One Piece Sales Might Have Just Overtaken Batman at Last

One Piece, as of now, has over 490 million copies of its manga currently circulating around the world, and it seems as if the adventures of Luffy and his Straw Hat Pirates have managed to overtake the sales when it comes to DC Comics‘ Dark Knight, the Batman. With One Piece first debuting in 1997 via Weekly Shonen Jump, its especially impressive that Eiichiro Oda‘s swashbuckling tale was able to overtake Gotham’s favorite son in overall sales, considering that DC Comics has been releasing comic books since 1939 and had a decades-long head start in terms of producing stories and releasing around 480 million.

One Piece’s rise in popularity has made it not only one of the most popular Shonen series but one of the most popular anime franchises released in the history of the medium. Though Eiichiro Oda has confirmed that he plans on ending the journey of the Straw Hats within the next five years, the Wano Arc shows that the mangaka is looking to end things with a bang as Luffy and his friends attempt to free the isolated nation from the iron fist of Kaido and his Beast Pirates. Ironically enough, there is one Beast Pirate who holds an appearance of a flying rodent and appropriately takes the name of “Batman” for himself in the process.

Surprisingly enough, the vast majority of copies of One Piece are currently circulating in Japan, with around 400 million copies in the East, and 90 making the rounds across the world. With anime and manga becoming more popular with each passing year in North America, we expect more copies of Eiichiro Oda’s manga to circulate in the West.

There has never been an official crossover between the pirates of One Piece and the hero of Gotham, though that hasn’t stopped Luffy and his friends from crossing over into some strange new worlds. For example, One Piece crossed over with the franchise of Where’s Waldo, creating images that show the pin-striped traveler finding himself dropped into the world of the Grand Line.

Batman himself is no stranger to the world of anime and manga himself, with the feature-length film Batman Ninja taking the Dark Knight to feudal Japan and a recent manga story created for the Clown Prince of Crime himself, the Joker.

What do you think of One Piece overtaking the world of Gotham in comic sales? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of the Grand Line.

Via WSJ_Manga