Canned Dogs reports that the 50th volume of Eiichiro Oda’s comedy-adventure manga One Piece sold more than 1 million copies in Japan during its first week of release.
Compare that to the latest volume of Masashi Kishimoto’s insanely popular Naruto, which has sold just 922,782 copies in six weeks. Yeah, “just.”
One Piece, which is released in North America by Viz Media, follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and his ragtag crew on their search for the ultimate treasure — the One Piece — and Luffy’s quest to become king of the pirates.
The manga began serialization in 1997 in Weekly Shonen Jump.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Yeah in Japan One Piece is the insanely popular series while Naruto plays second fiddle. It just can’t compete in America though, it always seems like it’s sales continue to slip further and further behind.
June 14th, 2008 at 1:56 am
Yeah, One Piece in Japan is up there with Dragon Ball Z in terms of sales and prominence. Over in America, its lack of popularity is due to a lack of hype, its horrible 4kids anime dub, and poor translation/editting in its Viz volumes.