One Piece’s Creator Has Some Controversial Advice for Drawing Women

When it comes to art, the only way to get good is with old-fashioned trial and error. The creator of One Piece learned that lesson the hard way, but Eiichiro Oda has adjusted in all the years he has spent overseeing the Straw Hats. In fact, it seems the artist has found a few shortcuts which help him meet deadlines, but some fans are not happy with one of those aides.

After all, Oda uses a rather controversial shortcut to draw up women, and even longtime fans may be surprised to hear how the artist does it.

As noted by Kotaku, Oda once answered a question about how he draws One Piece heroines like Robin after a fan asked him. It was there the artist got real about how he brought the curvy women to life.

It turns out he has a standard formula to make up the body proportions for heroines. “The women’s proportions are three circles and one X. Please think and draw this way,” the artist wrote.

Of course, some fans have taken offense to how women are depicted in One Piece. Their unrealistically tiny waists often war with heavy busts, and Oda did say he gets complaints about that often. In fact, the artist said female readers often critique the exaggerated proportions, but Oda seems to make the bodies look that way to carry on the series’ overblown look. After all, there are few characters in One Piece with realistic body types, and Oda was not about to start that trend with Nami or even Boa Hancock.

So, what do you make of this advice? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!

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.