Eiichirō Oda

Eiichiro Oda, born January 1, 1975 in Kumamoto City, Kumamoto Prefecture in Japan, is a Japanese Mangaka, best known as the creator of the "One Piece manga". He is married to Chiaki Inaba.

Early Life
As a child, Oda was inspired by Vikings and aspired to become a manga artist. He submitted a character named Pandaman for Yudetamago's classic wrestling manga Kinnikuman. Pandaman was not only used in a chapter of the manga but would also return as a recurring cameo character in Oda's own works. He is known to add Easter Eggs in his manga for fans to spot, including Doskoi Panda. Oda was inspired by the creator of Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball, Akira Toriyama. When he was young, he liked to play football at school and was nicknamed Odacchi by his friends. He would later voice Odacchi in the "Dream Football King!" short that was added to the third One Piece movie "Chopper's Kingdom on the Island of Strange Animals".

Assistant Years (1992-1997)
In 1992, Oda at age 17 began his manga career starting as an assistant to three different mangakas for the weekly shonen manga magazine Shonen Jump. In the same year he submitted his first work called Wanted! for which he won second place at Tezuka Award. At first he worked with Masaya Tokuhiro on Jungle King Ta-Chan in 1992. In 1994, he briefly worked with Shinobu Kaitani with Suizan Police Gang before going back to Tokuhiro. In the same year he left college as a freshman. After Jungle King finished its run in 1995, he and Tokuhiro went on to create Mizu No Tomodachi Kappaman, it ran from 1995 to 1996. Also in the same year he moved on to work with Nobuhiro Watsuki on Rurouni Kenshin in 1996. During this time Oda met Hiroyuki Takei. Oda drew scenes in that manga with his own art style.

During 1993 and 1994, he created other works such as God's Gift for the Future (1993), Ikki Yako (1994) and Monsters (1994), the last of which he would later mix with One Piece.

In late 1996, while still working with Watsuki, he created two one-shots for the upcoming manga artist showcase called Romance Dawn, Version 1 and Version 2, which would become the first chapter of One Piece. In 1997, he later quit working with Nobuhiro to begin working on One Piece, doing many early One Piece sketches that would appear in Color Walk 1. He planned out the early stage of One Piece (chapters 1-8) before he officially started it.

However, he made many changes, such as changing Boogie to Buggy, changing Zoro from being Buggy's henchman to being a wandering swordsman, and changing Morgan's appearance (he was originally supposed to look like a Sumo but Oda's editors wanted him to change it, which he did). Later Nobuhiro Watsuki would pay a tribute to Oda by drawing the Straw Hat Pirates' jolly roger in one chapter of Rurouni Kenshin as a picture on a bomb used by Gein, one of Yukishiro Enishi's subordinates.

One Piece (1997-Current)
Finally in August, 1997, he created his signature work, One Piece. Having been inspired by pirates, he made One Piece a pirate series.

In 1998, Oda did designs for the first OVA and was happy to see One Piece getting animated. In 1999, Toei Animation adopted One Piece and the staff would often meet up with Oda to discuss how to handle the series.

In 2002, he met Chiaki Inaba, who played Nami during the Shonen Jump Fiesta, and the two started going out, and in 2004, they got married. In 2006, he and his wife had a daughter. In April 2006, Oda unexpectedly fell ill and One Piece was not released that week. However he recovered and resumed One Piece the next week. Because of his recent illness, Oda felt the fans needed to catch up so he created Grand Line Times.

In 2007, at the JUMP Fiesta 2008, in the absence of Shūichi Ikeda, when the voice actors acted out the Red-Hair of Class 3 - Sea Time short, he wore a hot pink wig for the part and explained he would only do this because One Piece was in its tenth year. Later that year, he teamed up with Akira Toriyama to create a Dragon Ball/One Piece crossover called Cross Epoch.

He was also involved in writing and directing the tenth One Piece movie, the first movie that he actually wrote the script for, in honor of the tenth anniversary of One Piece.

In 2011 after the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake disaster, Oda as well other mangaka drew messages to the victims.

Future
Oda stated in an interview that he wanted to create a robot manga after he finished One Piece. Later, however, he stated that after he finishes One Piece, he would take the same path Toriyama did and create short-story manga.

Works

 * Wanted! (1992)
 * God's Gift for the Future (1993)
 * Ikki Yako (1994)
 * Monsters (1994)
 * Romance Dawn, Version 1 (1996)
 * Romance Dawn, Version 2 (1996)
 * One Piece (1997–present)

Citation
All the information in this page was taken from One Piece Wiki so see the page's history there for the original authors.