Erika is Japanese, she goes shopping in the streets of the crazy district of Shibuya in Tokyo, she is almost 50 years old. She was still a student or young employee when she started reading One Piece in publishing giant Shueisha’s weekly magazine Shonen Jump. However, it was already no longer in the core target of this periodical generally intended for teenagers. But it doesn’t matter, Erika is from this generation who let herself embark on the adventures of Luffy with her elastic body and her crew of pirates, from the first episodes published in 1997. One Piece has been, for a quarter of a century, the flagship series of Shonen Jumpa veritable nursery for cult manga, from dragonball at Demon SlayerPassing by naruto.
But One Piece breaks records: in terms of longevity and worldwide sales (500 million volumes in total). “I still read it today, I love it, all the characters are endearing”, specifies Erika, who does not buy Shonen Jump each week, but awaits the publication of volumes encompassing several stories of 19 pages each. Already 103 volumes on the counter in Japan.
An outcome as expected as feared
One Piece was able to capture adults from the start, because the manga was a remedy for depression after a series of crises since the end of the 1990s. Even a sexagenarian randomly questioned in the street tells us that he was a fan from the first episodes . He hasn’t read it for years, but hesitates when asked if he will return to it for the last episodes, when the end will be announced. Erika assures her from the start: she will be sad at the end, but she really wants to know how this journey will end, so she won’t give up. Taro, too, will go to the end, with the same enthusiasm that makes him inexhaustible on the series.
READ ALSO6 manga that are not for children
According to the author, Eiichiro Oda, the last part is coming soon. That said, he has been saying for years that he wants to get it over with, because One Piece, his only “rensai” (serial manga), has been his whole life for 25 years. “I would like to finish One Piece in five years,” Eiichiro Oda said in 2019. Then he repeated the same thing in 2020. But, if we stick to his recent messages posted on Twitter, the last chapter (which will contain an indefinite number of episodes) is for soon. “After so many years, he may no longer want to,” speculates the reader Taro quoted above.
The Oda Mystery
It’s because the same crazy rhythm repeats itself every week. No less than 19 pages to deliver. So much to think and draw, with a schedule that leaves little room for sleep, family and leisure. At the turn of a long conversation with the designer of Detective ConanGosho Aoyama, transcribed in Shonen Jump at the end of July, Oda explains that he does not even have time to read other manga. Because it’s a washing machine, Shonen Jump. He complains about it sometimes, when he responds (very, very rarely) to interviews, without ever showing his face.
READ ALSOWhy Japan fell in love with ‘Detective Conan’
To do everything alone is obviously impossible. He is therefore surrounded by assistants, but the screenplay is him, body and soul. “If the story doesn’t bring me to tears, I can’t touch the reader. If I am not moved myself, I do not believe I can move others, ”he confided in 2020 on television. He makes it a point of honor to draw the characters and central elements of his boards himself. He is not always on time and has already exhausted a dozen “tantosha” (editing officers). If he continues, it is, he says, “because I think it would be rude not to draw an episode that I myself find interesting”.When he took a four-week hiatus from weekly publication earlier this summer, it was all over the media. And for good reason, it is extremely rare. From there to think that he was on vacation, it would be wrong. He devoted this time to preparing the launch of the film One Piece Red released on August 6 in Japan (10 in France). Finally, part of this suspension of publication was used to rethink the last part of the manga which he had however imagined a very long time ago (from the beginning, according to him), but which he wanted to adjust, according to his own explanations.
READ ALSOWhy we create imaginary worlds
Signs of shortness of breath
Do we have to hurry towards the end, does the title run out of steam? Not impossible. Last February, an article on the Myjitsu website headlined “Readership is accelerating away from us,” picking up on the flood of comments from readers disappointed or outright annoyed by developments that were difficult to understand or abandoned along the way. Several other articles of the same ilk subsequently appeared on various specialized sites, with harsh titles, such as “Why One Piece come to be hated? or even “Why are readers leaving all of a sudden? »
One Piece has certainly succeeded in keeping part of its original readership in Japan over 25 years, but has been struggling to recruit new aficionados lately and is even losing some of the demanding readership who say they are drowning in a story now considered less dreamlike, less funny, more complex and boring. The youngest, the readership a priori targeted by Shonen Jump, are not present. About ten high school girls questioned answer that they are not at all interested in this manga. “We have a few friends who read it, but not us. » So that One Piece in Japan is a manga above all appreciated by adults. A 2019 survey indicates that 75% of readers at the time were over 18, with the majority in their thirties and forties. The expected announcement of the end will be a new dope, no doubt.
A big machine
And in the meantime, the industrial machine is running at full speed. One Piece, it’s also cartoons, series, animated feature films, countless derivative products, commercial partnerships. The film One Piece Red, produced by Oda and released on August 6 in 495 theaters in Japan, attracted a whopping 1.57 million viewers in the first two days, a record debut for the series of animated feature films derived from this manga. Besides the soundtrack of Red signed Ado (who also does not show her face) immediately claimed the top spot on all music sites in Japan.