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Sunday, January 18, 2009

One Piece Manga

Written and illustrated by Eiichirō Oda, One Piece premiered in the August 4, 1997 issue Weekly Shōnen Jump, where it continues serialization. In total, 528 chapters have been released in Japan as of January 17, 2009. As of December 2008, the first 512 of those chapters have been compiled into 52 tankōbon volumes in Japan by Shueisha, with the first volume released December 24, 1997.
One Piece Manga
One Piece MangaOne Piece Manga
One Piece Manga
The series is licensed for an English language release in North America by Viz Media. On July 8, 2002 ICv2 reported that One Piece would be in the opening line-up of the Shonen Jump magazine. When its first issue was released in November 2002, so was the first chapter of One Piece. The magazine has been publishing successive chapters ever since. The first volume was released by Viz in June 2003. As of October 2008, 19 volumes have been published. And an upcoming 20th volume is scheduled for February 3, 2009. The English volumes are being distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Madman Entertainment, with the first volume to be released on November 10, 2008. In the United Kingdom it was published by Gollancz Manga. Currently it is published there by Viz. One Piece is released in Denmark, Germany and Sweeden by Carlsen.

In addition to the regular manga series, Oda also wrote a variety of short manga pieces, generally less than five pages, featuring the One Piece characters. Unrelated to the series' plot, the side comics are drawn in super deformed style, giving all the characters large heads and tiny bodies. Some of these side comics are included in the data book One Piece BLUE: Grand Data File in four-panel format.

One Piece Manga
One Piece Manga
Eight side stories, collectively referred to as the Straw Hat Theater, were included in the One Piece Logs, a series of magazine-format manga compilations released from late 2005 through April 2006. These short bonus comics were featured at the end of the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th Logs, and advertised as "Brand-New from Oda-sensei! Special Manga. According to Oda, for each comic he was given three sheets of blank paper by his editor and told to "draw anything", with these being the result. The first five Straw Hat Theater manga shorts were also included in the One Piece YELLOW: Grand Elements data book, along with another bonus side comic. These five comics were also adapted into anime shorts, narrated by Masaya Takatsuka, that aired alongside episodes 279 through 283 of the One Piece anime adaptation.
One Piece Manga
One Piece MangaOne Piece MangaOne Piece Manga
One Piece Manga

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