Eiichiro Oda's tentpole shonen series One Piece, has the unique title of being one of, if not the longest, running manga of all time. Its anime is also sharing that same boat, as the series approaches 1000 episodes. When Oda began publishing the series, a little over 20 years ago, the exoectation was to tell a great story. Such is the expectation with all manga. Now with an end of the series in sight, in the coming years, people would assume that the steam would die down in popularity. However, the outcome proved to be quite the opposite!
The series, in both chapters and compiled volumes, has been setting its own records and topping them since as early as 2010. In that year the series had a first printing of three million copies. That next year, the next batch of numbers had shown an unprecendented 1 million copy increase, which marked a first for the industry and the series. Thankfully, every printing since has met or exceeded that 3 million benchmark.
As of now the series has once again succeeded in doing the impossible. With the 96th compiled volume releasing, the series has now garnered 470 million copies in print worldwide. That is 390 million in Japan and 80 million copies outside of the country. That means that the possibility of the series crossing 500 million is inevitable. With a definitive end in sight, in the coming years, this could be led to believe that the series could potentially get close to or meet 1 billion copies worldwide!
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