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One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda is taking a brief–and well-deserved–break from next week, leaving One Piece on a brief hiatus of three weeks. In a statement, Oda reassured fans that he is “not unwell” and he’ll be spending this time off recuperating and figuring out a very important plot point of his One Piece manga series.
“I am not unwell. And while it does have to do with my body, consider this a type of scheduled maintenance rather than anything else,” Oda wrote (via the official One Piece X/Twitter account. “More importantly, I think it’s time I start figuring out what the One Piece actually is! That’s going to keep me quite busy, I’ll have you know. [It] sounds severe but it’s no big deal.”
In the lore of the manga series, the One Piece is currently thought to be all the treasure possessed by the legendary Pirate King Gol D. Roger, and part of it is said to have once belonged to Joy Boy during the infamous Void Century. Reportedly buried on the final island of the Grand Line, this treasure has been the driving force for pirates in the years since Roger’s execution, and whoever claims it will officially be recognized as the next Pirate King.
Series protagonist Monkey D. Luffy and his crew are in pursuit of the One Piece, but it has never been explicitly explained what it is exactly. In previous interviews, Oda explained that the treasure is real and not something metaphorical like the journey to reach it.
One Piece has had several breaks over the decades that it has been in publication, as Oda’s schedule to produce weekly chapters became infamous for just how much time he’d spend working on the series. Between writing, plotting, drawing, and editing the manga, Oda has very little free time to himself.
This isn’t unique to Oda, as Hunter x Hunter creator Yoshihiro Togashi has taken frequent breaks due to ongoing issues with his back and hips, while Vagabond’s Takehiko Inoue stepped away from the series to focus on his mental wellbeing. In the last few years, the manga world has also been shocked by the sudden deaths of several creators, including Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama.
One Piece is currently in its final major arc and more than 1,100 chapters of the manga have been published to date. Beyond the printed page, a One Piece anime remake from the studio behind Spy X Family is in development and Netflix is producing a second season of its live-action One Piece series.
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