Eiichiro Oda's One Piece began serialisation in Weekly Shōnen Jump in July 1997 and continues at the time of writing. It is the bestselling manga series in history by cumulative volume sales — over 500 million volumes — and the principal commercial pillar of Shueisha's manga publishing since the early 2000s. The Toei Animation TV adaptation has run continuously since October 1999.
Production history
One Piece's serialisation has now run for over twenty-five years with only minor breaks for the author's health. Oda is among the rare manga artists who has maintained continuous high-quality serialisation across a decades-long career; his weekly output is approached only by Akira Toriyama at his commercial peak in the late 1980s, and even then for a shorter total run. Oda's relationship with successive Weekly Shōnen Jump editors has been documented in interview and is one of the most-cited examples of the editor-author working relationship in modern manga.
Volume sales and commercial scale
One Piece's cumulative volume sales had exceeded 500 million copies as of the early 2020s, with successive volumes frequently breaking single-week sales records on initial release. The franchise's parallel revenue streams — films, video games, merchandise, the 2023 Netflix live-action adaptation — make it one of the largest single intellectual properties in Japanese commercial media.
The Toei anime
Toei Animation's One Piece TV series has run continuously since October 1999 and exceeded 1,000 episodes in 2021. The production's per-episode budget has historically been low even by TV anime standards, and the visual quality across the series' run varies substantially. From 2023 onward, the anime entered a 'remake' phase in parallel with the original series' continued production, with Wit Studio producing a new adaptation (The One Piece) covering the early arcs at higher production density.