One Piece is the biggest manga series in the world. The sales don’t lie — One Piece has currently over 600 million volumes in circulation, which is quite an impressive number. But, despite all of One Piece’s success, it, too, is facing some struggles. Beyond manga breaks, fans have a bigger issue to worry about.
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A Huge Issue for One Piece Fans Is Repeated Breaks
Oda Needs More Breaks Than Before Due To His Health
One Piece is a slow burn story that requires patience from the fans. This manga has been releasing pretty consistently since 1997 right up until now, which is 28 years.
Despite this extremely long run of over 1100 chapters, the story of One Piece has been consistent in quality, if not improving. It is the best-selling manga in the world for a reason.
That said, one thing that fans dislike about the series is the creator, Eiichiro Oda, taking a lot of breaks, which is quite shocking. Oda is not as young as he used to be, and of course, he needs more time to take care of himself, as well as to take care of his family. Oda has previously stated that he gets little time to rest and spend time with his family due to working on One Piece.
It is true, however, that Oda seems to be increasing the frequency of his breaks slowly. A few years ago, breaks were rare. Around 2020, Oda started taking a break every 4 or 5 chapters. Following the conclusion of Wano, Oda switched to going on break after every 3 chapters. But now, it seems Oda could start going on break every 2 weeks.
While breaks are definitely an issue to deal with, One Piece fans may be faced with a bigger problem — and that has to do with declining manga sales.
Breaks Are A Huge Issue, But One Piece is Facing Another Big Problem
One Piece is still one of the Best Selling Manga, But Sales Are Declining
Breaks are annoying, but at the end of the day, Oda doesn’t go on extended hiatuses like many other mangakas, so fans should count themself lucky they're getting new One Piece content almost every week.
The real issue the One Piece series might be facing, however, is declining sales. One Piece sales aren’t really what they used to be, and they really peaked back in Marineford. Back then, a One Piece volume would easily have over 2 million copies sold per volume and 2.5 million was not a hard number to hit either. And even after the peak passed, One Piece still never really fell under 1.5 million sales, until Egghead.
After Wano’s conclusion, there’s a clear decrease in sales that looks like it’s only getting worse. Soon, it could be possible for One Piece sales to drop under a million per volume.
When I was a kid, I thought to myself: man I would love to draw a manga with the most hyped final stage! I wonder if I'm up to it! Now, we have only a tiny bit of Wano arc left, the preparations are almost done. Took me 25 years lol. That said, it's fine if you start reading from this point on. Because from this point on...it'll be... The ONE PIECE!! The mysteries of this world, I'll be drawing all of them! It'll be super interesting! Fasten your seatbelt! And please stay with me for a bit longer! — Eiichiro Oda, Author of One Piece, 2022
This is definitely concerning, and shows that One Piece is suffering from reader loss. It doesn’t mean the story is decreasing in quality now, but just that the story is so long that some people eventually lose interest or simply wait for the story to move forward more so they can read it at once. It isn’t out of the ordinary for a long series to experience that.
The One Piece series desperately needs to bring in new readers. The live-action and the anime remake could definitely make a difference and expand One Piece’s popularity globally.
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Where to Watch and Read One Piece?
Available on Crunchyroll and Manga Plus
One Piece is quite a long series, and with it being a weekly anime, the number of episodes keeps growing with every passing week. Right now, the anime has over 1100 episodes to catch up to, and they can all be found on Crunchyroll.
When it comes to the manga, One Piece Chapter 1163 will be out in two weeks. As usual, One Piece is going to drop on Sunday. In Japan, One Piece drops at 12AM JST on Monday. However, the vast majority of international readers will see the chapter available on October 26. The official release date of One Piece Chapter 1163 is October 26, 2025. Fans can read the chapter for free on Manga Plus.
- Release Date
- October 20, 1999
- Network
- Fuji TV
- Directors
- Hiroaki Miyamoto, Konosuke Uda, Junji Shimizu, Satoshi Itō, Munehisa Sakai, Katsumi Tokoro, Yutaka Nakajima, Yoshihiro Ueda, Kenichi Takeshita, Yoko Ikeda, Ryota Nakamura, Hiroyuki Kakudou, Takahiro Imamura, Toshihiro Maeya, Yûji Endô, Nozomu Shishido, Hidehiko Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou
Cast
-
Mayumi TanakaMonkey D. Luffy (voice) -
Kazuya NakaiRoronoa Zoro (voice)
WHERE TO WATCH
- Studio
- Toei Animation
- Creator
- Eiichiro Oda
- Streaming Service(s)
- Crunchyroll, Netflix, Hulu, Pluto TV
