Eiichiro Oda Biography

Eiichiro Oda is a Japanese manga artist, best known as the creator of the manga and anime One Piece. His drawing style is notable for its originality and has influenced a great deal of other artists, most notably Hiro Mashima.As a child, Oda was inspired by vikings and aspired to become a manga artist. He later submitted a character named Pandaman for Yudetamago's classic wrestling manga Kinnikuman, who was not only used in a chapter of the manga but would later return as a recurring cameo character in Oda's own works. At the age of 17, he submitted his work "Wanted!" and won several awards, including second place in the coveted Tezuka Award.

That got him into a job at the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, where he originally worked as assistant to Shinobu Kaitani's series Suizan Police Gang before moving to Masaya Tokuhiro on Jungle King Tar-chan and Mizu no Tomodachi Kappaman, which gave him an unexpected influence on his artistic style. At the age of 19, he worked as an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki on Rurouni Kenshin, before winning the Hop Step Award for new artists. During this time, he drew two pirate-themed one-shot stories, called "Romance Dawn", which would debut in Monthly and Weekly Jump in late 1996-early 1997. In 1997, One Piece appeared for the first time in Weekly Shonen Jump and promptly became one of the most popular manga in Japan. His biggest influence is Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump. They have also made a one-shot called Cross Epoch, a crossover containing characters from both Dragon Ball and One Piece.