The career path of the Japanese mangaka is known as one of the most physically and psychologically taxing endeavors in the entire art world. Unlike American comics, where whole teams of people typically work on any one issue, and any one series may exist indefinitely,... (1/30)

passing from one generation of artists and writers to the next across the decades, the Japanese manga is primarily a one-man show. The solo mangaka is usually responsible for creating, writing, and drawing every panel of every page of every chapter of his/her series,... (2/30)

even if it releases weekly and runs for years. Given these ruthlessly demanding responsibilities and deadlines, it is not uncommon for mangaka to work round the clock, forgoing all of life's other pursuits. They often abandon self care for years at a time, living... (3/30)

primarily off of crappy food, cigarettes, and a handful of hours of sleep each week. The mangaka life is usually one of self-inflicted suffering, and very few ever achieve rewards commensurate with their sacrifices. Some have criticized the manga industry for these... (4/30)

miserable working conditions, and perhaps they are correct.

Yet should it be surprising that such titanic pressures have ultimately produced one of the great diamonds of the world? Behold: Eiichiro Oda, who since 1997 has been self-imprisoned in a studio, a... (5/30)

"bunker," sleeping three hours a night, working an average, let us say, of 100 hours per week (a lowball estimate). Let's also pretend Oda averages two weeks off per year (probably not). It's said that a person can become a master of a skill with 10,000 hours of... (6/30)

experience, but at the age of 46, Eiichiro Oda is sitting on well over 100,000 hours of writing and drawing One Piece. As I type these words it is almost midnight in Japan, but undoubtedly the Mangaka King is at this very moment bent over a page with ink-stained hands,... (7/30)

sacrificing his life for his art and his fans. There haven't been too many moments in any given day since the Clinton administration that this has not been the case. The internet has taken over human civilization, cell phones have invaded every social interaction,... (8/30)

political unrest, terrorism, cultural upheaval and war have rocked every nation on Earth since the start of the 21st century. Yet through it all has the Mangaka King worked, tool in hand, honing his craft and building his universe, one pencil stroke at a time. His... (9/30)

entire adult life, sacrificed to a silly pirate comic. The majority of his whole life so far, sacrificed to a fictional doofus made of rubber. Why? It's insane. Yes. But Oda's sacrifices have not been in vain.

Look, people who know One Piece fans know what I'm about... (10/30)

to say. We say this all the time. They dismiss us because most of us are kids, or inexperienced with literature, or just generally frivolous people who waste time obsessing over comic books. That might all be fair for the most part, I don't know. But I can only speak... (11/30)

for myself: closer to 40 than 20, an English major who graduated from a great university with a 3.8 gpa and a 750 verbal score on the SAT, as well as a perfect score of 6 on the GRE writing exam. I was that nerd who actually did *all* the high school and college... (12/30)

readings, and spent large chunks of my formative years reading the classics for fun--you know, light page turners like Moby Dick, War and Peace, Atlas Shrugged, the Brothers Karamazov. I can tell you why Paradise Lost is a work of mind-blowing genius, and why the... (13/30)

little bit of Dante's Inferno you covered in high school barely scratches the surface. My knowledge of grammar would horrify you. When I was in college and a few years after, I became a professional tutor, helping people my own age write their papers. When my friends... (14/30)

need something important written, they come to me for help (though out of principle I do not write their schoolwork for them). I also love pop culture fiction: I adore Star Wars as much as Shakespeare, the Wire as much as the Odyssey. I first read The Lord of the Rings...(15/30)

when I was 11 years old, and have since read it a couple dozen more times. I live to read and watch great stories. It's always been my favorite thing in the world. I have a fiction addiction (seriously, I genuinely need to stop omg cry for help). Please understand,... (16/30)

none of this is bragging. I spend most days disappointed in myself, ashamed that I've spent more time in fake worlds than the real one. But I digress. What I'm saying is, this is the one thing I'm good at (the one thing at which I'm good). I've been wasting my life on... (17/30)

this mostly impractical stuff, and so I am not an expert in anything *except this*. I am for sure an expert in fiction, got my 10,000+ hours badge long ago, and speaking from this ant hill of authority, the most important thing I have to say is that One Piece is not... (18/30)

perfect, but it is the greatest adventure story of all time, and Eiichiro Oda is one of history's great geniuses. Do you hear me? EIICHIRO ODA IS AN ALL-TIME GENIUS, AND ONE PIECE IS THE GREATEST ADVENTURE STORY OF ALL TIME. Of all time.
Ohhh, I know you still don't... (19/30)

believe me, you cynical and jaded SOBs....

Honestly, you need to read it or watch it, but more than that, you need to pay attention. Watch/read some of the good analysis folks afterwards because you will probably miss a lot: Morj, Ohara the fox, Randy Troy, Grandline... (20/30)

Reviews, Artur at the Library of Ohara (but be wary of spoilers, for they will destroy you). You need to not let the goofy drawings and the silly humor fool you. Oda is a bashful genius, humble and sneaky, and he loves to make you think he's a hack just before the trap.. (21/30)

snaps shut and you find youself ensnared by storytelling brilliance. Pay attention. Watch what he's doing. Many writers can put together a great moment, but Oda layers them, jumbles them, interconnects them across vast distances, teases them in partial shadow, hides... (22/30)

them in his back pocket and then tosses them into your hands while you're off daydreaming and aren't ready to hold something so precious. As much as Tolkien is a genius, I can imagine what he had to do to create LotR, the monumental effort and talent. But I don't know... (23/30)

how Oda does some of the things he does. I don't understand how it's possible to thread so much intricate needlework when he's under the gun to produce 19 pages a week. The story of Nami's tattoo, Vivi's farewell, the flame of Shandora, the heart-breaking tale of Nico... (24/30)

Robin, the incident at Sabaody archipelago, the misfits Law and Corazon... The life of Kozuki Oden... the beauty and emotion of so many scenes, each a puzzle piece that adds by the hundreds into one massive and cohesive fictional world unlike any our Earth has ever... (25/30)

seen. I've read and watched so so much, but nothing else in fiction is like One Piece. It's a mystery, how he does it. I've only been talking about the writing, but my God the man has to *draw* all of this too! It's just too much. I can't believe One Piece exists (but... (26/30)

it does--the One Piece is real). I don't know how he does it, but I suspect it has something to do with those 100,000 hours.... I wonder how many hours Tolkien spent, or Milton, or Hemingway... If you squeeze everything you have, all of yourself, every moment of your... (27/30)

existence, every ounce of energy, every thought and breath and droplet of sweat into a thing...how long would it take for that creation to transcend the limits of the known possible? It's a question that haunts me every day...

imo it's the duty of every discerning One.. (28/30)

Piece fan--every OP fan who actually gets it, who truly understands the priceless treasure that we have here--to tell the world. Life is hard, and long, and for most people it's bad more often than it's good. We *need* to share the good things. Share the treasure.... (29/30)

Share the One Piece to make the world a better place... And pray that they don't F up the Netflix live action (30/30)