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One Piece #56 Manga Gets Record 2.85-Million Print Run (Updated)
posted on by Egan Loo
The Japanese publisher Shueisha is producing 2.85 million copies of the 56th volume of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece pirate manga — the largest print run that any Japanese manga has ever had in its first printing. The volume will ship on December 4. Since the manga began in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1997, Shueisha has printed 176 million copies. The previous volume, volume 55, sold 1,487,845 copies in its first week and 1,720,884 copies in the first five weeks.
Viz Media publishes the manga in North America, and Funimation is releasing the television anime adaptation on DVD and via online streaming. The 10th theatrical anime film, One Piece Film Strong World, will open in Japan on December 12.
Source: Oricon
Update: Oda confirmed last Saturday in an Asahi Shimbun article that he had planned to end the series in five years and has had the image of the final chapter established in his mind for a long time. However, creating the episodes that lead to that ending has taken longer than he had anticipated. In the manga's 13th year, he would like to say that he is 9/10ths of the way towards the end, but he acknowledged that he is only halfway there.
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