One Piece

One Piece (ワンピース Wan Pīsu?) is a Japanese shōnen manga series written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda, that has been serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump since August 4, 1997. The individual chapters are being published in tankōbon volumes by Shueisha, with the first released on December 24, 1997, and the 61st volume released as of February 2011. In 2010, Shueisha announced that they sold over 200 million volumes of One Piece manga so far; volume 61 set a new record for the highest initial print run of any book in Japan in history with 3.8 million copies (the previous record belonging to volume 60 with 3.4 million copies). Volume 60 is the first book to sell over two million copies in its opening week on Japan's Oricon book rankings. One Piece follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, a 17-year-old boy who gains elastic abilities after inadvertently eating the gum gum fruit, one of the mystical devil fruits, and his diverse crew of pirates, named the Straw Hats. Luffy explores the ocean in search of the world's ultimate treasure known as the One Piece and to become the next Pirate King. On his journey, Luffy battles a wide variety of villains and makes several friends.
The series has been adapted into an original video animation (OVA) produced by Production I.G in 1998, and an anime series produced by Toei Animation, which premiered in Japan in 1999. Since then, the still ongoing series has aired more than four hundred episodes. Additionally, Toei has developed ten animated feature films, an OVA, and five television specials. Several companies have developed various types of merchandising such as a trading card game, and a large number of video games.
The manga series was licensed for an English language release in North America by Viz Media, in the United Kingdom by Gollancz Manga, and in Australia and New Zealand by Madman Entertainment. The anime series was licensed by Funimation Entertainment for an English language release worldwide, although the series has been dubbed previously by 4Kids Entertainment.
Since its release, One Piece has become one of the most popular manga series of all time in Japan. It is the highest-selling manga of all time in the history of Weekly Shōnen Jump, as well as currently being its most acclaimed manga. It enjoys a high readership, with more than 202 million volumes of the series sold by 2011. Reviewers have praised the art, characterization, and humor of the story.

Plot
The series begins with a boy named Monkey D. Luffy, inspired by his childhood hero, the pirate known as "Red-Haired" Shanks, going on a journey to find the One Piece. Along the way, he organizes and leads a crew named the Straw Hat Pirates. The crew consists of a swordsman and first mate named Roronoa Zoro; the navigator and thief Nami; the cowardly sharpshooter Usopp; the womanizing chef Sanji; the doctor Tony Tony Chopper, an anthropomorphized deer; the archaeologist Nico Robin, a former enemy of the crew; the cybernetic shipwright Franky; and a musician skeleton named Brook.
The crew faces diverse villains such as Baroque Works, Eneru, the Seven Warlords of the Sea, Blackbeard and the Marines. The marines are the subordinates of the World Government, who seek justice by ending the Golden Age of Pirates. Many background story elements involve the delicate balance of power between the World Government and the world's most powerful pirate crews, especially the Four Emperors, the four most powerful pirates in the world.
After the death of Luffy's adopted brother Portgas D. Ace and one of the Four Emperors named Whitebeard, the Straw Hat Crew undergoes rigorous training regimens. Two years later, the crew regroups at Sabaody Archipelago and set out on a journey to the New World.

Setting
The fictional world of One Piece is covered by two vast oceans, which are divided by a massive mountain range called the Red Line. The Grand Line, a sea that runs perpendicular to the Red Line, further divides them into four seas: North Blue, East Blue, West Blue and South Blue. Surrounding the Grand Line are two regions called Calm Belts, which experience almost no wind and ocean currents and are breeding ground for the huge sea creatures called Sea Kings (renamed "Neptunians" in the English manga). Because of this, the Calm Belts are very effective barriers for those trying to enter the Grand Line. While navy ships, using sea stone to mask their presence, can simply pass through, most have to use the canal system of Reverse Mountain, a mountain at the first intersection of the Grand Line and the Red Line. Sea water from each of the four seas runs up that mountain and merges at the top to flow down a fifth canal and into the first half of the Grand Line. The second half of the Grand Line, beyond the second intersection with the Red Line, is also known as the New World.
The currents and weather on the Grand Line's open sea are extremely unpredictable, while as in the vicinity of islands the climate is stable. What makes it even harder to navigate is the fact that normal compasses do not work there. A special compass called a Log Pose must be used. The Log Pose works by locking on to one island's magnetic field and then locking on to another island's magnetic field. The time for it to set depends on the island. This process can be bypassed by obtaining an Eternal Pose, a Log Pose variation that is permanently set to a specific island and never changes.
The world of One Piece is filled with anachronisms, like the transponder snails, snail-like animals that can be attached to electric equipment and function as rotary phones, fax machines, surveillance cameras, and similar devices. Dials, the shells of certain sky-dwelling animals, can be used to store wind, sound, images, heat, and the like and have various applications. A Devil Fruit (renamed "Cursed Fruit" in the edited dub) is a type of fruit which when eaten confers a power on the eater. There are three categories of Devil Fruit. Zoan fruits allow the user to fully and partially transform into a specific animal. Logia fruits give control over and allow the user "to change their living body structure into the powers of nature". Paramecia is a catch-all category for fruits that give the user superhuman abilities. They are said to be incarnations of the Sea Devil himself, and as a result, Devil Fruit users cannot swim in sea water, as "they are hated by the sea". When even partially submerged in sea water, they lose all of their strength and coordination, although some abilities remain, such as Luffy still being able to stretch after being totally submerged. "Moving" water, such as rain or waves, does not have this effect.

Production
One Piece started as three one-shot stories entitled Romance Dawn—which would later be used as the title for One Piece's first chapter and volume. The two one-shots featured the character of Luffy, and included elements that would later appear in the main series. The first of these short stories was published in August 1996 in a special issue of Shōnen Jump and later in One Piece Red. The second was published in the 41st issue of Shōnen Jump in 1996 and reprinted 1998 in Oda's short story collection, Wanted!.
Oda originally planned One Piece to last five years, and he had already planned out the ending, but he found himself enjoying the story too much to end it in that amount of time and now has no idea how long it will take to reach that point. Nevertheless, the author states, as of July 2007, that the ending will still be the one he had decided on from the beginning and he is committed to seeing it through to the end, no matter how many years it takes.
When creating a Devil Fruit, Oda thinks of something that would fulfill a human desire; he added that he does not see why he would draw a Devil Fruit unless the fruit's appearance would entice one to eat it. The names of many special attacks and other concepts in the manga consist of a form of punning, in which phrases written in kanji are paired with an idiosyncratic reading. The names of Luffy, Sanji, Chopper, Robin, and Franky's techniques are often mixed with other languages, and the names of a number of Zoro's sword techniques are designed as jokes; for example, some of them look fearsome when read by sight but sound like kinds of food when read aloud (like Zoro's signature move, Onigiri, which is rendered as demon's cut but may also mean rice dumpling). Eisaku Inoue, the animation director, has said that the creators did not use these kanji readings in the anime since they "might have cut down the laughs by about half." Nevertheless, Konosuke Uda, the director, said that he believes that the creators "made the anime pretty close to the manga."
Oda was "sensitive" about how it would be translated. The English version of the One Piece manga in many instances uses one onomatopoeia for multiple onomatopoeia used in the Japanese version. For instance, "saaa" (the sound of light rain, close to a mist) and "zaaa" (the sound of pouring rain) are both translated as "fshhhhhhh."