Eiichiro Oda

Biography

Eiichiro Oda is a Japanese manga artist best known for creating One Piece, which began serialization in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1997 and became the best-selling manga series in history with over 500 million copies in circulation worldwide. Born in Kumamoto in 1975, Oda developed a fascination with pirates from childhood after watching the anime series Vicky the Viking. He began his professional career with the one-shot manga Wanted! at age 17 and went on to assist veteran manga artists before launching One Piece. Known for his extraordinary dedication, intricate world-building, and long-horizon storytelling, Oda has crafted a narrative whose layers and foreshadowing span decades of publication. Despite the extraordinary commercial success of his work, he is noted for maintaining a genuine creative passion for the characters and world he has built.