It’s a huge year for Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece as the franchise is currently celebrating both its 20th anime anniversary, and the 22nd anniversary of the original manga series. Not only is the anime celebrating in its own major way with a new movie coming in just a few days in Japan, Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump will be celebrating the manga will a cool new set of special one-shots.
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The first of these one-shots has debuted, and features a remade take on Zoro and Mihawk’s fight in the series illustrated by Dr. Stone artist and Sun-Ken Rock creator Boichi. You can currently read the new one-shot online with Viz Media, which you can find at the link here.
This is the first in a new special series of one-shots for the “Cover Comic Project,” which will involved different manga creators and artists sharing their own take on some of One Piece‘s most recognized events. Although the full slate of artists in the project has yet to be unveiled, each one will “cover” a chapter from the manga with slick new color pages included.
Boichi’s one-shot in particular is 49 pages long, and is a remake of Chapter 51 of the series, “Zoro Overboard.” This recreates the first battle between Zoro and Mihawk, and puts an entirely new spin on this famous moment from the series. Fans remember this moment as when Zoro took his first major loss in the series, and the resulting passion and drive that sparked within him to push him further toward his dream of becoming the world’s greatest swordsman.
Seeing Boichi’s take on many of the series’ characters, especially the Straw Hats’ looks during the East Blue arc of the series, is definitely a cool sight to see and it only excited fans to see what’s next to come from this special collaborative project. Make sure you check it out alongside your weekly manga updates in Viz Media’s digital Shonen jump release.
Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 80 volumes, and 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 over 430 million copies sold. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.
