After 25 years and 490 million copies sold worldwide, the beloved Japanese manga One Piece is entering its final chapter, its creator, Eiichiro Oda, said on Tuesday.
The manga, which follows the adventures of the swashbuckling pirate Monkey D. Luffy, has captivated millions of fans worldwide as its characters hunt for One Piece, a treasure coveted by pirates in the comics.
Oda wrote on Twitter that he would be taking a month off from his usual publishing pace of one instalment per week, citing demands including his work on the final part of the long-running series.
“A break for me,” Oda wrote in a handwritten announcement that was posted on the official Twitter account of the series.
“I want to rearrange the structure [of the manga] so that I can wrap up the final chapter as soon as possible,” he wrote. “Soooo... Forgive me, but I will take a short breather to prepare for it all.”
One Piece first appeared in manga form in Japan in 1997, with an animated TV series version following two years later.
Since then, the franchise has become a global cultural phenomenon, and Oda holds the Guinness World Record for “most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author.”
Last year, the 1,000th episode of the TV series was released, with special screenings in the US and France.
A live-action adaptation by Netflix is also in the works, with fans speculating that it could catapult the franchise to global household name status, on par with Star Wars or Harry Potter.
Meanwhile, the publishers of another cult manga series, Berserk, announced that the cartoon would be relaunched following the death of its creator, Kentaro Miura, a little more than a year ago.
Miura’s friend Kouji Mori would continue the author’s work based on discussions the two had about the direction of the series, the Hakusensha publishing house said.
“I will only write the episodes that Miura talked to me about,” Mori said in the statement released by Hakusensha. “I will not flesh it out. I will not write episodes that I don’t remember clearly. I will only write the lines and stories that Miura described to me.”
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