The king of pirates, king of manga.
100 books in 24 years
Last December, the 100th volume of the One Piece manga was released. A symbolic step that allows us to look back at the author and the history of this saga.
The creator
Eiichirō Oda (尾田 栄一郎) was born on 1 January 1975 in Kumamoto, Japan. At the age of four, he chose to become a mangaka (manga artist and scriptwriter). In 1997, the first chapter of One Piece appeared in the Weekly Shônen Jump (a well-known manga pre-publication magazine), and the success was immediate. And it has been going on for 24 years now, gaining more and more notoriety.
One Piece entered the Guinness Book of Records in 2014 for becoming the most published manga.
One Piece
The manga tells the story of Monkey D. Luffy, the main protagonist, dreams of becoming the king of the pirates. In order to achieve this, he goes on a quest to find One Piece, the legendary hidden treasure of Gol D. Roger, the previous and only pirate lord, who was killed 22 years earlier. He seeks a crew to help him, including charismatic characters such as Chopper the doctor, Roronoa Zoro the swordsman, Nami the navigator, Sanji the cook, Usopp the sniper, Franky the carpenter, Jinbe the helmsman, Nico Robin the archaeologist and Brook the musician. Together they form the crew of the Straw Hat and set off for the "road of all perils", where the greatest pirates meet.
Monkey D. Luffy
The main character is in every way the hero of a typical shonen manga (manga for young teenagers of the male gender). Luffy in the straw hat is a big, naive, rather angry and not always very intelligent character who is indignant at the hardships he meets. Another example that fits the shonen cliché is Goku from Dragon Ball. Luffy's particularity is that he ate a demon fruit, which gave him the gift of having a super elastic body, to the detriment of being able to swim.
The success of the series is mainly based on the hero, as well as on all the other characters, each more original, strange and surprising than the last. The universe of the manga also contributes greatly to the longevity of the series, which has been gaining in audience for almost a quarter of a century.
Among the series often associated with One Piece, we find notably :
- Fairy tail by Hiro Mashima
- Bleach by Tite Kubo
- D.Gray-man by Hoshino Katsura
- Dragon Ball by Toriyama Akira
- HunterXHunter by Togashi Yoshihiro
If you want to deepen your knowledge and train with other One Piece enthusiasts, Apolline offers manga courses in Lausanne, Etoy and Montreux. .
Our Manga teachers will help you discover new techniques and much more.