There’s no denying the monumental impact that Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece has had on the manga industry. Not only is the series a member of Weekly Shonen Jump‘s exclusive “Big 3” club, but it’s also one of the longest manga ever serialized, with an astounding 1133 chapters under its belt and more on the way. Oda’s pirate epic isn’t slowing down, and it recently earned itself a monumental new achievement that seems absolutely unbelievable, even for One Piece.
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As announced by the official X (formerly Twitter account) for Eiichiro Oda and the One Piece manga, the series has been actively publishing for over 10,000 days. One Piece originally began being serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine on July 22, 1997, beginning its historic, near-30-year run. For reference – in the same issue that One Piece launched its first chapter, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure had just published Chapter 514, “White Album, Part 6”, or the 74th chapter of Part 5. Yu-Gi-Oh! also published Chapter 42, “Get the Million!!” in this issue.
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One Piece Was Always Destined For Greatness
One Piece has had the unique experience of seeing multiple manga series come and go from the magazine, with Eiichiro Oda staying humble throughout the journey. Publishing his first one-shot Wanted! at seventeen, the starlet manga artist won multiple awards for the short story, including placing second for a Tezuka Award. The success of Wanted! landed Oda a job at Weekly Shonen Jump as an assistant to Shinobu Kaitani while he worked on his series Suizan Police Gang. He later worked on Masaya Tokuhiro’s Jungle King Tar-chan. By the time he was 19 years old, Oda was working on Rurouni Kenshin, which all but solidified his future in the industry.
Following Wanted! and his assistant work, Oda published two pirate-themed one-shots. One of the one-shots, titled Romance Dawn, featured a very early concept of Luffy as its protagonist. The short was originally published in 1996 in Akamaru Jump, a seasonal version of Weekly Shonen Jump published on Japanese holidays used to boost the talents of up-and-coming artists. Shortly after, One Piece finally began serialization and became an instant hit – and has become the best-selling manga series of all time, breaking a Guinness World Record in 2022 by having over 500 million copies in circulation. One Piece is also the 20th longest manga series ever published, with, as of writing, having 110 collected volumes published.
H/T: One Piece on X
