One Piece Manga Announces Extended Break

One Piece is one of the most popular manga titles in Japan, and its sales speak for itself. With the series approaching Batman-level sales these days, it goes without saying that Monkey D. Luffy is a well known guy. It falls to creator Eiichiro Oda to bring the character to life week after week, but the guy does need a break every now and again. And as it turns out, he will be doing just that this month.

Recently, One Piece put out a new chapter, and it was there fans kept up with the series' Wano Country arc. The short chapter left off with a major cliffhanger, so you can imagine how blown back fans were when they realized Oda was going on a mini-hiatus. The title will not publish a new chapter until the end of October so Oda can enjoy a small break.

It turns out One Piece will come back on October 20, so fans will have to go without new chapters for nearly two weeks. The anime will air as usual with new episodes, so fans will not be deprived totally of the Straw Hats. After all, the heroes have entered the Wano Country arc on TV, but Luffy's gang has barely enter the story. The anime won't come anywhere close to catching up with manga before this hiatus ends, but something is better than nothing for most fans.

For anyone concerned about the hiatus' length, there is no need to be concerned. While Oda doesn't take all too many breaks from One Piece, the artist does need to rest throughout the rest. In the past, Oda has taken a handful of two-week breaks to either vacation or prepare new content, so it seems all is running as planned with the series nowadays.

Do you think you can live with this extended break? 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.