One piece is the biggest manga series in the world. Sales Don't Lie – One piece it currently has over 600 million volumes in circulation, which is quite an impressive number. However, despite all of One Piece's success, it also faces some problems. Aside from the manga hiatus, fans have a bigger issue to worry about.
A big problem for One Piece fans is the repeated breaks
Oda needs more breaks than before due to his health
One piece is a slow story that requires patience from fans. This manga has been published fairly consistently from 1997 to the present, which is 28 years.
Despite this extremely long number of over 1100 chapters, the story of One Piece has been consistent in quality, if not improving. It's the best selling manga in the world for some reason.
That said, one thing fans don't like about the series is creator Eiichiro Oda taking a lot of breaks, which is quite shocking. Oda is not as young as he used to be and of course he needs more time to take care of himself as well as take care of his family. Oda has previously stated that due to his work on One Piece, he has little time to relax and spend time with his family.
However, it is true that Oda seems to be slowly increasing the frequency of his breaks. A few years ago, breaks were rare. Around 2020, Oda started taking a break every 4 or 5 chapters. After Wano ended, Oda went on hiatus after every 3 chapters. But now it looks like Oda might start taking a break every 2 weeks.
While hiatuses are definitely an issue that needs to be addressed, One Piece fans may be facing a bigger problem – and that has to do with declining manga sales.
Breaks are a huge problem, but one piece faces another big problem
One Piece is still one of the best-selling manga, but sales are declining
The breaks are annoying, but at the end of the day, Oda doesn't take long breaks like many other mangakas, so fans should be lucky to get new One Piece content almost every week.
A real problem One piece the series may face, however, declining sales. One piece sales aren't what they used to be and really peaked at Marineford. Then a One piece volume would easily have over 2 million copies sold per volume, and 2.5 million wasn't a hard number to hit as well. And though the peak has passed, One piece it had never fallen below 1.5 million in sales until Egghead.
After Wano's conclusion, there's a clear drop in sales that looks like it's only getting worse. It might soon be possible One piece sales will fall below a million per volume.
When I was little, I thought to myself: Man, I would really like to draw a manga with the most famous final stage! I wonder if I can do it! Now we only have a small piece of the Wano arc left, the preparations are almost done. Took me 25 years lol. That said, it's okay to start reading from this point. Because from this moment on…it will be… ONE PIECE!! Mysteries of this world, I will draw them all! It will be super interesting! Fasten your seat belt! And please stay with me a little longer! — Eiichiro Oda, author of One Piece, 2022
This is definitely disturbing and it shows One piece suffering from a loss of readers. It's not that the quality of the story is going down now, it's just that the story is so long that some people end up losing interest or simply waiting for the story to progress further to read it all at once. It's not unusual for this to go on a long streak.
The One piece the series desperately needs to bring in new readers. A live action and anime remake could definitely change and expand One Piece's worldwide popularity.
Where to watch and read One Piece?
Available on Crunchyroll and Manga Plus
One Piece is quite a long series, and since it is a weekly anime, the number of episodes increases with each passing week. Right now, the anime has over 1,100 episodes to catch up on, all of which can be found on Crunchyroll.
As for the manga, One Piece Chapter 1163 will be released in two weeks. As usual, One Piece drops on Sunday. In Japan, One Piece drops Monday at 12pm JST. However, the vast majority of international readers will see the chapter available on October 26th. The official release date of One Piece Chapter 1163 is October 26, 2025. Fans can read the chapter for free on Manga Plus.
Source: X
- Release date
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October 20, 1999
- Network
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Fuji TV
- directors
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Hiroaki Miyamoto, Konosuke Uda, Junji Shimizu, Satoshi Itō, Munehisa Sakai, Katsumi Tokoro, Yutaka Nakajima, Yoshihiro Ueda, Kenichi Takeshita, Yoko Ikeda, Ryota Nakamura, Hiroyuki Kakudou, Takahiro Imamura, Toshihiro Maeya, Yûji Endô, Nozomu Shishido, Hidehiko Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou
- Writers
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Jin Tanaka, Akiko Inoue, Junki Takegami, Shinzo Fujita, Shouji Yonemura, Yoshiyuki Suga, Atsuhiro Tomioka, Hirohiko Uesaka, Michiru Shimada, Isao Murayama, Takuya Masumoto, Yoichi Takahashi, Momoka Toyoda
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Mayumi Tanaka
Monkey D. Luffy (voice)
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Kazuya Nakai
Roronoa Zoro (voice)
