 This video is a buster call. To find out more about how you can get me to do a personalized video on a topic of your choosing, head over to patreon.com slash Grand Line Review and scroll down to the admiral tier. But for now, enjoy the video. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Today we are going to go on a bit of a meta journey through the history of this incredible story, detailing how it went from its humble beginnings to becoming not only the best-selling manga of all time, but one of the best-selling comics in general throughout the world. And the only place to kick off this adventure is with the author himself, Etchira Oda. Oda was born on the 1st of January in the Kumamoto Prefecture, which is located on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four major islands. Oda's interest in becoming a manga car was solidified by the mere age of four when he resolved to become a manga artist in order to avoid getting a quote-unquote real job. And as someone who has a real job, all I can say is, good on you kid, you had the right idea. Throughout his childhood, Oda had many inspirations for his own story, but the most prominent ones come from Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama, which to this day is the property that essentially defines the entire battle manga genre, as well as Vicky the Viking, which is best described as a German, Austrian, Japanese animated series, which has been hypothesized to be Oda's spark of interest in the world of piracy. And in 1992, at the age of 17, he would take the first step towards putting his career into action by becoming an assistant to three different manga car for the publication Weekly Shonen Jump. During that same year, he was also hard at work on his own one-shot manga called Wanted, which most of you have probably heard about at some stage. This one shot was submitted for the Tezuka Award, a semi-annual manga award instituted by the publisher Shueisha in order to cultivate new manga car, with a first place prize of two million yen and a second place prize of one million yen. This competition is incredibly competitive, but also subject to extraordinary levels of scrutiny, as judges can elect not to award cash prizes if they deem that none of the candidates are worthy of receiving it. With that in mind, Wanted received second place in the contest, setting the stage for Oda to one day become a highly influential manga car in his own right. However, it would still be some time before one piece came to fruition, and so Oda continued working as an assistant for many years, and in 1996 he became an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki, manga car of the highly successful Rurouni Kenshin series. However, during this year, Oda would also be hard at work on the true prototype of One Piece, known as Romance Dawn. Now, interestingly enough, this word actually came in two versions, both of which introduced Luffy, the Gomagomonomi, and some other core aspects that would become One Piece. Although radical changes were made between the two, one of which is the character that would eventually become Nami, who was named Shirakuu in version one, and Anne in version two. There was also a much stronger magical element in these prototypes, showing that Oda hadn't quite decided on exactly how this world was going to operate just yet. After creating these one shots, Oda quit his assistant job for Nobuhiro Watsuki to begin working on One Piece, and so One Piece was unleashed properly onto the world in issue 34 of Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997, with chapter one being titled Romance Dawn. And it began exceptionally strongly claiming the number one spot in the reader feedback polls, and being consistently placed in the top half of the magazine for the remainder of the year, by the end of which the very first Tonkaban volume was published, also entitled Romance Dawn. Now at this stage, Oda had quite an ambitious outline for the series, having already decided on the ending and planning it to last a total of five years. But that was 1997, and as of this recording, it is late, late 2018. So we all know that, uh, things didn't quite go to plan here. But it should be noted that planning a five-year run was still incredibly bold in the hyper-competitive manga industry. Throughout 1998, One Piece continued strong, taking readers through East Blue, and delivering them to the Arlong Arc by December that year. As a result of this strong performance, it was being scouted by the animation company Toei, and in October of 1999, the very first episode of One Piece aired on the Fuji Network system. By this time in the manga, the straw hats had just entered the grand line, and were knee-deep in the events of Whiskey Peak. And the series itself had achieved a mainstream level of popularity in Japan anyway, becoming the third highest-selling manga of 1999, with just under 372,000 volumes sold, putting it behind only Ruroni Kenshin and Detective Conan for that year. This was the first year that One Piece cracked the top three in volume sales, and from this point on, it would never fall out of that top three. On the contrary, from here on, One Piece would experience explosive growth, managing to sell under 872,000 volumes, as well as claim the number one spot in the very next year. And this strong growth would continue, as in 2001, the series managed to crack one million volumes sold, and by 2002, the total yearly volume sales were over two and a half million. By this time, the manga was well into the events of Skypeer, and the anime adaptation wasn't trailing too far behind it, having just entered the Jaya arc. Furthermore, at this point, Three One Piece movies had come out, and although none of them were feature-length, the beast that is this series was spawning more than its fair share of extended media, including cosplay performances at the 2002 Jump Festa, where Oda would meet his future wife, Chiaki Inaba, who was playing the role of Nami in the performance. The two of them were married in 2004, and in that very same year, One Piece was acquired by Four Kids Entertainment, and an English dub distribution of the anime was announced for the United States, Canada, the UK, South Africa, New Zealand, and of course, the ever-wonderful Australia. Sadly, this ended up being a move that would generate extreme criticism, and arguably cause permanent damage to the perception of One Piece in the English-speaking world, due to strong censorship, overt Americanization, and the general strategy of aiming the series at the ever-lucrative 6-11 age bracket. Basically, Four Kids were looking to find their next Pokémon, and in doing so, failed to reach the broader audience that One Piece enjoyed in Japan, with some former Four Kids employees even stating that One Piece is an extreme case that tarred the reputation of the company. But despite what was happening in the English marketplace, One Piece in Japan continued to grow over the next few years, as readers were taken on a grand journey through Water 7, any slobby thriller bark, Sabati Acapelago, Amazon Lily, Impel Down, and in the second half of 2009, Marineford. Now I would personally argue that 2009 was by far the most important year for One Piece as a property, and this is because the end of 2009 saw a culmination of the series on two fronts, the first of which being the manga, which was serializing the aforementioned Marineford arc. This portion of the story was the end of an entire age of One Piece, bringing together characters from throughout the entire history of the series, and placing them in a climactic battle, the likes of which I had never seen in manga before. But the second and more overlooked culmination came in the form of the movie realm. By 2009, One Piece had released a total of nine films, with six of them being full length features, and while these did enjoy a decent amount of general financial success, none of them really stood out to the world. However, all of that was about to change with the release of the tenth film, Strong World. This film was particularly notable because it was being written by Oda himself, leading to a fast superior product, and after a fantastic marketing campaign, Strong World opened on the 12th of December 2009, grossing just over 11.5 million US dollars in its opening weekend, which was more than the previous One Piece film had grossed during its entire theatrical run. But just for further comparison, when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opened in Japan, it grossed 1.2 million US dollars in its opening weekend, so yeah, Strong World was a bit of a big deal. So with the manga reaching its greatest point to date and this new film garnering heavy mainstream attention, the One Piece fanbase absolutely exploded, and for the year of 2009, volume sales totaled over 14 million. But that isn't even the impressive part, because the effects of 2009 would not be seen until the 2010 sales figures were announced, with One Piece managing to sell a truly astonishing 32 million copies. At this stage One Piece was now a behemoth like nothing the manga world had ever seen before, and its mega success grew to selling just under 40 million volumes in a single year in 2011. However, following that there was a steep decline in both 2012 and 2013, although the sales of both of those following years still kept it comfortably in the number one best-selling manga spot. In an effort to combat this decline, 2013 saw some intriguing strategies to try and push One Piece into the international marketplace, the most prominent of which was a full page ad run in two of the top five newspapers in the world, The New York Times and China Daily, with a very bold statement declaring, Hey world, this is manga. Featuring a full coloured illustration of Luffy by Oda himself, and while these ads were very, very cool, they didn't stop the sales decline, and the period of 2014 ended with a total of just under 12 million volume sold, which happens to be the only year in recent history that the number one spot has been threatened with Attack on Titan managing to sell an astoundingly close number, but it still wasn't quite enough. With that said, this sales number only looks low due to the absurd numbers of 2010 and 2011. One Piece was and still is the marketplace leader in the manga world, making Oda a very, very wealthy man. In fact, at your Oda's net worth today is estimated at $200 million, which sounds fantastic, but it's not as if he ever has any time to spend any of it. Oda's work schedule is particularly brutal, as he works seven days a week planning, writing, drawing, inking and colouring. On top of that, his days generally commence with waking up to work at 5am and going to sleep at 2am, and while I never understand being able to pull off that lifestyle myself, all of the effort put into One Piece is more than evident, and the series has still continued strong as the world's best-selling manga, and as of 2018, the series has managed to sell over 440 million copies over its lifetime. This has even resulted in One Piece attaining the Guinness World Record for most copies of a comic book published by the same author, and if that wasn't enough, well, One Piece is currently the third-highest selling comic book in history, poised to surpass Batman in a few years, but still a far cry from the number one spot held by Superman. However, One Piece is a series about constantly battling against the impossible, and making a name for yourself in a massive world full of mammoth contenders, something that is very well reflected in the meta-journey of the manga's publication, and given that we still have no real indication of when One Piece is going to end, it's not out of the realm of possibility to think that when the day of Luffy ascending to the role of Pirate King does finally come, that perhaps that will also be the time when One Piece itself also does the impossible and becomes the best-selling comic book the world has ever seen. But that pretty much does it for this brief history of One Piece. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produces in general, then please do consider making a donation to the Grand Line Review Patreon because the support of all the few amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible. 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