Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece has become a household name in the manga/anime community worldwide and has broken yet another record. The publisher for the series, Shueisha Comics, announced on Thursday that the volumes of One Piece have reached the milestone of 480 million printed copies in circulation across the world. These statistics were released the same day as the 98th compiled manga volume on February 4, 2021. The majority of the landmark total comes from around 400 million copies in Japan alone. The over 80 million copies elsewhere account for 42 countries and territories, such as Germany, France, China, and the United States.
Shueisha is doubling down its efforts to further expand markets, launching a campaign on social media site TikTok to commemorate the 98th manga volume’s release. The publisher of the series is also starting a giveaway with 10 replica art pieces from the manga at random to people who can post videos using the competition hash tag “#麦わらの一味の負ける気がしねェチャレンジ” by the deadline of February 18th. TikTok is growing in popularity in Asia, especially in Japan, and anime and manga companies are now quick to advertise and promote on the site.
Manga author and illustrator Eiichiro Oda first began serializing the One Piece manga in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. The series was first printed across Japan on July 19, 1997. The series broke its first major manga industry record by the release of the 57th volume of the manga. This volume had a first printing of 3 million copies in the domestic market upon its release in March 2010. The second major industry record came a couple years later, beating the series’ previous record for the highest number of first-print volumes with the 67th volume of the series, which printed 4.05 million copies. The manga also holds the Guinness World Record for “the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author.” It claimed this record in 2015.
The manga has several accolades as well, including a grand prize in the prestigious 41st Japan Cartoonist Awards in 2012.
As of last April, the manga had reached 470 million copies worldwide, with 390 million copies sold in Japan and 80 million copies sold in over 42 other countries. This shows One Piece’s huge popularity in Japan over 20 years later and displays room for growth in manga sales in the future. Oda said in an interview last August that he plans to end the story in four or five years. He published the 1,000th chapter in this year’s combined 5th/6th issue of Weekly Shonen Jump magazine on January 4th.
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