It was announced on Monday that Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece manga has set a Guinness World Record for number of copies printed. As of the end of December 2014, One Piece has printed 320,866,000 copies worldwide. Oda offered a comment on this amazing achievement:
“Thank you for this certification for the Guinness World Record. Manga is an amusing way to pass time, but when I receive reports that say ‘through One Piece I made friends,’ or ‘through One Piece I found my sweetheart,’ I am really happy. I feel like this record number has the possibility to bring the same number of people together. I will not forget my predecessors in the manga world, the colleagues whom I work with, and my readers, and from now on I want to continue to draw a work that will not shame this record.”
A presentation of the award was held on Monday, however, Oda was not present to accept it. Instead, Yoshihisa Heishi, an editor from Weekly Shounen JUMP accepted the award on his behalf.
One Piece currently has 77 volumes printed and has been serialized since 1997. The manga is available in 30 different countries and has spawned a long-running television anime that is just three episodes shy of hitting the 700 mark. In addition, the franchise has spawned several movies, OVAs, characters CDs, action figures, and other assorted merchandise. One Piece is considered one of the three pillars of Weekly Shounen JUMP alongside Tite Kubo’s Bleach and Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto franchises. There are also big plans in store for One Piece as Weekly Shounen JUMP touted a major announcement in the 29th issue of the magazine which should hit shelves in Japan on June 22, 2015.
