want[s] them to find interesting, and this is what [he] want[ed] them to feel at this point of the series."

So Oda essentially acknowledges the problems some fans have with One Piece's story. Some fans feel it can drag in some arcs, or not have a clear end in sight, but Oda is always considering this. Rather than drag, Oda is explicitly controlling the pace of the story in order to allow certain moments to breathe and enhance the truly important moments.

This is especially notable during the "Battle of Marineford" arc the two discuss here. This arc is still one of the more critically successful in the series so far.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has been collected into 87 volumes, with a few chapters yet to be included. It has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best selling manga series worldwide with 430 million copies sold worldwide.

One Piece is currently in the middle of the "Whole Cake Island" arc and is now streaming on Crunchyroll.

Would you be interesting in revisiting One Piece? Talk to me @Valdezology.