One Piece manga creator Eiichiro Oda said during an interview on an episode of the variety show to the Arashi band Tubo on Thursday that he plans to finish the story in four to five years. Arashi member Masaki Aiba had asked Oda, “Have you decided how many more years the plot is?”
Oda pointed out in response to a question from Arashi member Satoshi Ohno that he has decided the ending. Oda added that “We have to talk about everything every time my editor changes,” and the editor sitting near him during the interview confirmed that he also knows the ending.
Publisher Shueisha and the editors of Weekly Shonen Jump magazine and the Jump Comic label announced on August 14 that they will be delaying three One Piece publications from September 4-16 due to production issues related to COVID-19 concerns. The three publications are One Piece manga volume 97, One Piece Oda Eiichiro Gashū Tiger Color Walk 9 (One Piece by Eiichiro Oda Tiger Color Walk 9 art book) and One Piece Magazine Vol. 10.
The series also experienced delays in the spring due to COVID-19. Oda warned in May that further delays are possible as his staff rearrange the workplace to facilitate social distancing.
In an announcement for the upcoming 10th volume of One Piece magazine on September 4, this year’s 35th issue of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine teased on August 2 that One Piece “is heading toward the next final saga.”
Oda reported in a YouTube video posted in September 2019 that he “wants to finish [the One Piece story] in five years.” Then an interview in November reaffirmed that plan.
While still in high school, Oda was a finalist for the Tezuka Award for New Creators for Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1992. He began serializing the One Piece manga in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump manga on July 19, 1997. As of April, the manga had 390 million copies in print in Japan and 80 million copies in print in more than 42 countries and territories, for a total of more than 470 million copies in print worldwide. The manga won the 41st Japan Cartoonist Awards in 2012 and set a Guinness World Record in 2015 for “the most copies published for the same comic series by a single author.”
Source – Animenewsnetwork
