Eiichiro Oda, aka the greatest shonen mangaka, and the creator of the most-selling manga, One Piece. He has changed millions of lives with his work and entertained our entire childhood, and is still doing it.
One Piece is that manga/anime that, even if you haven’t read or watched, you still know about it. I guess anyone who has ever read a single manga knows about this masterpiece. Even with over 1000+ chapters and episodes, One Piece is still running strong.
Who would have wondered how the journey of a Pirate named Luffy would go down in history? One Piece is that anime/manga that once you have gotten the taste of it, you wouldn’t look away from it until you caught up.
In this article, we will be covering the entire journey of Eiichiro Oda and how he created One Piece. We will be talking about various ups and downs in his journey of becoming the greatest mangaka.
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Oda’s Journey to becoming a Mangaka
The year is 1975, and the war is experiencing a tragic ongoing war between two powerhouses of the US-Soviet Union during the Cold War. At the same time, the earth also witnessed the finale of the cruel Vietnam War. Life was tough until 1975 when the war was heading in the right direction.
For the manga world, this was an important year because it was the year when one of the greatest mangakas of all time was born. Eiichiro Oda was born on the 1st of January 1975 in Kumamoto City, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan.
At the young age of four, Oda made up his mind that he didn’t want to grow up and have a real job. He wanted a job where he could stay at home and do what he loved while getting paid.
He quickly found the answer to his wishes in a magazine, so he wanted to become a mangaka. Later that year, the second episode of Dragon Ball made Oda fall in love with the medium of anime and manga.
In the One Piece QnA section for Manga, a fan asked why he wanted to become a mangaka, and this is what Oda said, “How I first encountered Toriyama sensei’s manga was the second episode of Dragon Ball. I fell in love at first sight. At that time, I loved Disney, but I thought this was even better than Disney stuff.
Oda is a big fan of Shonen manga growing up. He even submitted a character named Panda Man Yudetamago’s classic wrestling manga, Kinnikuman.
Oda’s love for Panda Man is something we still see today, with even the new live-action using it as their project name during production, as well as constant cameos by the panda, or man, all throughout the One Piece manga and anime.
Due to his passion for manga, he started drawing constantly during his childhood and teenage time, building his art foundation. At the age of 17, Oda submitted the manga Wanted to Shonen Jump magazine in 1992.
The manga surrounds the story of a course trying to recruit the wanted criminal, Gill Bastar. Wanted is the debut work of Oda in the Manga industry. It is entertaining, funny, and easy to follow, but it is rather quite simple, lacking complexity and character development.
However, that didn’t stop Oda from receiving second place in the Tezuka Award. It was the very first set that Oda experienced in the manga industry. It also gave him a glimpse of hope to become a professional Mangaka. Oda submitted Wanted with the pen Tsukihimizu Kikondo instead of his real name.
Although it was a small award, it served as recognition and confidence to Oda, telling him maybe he could actually pursue the dream that he had.
The following year (1993), when Oda turned 18, he submitted his next work to Shonen Jump, God’s Gift from the Future. It is a comedy manga of comedic events that occurs with the main protagonists.
During the same time, Oda entered the University of Tokai to study architecture. When He turned nineteen, he submitted his third work, Ikki Yako, to Shonen Jump. The story is about Kugo, a monk who is on a journey to slay a demon, AKA Yokai, but ironically, he is absolutely terrified of Yokai.
This is probably the best action manga Oda has done so far. In the way same year, he published another one-shot manga named Monster. The plot revolves around a samurai saving a cute girl from the bad guys by slaying a dragon.
Oda’s Development
From the last four one-shots, Wanted, God’s Gift from the Future, Ikki Yako, and Monsters, we can clearly see Oda is quite a novice Manga who has basic storytelling, mediocre character design, and below-average action scenes, but we can clearly see improvement as he submits more and more works.
There’s one particular area in which I believe Oda deserves some recognition and credit, and that area is character development. Oda’s work has progressed from a one-dimensional comedic character in Wanted to a more character progression in Ikki Yako and God’s Gift from the Future.
We can clearly see the main protagonist is changing. It went from a bad guy picking pockets to a hero risking his life to save a child. On the other hand, we saw a coward who is scared of Yokai becoming a true warrior, gathering all of his courage to step forward and slay the demon who killed his master.
Such character improvement laid a strong foundation for Oda’s future work, and he has become one of the biggest weapons that he had in his infantile mangaka arsenal.
Oda’s Career
After one year of studying at Tokai University for architecture, Oda realized that he was wasting his talent at the university, so he dropped out and pursued his manga career full-time.
Being a young 19-year-old novice mangaka, he lacks experience and skill to run a lance utilize manga, and he definitely needs some money coming in to support his expenses.
As a result, the Shonen Jump magazine editor sent him to work as an assistant. Little did Oda know, he went on and became a manga assistant for a long period of time, during which he made a lot of meaningful encounters.
The first manga assistant that Oda worked for was Shinobu Kaitani, and he was working on the Suizan Police Gang in 1994. Under Shinobu’s supervision, Oda picked up a lot of skill and experience in serialization in a weekly manga. One of the most surprising things for him is how beautiful a manga Jump’s page can be.
Oda said in a Qna, “Since Jump’s pages are made of recycled pages that feel all rough and dirty, right? But the original molds are remarkably beautiful.”
He then went on to work for Masaya Tokuhiro’s Jungle King Tar-chan. This manga is based on Tarzan or a parody of it. During this period, Oda learned how to draw the profile of a character an expression.
He also admires Tokuhiro’s organizational skill of how he can correctly plan his work in two different time slots and execute it accordingly.
Oda’s next assistance work for Nobuhiro Watsuki is the turning point for his manga career. A little bit of background information: Watsuki is the author of Rurouni Kenshin.
During that time, Rurouni Kenshin was a mega-hit in Japan, so Watsuki sensei was like an S-Rank mangaka. Under his supervision, Oda keeps honing his foundation and art skills. Watsuki sensei has so much faith in Oda that he lets him help in the character creation of Honjō Kamatari.
He even let Oda draw his only easter egg in Rurouni Kenshin. Oda also met one of his closest manga friends/rivals in that period as well. He met Hiroyuki Takei, aka the author of Shaman King and Otomo.
Both of them were assistants of Watsuki sensei at the time, and both of them wanted to serialize their manga. Ever since Oda met Hiroyuki, he knew he would be a great mangaka, and he has also been a fan of his work since day one.
Oda talked about Hiroyuki when some asked about his rival in Qna, “He just had the fantastic art sense. He continues to make me feel like, “Wow, that was awesome!” He also kicks ass at Mecca game.”
Birth of Most Selling Manga: One Piece
During his time as a manga assistant, Oda constantly works on his own manga once he has finished his job and whenever he can. He kept modifying his story, continuously coming up with different characters, non-stop honing his skill, and finally, after two years, he came up with Romance Dawn, and that was the turning point in manga history.
Oda published Romance Dawn in 1996, two years after his last work. Romance Dawn surrounds the story of Luffy saving a kid named Annie from a pirate crew. In this one shot, Oda showcases the creativity of the devil fruit, the character development of Luffy, and a satisfying action scene, and he showcases the potential of this masterpiece.
But Romance Dawn had a strong competitor, Tite Kubo (Bleach Mangaka), and his work on Ultra Unholy Hearted Machine. During that time, Oda was in the blink of giving up if the Roman style failed.
Oda talked about giving in that time period in a Qna, “I was really just hanging by a thread and prepped myself thinking if this doesn’t work out, I will just have to give it up.”
For this, it was like a now-or-never situation for Oda since he has spent his entire life on this career. He even dropped out of his architecture degree.
Oda’s work has finally paid off, and Romans Dawn was a huge deal as a one-shot. It evens out competing Kubo Tite work. This allows Oda to obtain his first elusive sterilization opportunity, and thus, it begins a new era of manga.
Oda Breaking Records with One Piece
One Piece was started in 1997, and it is yet to finish even after 26 years. In these 26 years, One Piece has accomplished tons of achievements. It broke almost every single record you can imagine.
One Piece is now the number one best-selling manga of all time. It sold over 516.6 million copies and is still going strong, making it impossible for anyone ever to break it. On top of that, One Piece helped Oda to win numerous amount of awards, including three peaks of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.
One Piece even got its own life action in which Oda was supervising everything. The live-action of One Piece became a big hit overnight and broke the curse of live-action. It surpassed everyone’s expectations.
Awards Won By Eiichiro Oda
- 1993: Hop☆Step Award for Ikki Yako
- 2000: Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize finalist for One Piece
- 2001: Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize finalist for One Piece
- 2002: Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize finalist for One Piece
- 2005: Sondermann Award in the International Manga category for One Piece
- 2006: Japanese Media Arts Festival 100 Manga Selection for One Piece
- 2008: Sondermann Award in the International Manga category for Volume 44 of One Piece
- 2009: Sondermann Award in the International Manga category for Volume 48 of One Piece
- 2012: Received Grand Prize at the 41st Japan Cartoonists Association Award for One Piece
- 2015: Guinness World Record for “the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author,” with 320,866,000 copies printed worldwide up until December 2014.
- 2018: Kumamoto Prefecture Honorary Prize
- 2019: Most Searched Author at The Yahoo! Japan Search Awards
- 2019: Included in the list of Newsweek Japan’s “100 Globally respected Japanese people.”
- 2022: Special Lifetime Achievement Award at Napoli Comicon 2022 in Italy.
- 2022: Guinness World Record for “the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author,” with 516,566,000 copies in print worldwide up until July 2022.
One piece has made Oda one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time. This is really important. Let me repeat myself: best-selling fiction, which means Oda is on the same tier as JK Rowling.
Oda’s Collaboration
In 2007, Oda and Akira Toriyama together worked on a one-shot called Cross Epoch. The manga contained characters from Toriyama’s Dragon Ball and Oda’s One Piece.
In 2013, they each designed a Gaist character for the video game Gaist Crusher.
In 2011, Oda and Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro together worked on a one-shot manga named Taste of the Devil Fruit. Shimabukuro said that he was the one who came up with the story, while Oda gave him suggestions.
How One Piece was the boost to Shonen Jump Magazine?
Dragon Ball made Shonen Jump the undisputed number Shonen magazine in Japan with 6.53 million weekly sales, the highest in its history. During Dragon Ball serialization between 1984 and 1995, Weekly Shonen Jump magazine had over 2.9 billion copies in circulation.
Dragon Ball has accumulated 6.9 billion dollars in sales for Jump. So. now imagine losing that revenue stream overnight. On top of that, Jump also lost Slam Dunk and YuYu Hakusho ownership during that time, which is like the big fridge in the 90s era.
Jump has dropped weekly sales from 339 million in 1995 to 297 million in 1998. Shonen Jump magazine lost its form in 1997 to Weekly Shonen magazine. The undisputed Shonen magazine has been dethroned.
But not all hope is lost because the new successor of Dragon Ball has arrived. And by 2003, with the resurgence of the big three in Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece, Jump has finally reclaimed its crown back.
In other words, Oda is almost like a savior for Shonen Jump, and he has successfully taken the empty seat of Akira Toriyama, becoming the goat of Shonen manga.
How One Piece Changed Oda’s Life?
Has the manga journey of Oda always been smooth and successful ever since the release of One Piece? Kind of a big Yes. However, he does face struggles along the journey with the different art lengths on the long setup. Another struggle would be the constant change of editors. Oda has had 12 different editors since the inception of One Piece.
Maybe that’s why Oda is used to creating One Piece all by himself. He once commented he never wants to be helped because he wants to take responsibility for One Piece, both the credit and the criticism.
On top of that, Oda faced constant death threats in 2007 from a woman for two straight years. Apparently, her husband was working for Oda, but he has been fired since then. She held a grudge against Oda, and she started sending hundreds of death threat messages to Oda’s mobile phone.
By 2009, she was arrested by the police, and the rest is history. During One Piece’s peak period, Oda was working really hard. He only sleeps for three hours a day. He wakes up at 5 AM and works the entire day, and finally goes to bed at 2:00 AM.
However, that took a toll on his body, and unfortunately, he got a peritonsillar abscess in 2013, and he ended up in hospital for a while. He felt so bad for the audience waiting for him, and he even came with an apology statement for the delay in the manga.
Eiichiro Oda 2000 vs 2020
Oda’s love life
Oda met the love of his life, Chica Inaba, in 2002. She was a formal cosplay model, and in 2002, she was cosplaying Nami in Shonen Jump Festa. And that is where she caught Oda’s attention and heart. After two years of dating, the lovely couple was married in 2004. Since then, they are parents of two children.
Oda’s Rival
Throughout Oda’s career, he had many rivalries, such as the battle between One Piece and Naruto with Masashi Kishimoto, Tite Kubo, and Hiroyuki Taiki. He also made numerous amount of good friends in this industry, including Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro (Toriko), Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto), and Hiroyuki Takei (Shaman King).
What Oda Would Do After One Piece?
Oda was once asked, “What would you do after One Piece is over?” Oda mentioned that he would not produce another long-running manga.
Oda said, “After I complete it. I think much like Akira Toriyama sensei, I will put out a single volume of story every once in a while.” Maybe that is why Oda is spending his energy and passion on making this manga his best work ever.
