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."

Eiichiro Oda (Figure)

Eiichiro Oda (尾田 栄一郎 Oda Eiichirō?, born January 1, 1975 in Kumamoto, Kumamoto) is a Japanese manga artist, best known as the creator of the manga and anime One Piece.

Early Life
As a child, Oda was inspired by Akira Toriyama's works and aspired to become a manga artist. He recalls that his interest in pirates was probably sparked by the popular TV animation series titled Vicky the Viking. He submitted a character named Pandaman for Yudetamago's classic wrestling manga Kinnikuman. Pandaman was not only used in a chapter of the manga but would later return as a recurring cameo character in Oda's own works.

Career
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 Shōnen 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. Watsuki also credits Oda for the creation of the character Honjō Kamatari who appears in Rurouni Kenshin. 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. "Romance Dawn" featured Monkey D. Luffy as the protagonist, who then became the protagonist of One Piece. While Oda was an assistant of Watsuki, his colleague was Hiroyuki Takei, and the three of them are good friends.
In 1997, One Piece appeared for the first time in Weekly Shōnen Jump and promptly became one of the most popular manga in Japan. His biggest influence is Akira Toriyama, who is the creator of Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump.
In an interview with Shonen Jump, when asked what his three favorite manga by other authors were, he stated 'everything by Akira Toriyama'. Oda and Toriyama have made a one shot called "Cross Epoch" containing characters from Toriyama's Dragon Ball and Oda's One Piece.

Works
One Piece (since 1997)
Wanted! (1998, Collection of the short stories below)
Wanted! (1992)
God's Present for the Future (1993)
Ikki Yakou (1993)
Monsters (1994)
Romance Dawn (Version 2, 1996)
Dragon Ball x One Piece: Cross Epoch (2007)

Popularity
In a 2008 poll, conducted by marketing research firm Oricon, Oda was elected fifth most favorite manga artists of Japan. He shared the place with Yoshihiro Togashi, creator of Hunter X Hunter and YuYu Hakusho.

Personal Life
Oda is married to Chiaki Inaba, who had played the One Piece character Nami during Jump Festa One Piece stage performances. They have two children. On April 9, 2009, Anime News Network reported Oda was receiving death threats from a 27-year-old unemployed woman , who was arrested earlier that day. According to authorities, the woman's husband was an assistant at Oda's office and was fired for an unknown reason. As a result, Oda was sent threatening text messages that read "Die Die".

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Edition (Game)

Game Edition

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (2002)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell was developed in 2 years, after which it was first released for the Xbox in North America on November 19, 2002. It uses an Unreal Engine 2 that was modified to allow the light-and-dark based gameplay.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (2004)
Pandora Tomorrow was developed by Ubisoft Shanghai and introduced multiplayer gameplay to the Splinter Cell series. In single-player mode, the game AI adapts to adjust to the player's skill level. Its first initial releases on March 23, 2004 supported the Xbox and Windows platforms.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005)
Ubisoft Montreal was again responsible for the third game in the series, Chaos Theory. It adds a cooperative multiplayer mode. Originally announced to be released in Fall 2004, its initial releases were made at the end of March 2005. Again the Unreal Engine was heavily modified, this time from version 2.5.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Essentials (2006)
Essentials extends the Splinter Cell series to the PSP platform. Through a series of flashback missions, the player learns more about Sam Fisher's back story. The game was critically received much worse than the others in the series: While the graphics were considered high-quality for the PSP, the multiplayer was deemed almost unplayable. The game was also criticized for not being able to be played on the go, because it requires a dark environment.[citation needed]
It was released in March 2006.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent (2006)
For the series' fourth installment, two separate versions were created, one for generation six consoles and the other for generation seven consoles as well as PCs. Double Agent features a "trust system" that presents the player with moral dilemmas.
The initial versions were released in October 2006.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction (2010)
Conviction was officially announced on May 23, 2007 when Ubisoft released a trailer for the game. The game was due for release on November 16, 2007. However, the game missed its initial launch date, and on May 19, 2008, it was reported that Splinter Cell: Conviction was "officially on hold" and that the game had been taken "back to the drawing board". Ubisoft announced that the game had been pushed back to the 2009-10 fiscal year.
At E3 2009, the developers confirmed that the "new" Conviction had been in development since early 2008, commenting that "the gameplay has evolved a lot" and "the visual direction is simply much better". The game's release date was pushed back several times. On March 18, 2010, the demo was released for Xbox 360.
Ubisoft wanted to make the fifth game more accessible. so Conviction was designed around the new core elements "Mark and Execute" and "Last Known Position", while stealth elements present in the previous games were de-emphasized. Conviction uses a cover system and adds simple interrogation sequences to the series.
The Xbox 360 was released in Mid-April 2010, with the Windows version following at the end of April.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell 3D (2011)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell 3D, developed by Ubisoft Montreal and released by Ubisoft as part of the Nintendo 3DS launch in March 2011, is a version of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, with specific features that utilize the 3DS capabilities.[16] This game uses the same stealth gameplay as Chaos Theory. The voice acting is the same as the Original Port. The graphics have been downgraded due to 3DS portable graphics. There are save points and health cabinets to be found in the game.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Trilogy (2011)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Trilogy is a collection of the first three games in the series remastered in high definition.
In February 2011 it was reported that an Xbox 360 version of this trilogy had been rated by the ESRB.

Novels
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (2004)
Splinter Cell is the first installment of a series of novels based on the successful video game series. It was written by Raymond Benson under the pseudonym David Michaels. The plot follows Sam Fisher as he investigates a terrorist group called "The Shadows" and a related arms-dealing organization named "The Shop". Members of "The Shop" use inside information to attempt to kill "Third Echelon" members, including Fisher. Shortly after its publication in December 2004, it spent 3 weeks on the New York Times list of bestsellers. It also made it to the list of Wall Street Journal mass-market paperback bestsellers.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda (2005)
In Operation Barracuda, which was released on November 1, 2005, and which also made the New York Times bestseller list, Raymond Benson (again as David Michaels) continues the story of the first Splinter Cell novel.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Checkmate (2006)
For Checkmate, Grant Blackwood took over as author behind the David Michaels pseudonym, Benson having declared that he was "finished with Splinter Cell".[22] Unlike the first two books, Checkmate is not written from the first person perspective of Fisher, nor does Checkmate continue the running subplots that were established in the previous. This novel was released on November 7, 2006.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Fallout (2007)
On November 6, 2007, Fallout, was published, Blackwood's second Splinter Cell novel and the fourth in the series. The story follows Sam Fisher as he combats Islamic fundamentalists who have taken over the government of Kyrgystan.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction (2009)
Conviction, is the tie-in novel to the game with the same name. It was published on November 3, 2009.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Endgame (2009)
Endgame is the second tie-in to the Conviction game. It covers the same events as the Conviction novel from the point of view of Fisher's antagonists. It was published on December 1, 2009.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (Game)

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is a series of stealth video games, the first of which was released in 2002, and their tie-in novels. The protagonist, Sam Fisher, is presented as a highly-trained agent of a fictional black-ops sub-division within the NSA, dubbed "Third Echelon". The player guides Fisher, who usually has the iconic trifocal goggles at his disposal, to overcoming his adversaries in levels based on Unreal engines that were extended to emphasise light and darkness as gameplay elements. With one exception all games in the series were critically acclaimed, and the series is commercially successful.

Plot and Themes
The first game explains that "Splinter Cell" refers to an elite recon-type unit of single covert operatives (such as Sam Fisher) who are supported in the field by a high-tech remote team.
In the first three games (Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory), terrorists are planning attacks, usually by use of information warfare, which Sam Fisher, an operative for Third Echelon, a secret branch of the NSA, must prevent. The missions range from gathering intelligence to capturing and/or eliminating terrorists.
In the fourth game, Double Agent, Fisher assumes the identity of a wanted criminal in order to infiltrate a terrorist ring.
The fifth game, Conviction, starts after events in the conclusion of Double Agent: Sam has abandoned Third Echelon. When he discovers that the death of his daughter Sarah had not been an accident (as had been purported at the beginning of Double Agent), he strikes out on his own in search of those responsible.

Trifocal Goggles
A device used for seeing in the dark features strongly in the series. Originally, Tom Clancy had rejected the idea of Sam Fisher having these "trifocal goggles", having stated that such goggles (with both thermal vision and night vision) were impossible to make. The creators argued that having two separate sets of goggles would have made for awkward gameplay and convinced Clancy to allow it. This also gave the Splinter Cell series a recognizable signature, a desirable feature. Current technology allows goggles with both thermal and night visions (as used in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas games) to be available for the military, although the goggles featured in the games are still much more compact than their real-life counterparts.

Characters
The characters of the games, as well as the organization "Third Echelon", were created by JT Petty. The main recurring ones are:
Sam Fisher is the main protagonist of the series. The character ranks 24th on the "Guinness Top 50 Video Game Characters of All Time" list.
Irving Lambert, leader of "Third Echelon", serves as the player's guide by leading Fisher through the games' missions, until he is killed as part of Double Agent's story.
Anna Grimsdóttír is portrayed as an official Third Echelon hacker and analyst, who helps Fisher when technical obstacles need to be overcome. In Conviction she takes over the role of guide from the deceased Lambert; her character also becomes the source of dramatic tension in the story.

Gameplay
The encouraged way to progress through the games is to remain hidden, select non-obvious routes, and utilize diversions to pass guards. The first game in the series only features a single-player mode, Pandora Tomorrow introduces a two-on-two multiplayer mode. Chaos Theory further develops that mode and introduces a cooperative mode. Cooperative mode plays similarly to the single player mode, but adds situations that can only be overcome as a team. The cooperative storylines in Chaos Theory and the sixth generation version of Double Agent parallel those of Sam's actions in the single-player modes, letting players act on information he obtained or provide support in the field.
Double Agent introduces a morality factor: Fisher may now encounter conflicting objectives between his superiors and the terrorists. For example, the terrorists may assign a mission to assassinate someone, while the NSA simultaneously instructs the player to prevent the assassination. This creates a delicate balancing act between gaining the trust of the terrorists and fulfilling the mission assignments. In addition, Fisher must not do anything to reveal to the terrorists that he is a double agent (such as let himself be seen with an NSA gadget), otherwise he will lose instantly.
Conviction utilizes a much faster and more violent[original research?] form of stealth action gameplay than previous games in the series. It retains the cooperative multiplayer mode of the two preceding games.