'One Piece' Manga Commemorates 20th Anniversary

Eiichiro Oda's long-running adventure manga One Piece celebrates its 20th anniversary this week in Shueisha's Weekly Shounen Jump magazine. The series began publishing on July 22, 1997.

The people involved in the series, as well as fans and other industry personalities around the globe, are also commemorating the second decade of Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates' adventures through multiple projects including special illustrations, collaborations, and future adaptations.

Anniversary Video


One Piece Episode of East Blue: Luffy to 4-nin no Nakama no Daibouken (The Big Adventure of Luffy and His Four Crewmates)

Announced in this year's 30th issue of Weekly Shounen Jump, Episode of East Blue will be a two-hour special airing on August 26 at 9:00 p.m. on Fuji TV. The special will be a new work featuring reanimated scenes from the beginning of the series until the beginning of the Grand Line story arc.

An anniversary special version of the first opening theme song "We Are" will also be featured. It will be performed by Hiroshi Kitadani and 100 other singers selected by lottery through an Avex campaign that lasted until July 5. Takashi Ootsuka (Smile Precure!) is directing the special, while series regular Tomohiro Nakayama will pen the anime. Masayuki Satou (One Piece Film: Gold) serves as the special's character designer and chief animation director.

Announcement


One Piece Magazine, Spin-off Manga, and Novel

Shueisha is publishing a time-limited three-part magazine to commemorate the franchise's 20th anniversary. The first volume of the magazine was published on July 7, which included an extensive interview with Oda, a spin-off manga, two novels, a picture book, and a realistic wanted poster of Monkey D. Luffy.

The spin-off manga, titled Luff, reimagines the series by an alternate event. The novels, One Piece Novel A and Straw Hat Crew, focus on Portgas D. Ace's past and short episodes revolving around the series characters, respectively. The picture book tells the childhood story of Luffy, Ace, and Sabo.

The second issue of One Piece Magazine will go on sale on August 4, and the third on September 1.

Weekly Shonen Jump Special 33rd Issue

The 872nd chapter of One Piece was released in the 33rd issue of Weekly Shounen Jump on July 17. The anniversary issue also featured a special cover illustration, an illustration message by Oda, a poster, a shogi-themed appendix page featuring the Straw Hat Pirates and characters of the New World arc, a reader appreciation corner, a one-shot manga by Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro (Toriko) about his and Oda's memories together, and a chapter from Ei Andou's (Majin no Gald!) One Piece Party spin-off manga spanning for six pages.

School of Jump


New Video Game, "Dawn"

The franchise has received multiple video game adaptations for various platforms. This anniversary's special game, code-named "Dawn," will combine the efforts of Toei Animation's Hiroki Koyama (One Piece planning), Shueisha's Suguru Sugita (One Piece media supervisor) and Yuji Tsuzuki (One Piece game supervisor), and Bandai Namco Entertainment's Kouji Nakajima (Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin planning manager). More information on the game will be revealed at a later date.

Hello, One Piece Exhibition

The franchise exhibit will travel overseas beginning with Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, between August and October. More locations and dates will be announced soon.

Mobile Games Anniversary Event

Later this month, three mobile games will have in-game events to commemorate the series anniversary. These three will be One Piece: Treasure Cruise, One Piece: Thousand Storm, and One Piece: Grand Collection.

Tokyo Pirates Festival

Tokyo One Piece Tower will hold a Tokyo Pirates Festival beginning July 22. The event will consist of talk shows, written commentary exhibits, anniversary celebrations, contests, and a banquet with the people behind the theme park and other guests. The special program will be streamed on LINE Live.

Limited-Time Free Digital Manga Volumes

Through August 4, digital editions of the first 60 volumes of One Piece can be read for free in Japanese on a special Shounen Jump website.

FiguartsZERO Anniversary Figures

FigurartsZERO will release a series of limited edition anniversary figures of nine Straw Hat Pirates members in October and November 2017. These figures, which include alternative facial expressions, stand three to eight inches tall.

Online Campaigns

Aside from physical campaigns, the franchise expands its anniversary celebration on social networking sites. Camera and communication application SNOW released Luffy and Chopper stamps on July 21. Twitter is also including a straw hat emoji for users who use designated hashtags (#ONEPIECE, #ONEPIECE20th, #ワンピース, or #ワンピース20周年).

Minna no Luffy Fan Art Event

Shueisha is holding a campaign through August 31 where 100 works of fan art will be selected to form a special cover with a Luffy illustration by Oda for a future issue of Weekly Shounen Jump to be released later this year.

Hollywood TV Series Adaptation

A Hollywood live-action TV series of One Piece is currently in the works by Tomorrow Studios (Prison Break), a joint endeavor between producer Marty Adelstein and ITV Studios.


Over the past two decades, One Piece has won numerous awards and also set records in sales thanks to its popularity. These are some of the achievements of the series:

• Highest total manga volume sales, with a cumulative number of 416 million copies in print worldwide as of the 84th volume.
  
• Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author.
  
• Maintains presence in the Oricon Yearly Manga Sales Ranking for nine consecutive years since they begin charting in 2008.
  
• In 2009, all 56 volumes of the manga released at the time made the list of Oricon's Top 200 manga of the week.

One Piece has received multiple anime adaptations. The main series, which has been airing since October 20, 1999, is produced by Toei Animation. With a total of nine sagas and 46 story arcs to date, the anime will reach its 800th episode on August 6, 2017.

Source: One Piece official site, Comic Natalie
Statistics: PR Times, Oricon 1, Oricon 2, Oricon 3