Oda Knows the Ending but Invents the Way There
An editor wanted more excitement, and he answered with nine rookie pirates in a few hours.
Founders · #439 How Eiichiro Oda WorksAn editor expressed concern that the storyline for One Piece needed more excitement.
Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, the long-running Japanese comic about a pirate crew, answered by spontaneously creating nine rookie pirates.
People who described the meeting said the new characters took shape in only a few hours.
The moment fits the method Oda describes for himself: a fixed ending, with the arcs leading to it left open to invention.
“I only have the ending of One Piece in my mind and nothing else,” he says.
Knowing that endpoint, he says, he weaves the story in arcs that build toward it. Because he knows the final destination, he feels free to make up the journey as he goes.
He is described as a perfectionist, very set in his ways, yet with a strong ability to improvise when a story needs something new.
That stubborn standard recalls Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who also prized holding work to the best version people knew was possible.
Oda says, "I feel like now it's harder to choose what to draw than when I started serializing One Piece." He says thinking now takes him more time than drawing itself.
He says he gets bored drawing an incomplete idea, so he just thinks until he finds something he really wants to draw, sometimes for the entire day.
The nine rookies were not in his original notebooks. Introduced as powerful young pirates, they became part of the pirate group known as the Supernovas.
Those hurried inventions became central to the series.
Questions people ask
Who are the Supernovas in the story?
They are a group of powerful young pirates introduced together at an auction house gathering, just before a major war in the story. Most carry bounties above 100 million berries, the money used in this world, marking them as dangerous rising stars.
What is One Piece about?
One Piece follows Monkey D. Luffy, a cheerful captain whose body stretches like rubber, and his growing crew as they sail a strange ocean searching for a legendary treasure. Along the way they battle rival crews, harsh governments, and sea monsters, while collecting friends.
How long has Oda been drawing One Piece?
Serialization began in 1997, and Oda once expected it to last about five years. Nearly 30 years later it was still running, with more than 600 million copies in circulation, making the improvised detours part of its size.