After 25 Years, One Piece Is Headed for Its Final Chapter
It looks like we'll be seeing the last adventures of our favorite pirate Monkey D. Luffy on One Piece very soon.
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Creator Elichiro Oda broke the news on Twitter on Tuesday, June 7, that he would be taking a month-long sabbatical from his work, veering away from his pace of one installment per week.
"A break for me!" he announced on the series' official Twitter account. "I want to rearrange the structure (of the manga) so that I can wrap up the final chapter as soon as possible. Soooo... Forgive me, but I will take a short breather to prepare for it all!"
Oda is said to be taking a break from June 27 to July 25 in preparation for the theatrical release of One Piece Film: Red and the final arc of the series itself.
It's been a while since One Piece has had a production gap, last doing so back in August 2010. We can recall that the last hiatus brought us to a two-year time skip in the series. This was when Luffy and his posse had been defeated in the Sabaody Archipelago and the Paramount War, prompting them to take the two-year-long train ride.
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One Piece has gone on to become a global cultural phenomenon since it was first published in 1997 and becoming an animated series in 1999. For 25 years, the beloved Japanese manga has garnered millions of fans across the world, spanning close to three generations of viewers and selling more than 490 million copies worldwide.
In 2021, it celebrated its 1,000th episode. Oda also happens to be the Guinness World Record holder for "most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author."
In the Philippines, One Piece reruns have been on television screens nationwide for about two decades now. GMA Network first acquired the license to dub the episodes in Filipino, with Telesuccess Productions, Inc. handling the work. It made its television debut back in 2002.
Toei Animation Philippines in Quezon City is also credited for the production and animation of One Piece episodes, as per its IMDB details. The rest of the work for the show goes to Toei Japan.
Will we ever see Luffy fulfill his destiny as Pirate King? We're just going to have to wait and see.
