Who's who in the world of Otaku!

I'm going to start of this series right. "Who's Who" posts can be about singers, artists, writers, social activists, voice actors, etc however they're all real people although that may be debated because most of them work to bring you the anime characters and themes we know and love. For my first "Who's Who" post I am choosing to write about a genius mangaka (Manga Author) by the name Eichiro Oda.

Eichiro is a man of very few photographs, a trait common to certain genius' and great men. However his work speaks for him:

He is the creator of the HIT manga and anime series: ONE PIECE!

Check out our One Piece Recommendation for the summary of One Piece and Anime Peeps I Care About Post inspired by the anime!

Before that he created short stories/manga in a series called Wanted!

I don't think you can buy this one at any ordinary manga store... especially here in America... I wish though.

He collaborated with the creator of Dragonball, Akira Toriyama, to create Cross Epoch a short story about a world where DragonballZ and One Piece exist together.

Check it out at NBST

Look here young man/woman

Click above and you'll see, One piece is currently the third ranked anime in Japan for the week of October 4th. One Piece is third to two anime which are vintage anime. The first of which, Sazae San, is like the Japanese Simpsons in that it's the longest running cartoon there and still running today. 

SO ONE PIECE IS A PRETTY DARN BIG DEAL IN JAPAN! 

I'll go further to say that it's the shounen anime king there, it beats Naruto, Full Metal, Bleach, all those.

Why hasn't it dominated the USA cartoon inventory?? Well there's actually a story about that...

When One Piece debuted in the US in around 2004 or 2005 it was brought to people by the 4KIDS company that brought America Pokemon. Pokemon was a MAJOR hit in the USA and Japan thought they would do the same with One Piece, they entrusted another hit to them. However 4KIDS messed up the voice acting, changed the opening and ending themes, and censored out most of the show. What worked or whatever they did with Pokemon could not be done with One Piece and therefore the public in America rejected One Piece as stupidness. Only few people who could see the greatness of the story itself continued to watch the 4KIDS mis-presentation until it was taken off the air. Funimation in the recent few years picked up One Piece and fixed it up to be truer to the Japanese version however it hasn't been put back on TV for public audiences. And that is why One Piece isn't beating out Naruto and Bleach here in America, and yes I know those are good shows too.

For certain reasons the old 4KIDS dub was purged from existence (at least on youtube) so all I can show you is the bad censorship they did. They made many guns into water guns, cigarettes into lolipops, blood into nothing, knives into thin air, etc. I know these things are bad but c'mon One Piece is a world where they're all worthless anyway, WHY CENSOR THEM? 4KIDS should work for the Big Man Above... Alittle inside humor I think.

Anyway back to Eichiro Oda

 He worked hard to bring everyone the best anime/manga ever!
Oda remarked that his interest in pirates came from another show called "Vicky the Viking". Even Oda had to be inspired by something else! Check out his wiki article!
Wikipedia bio of Eichiro Oda

Will you finally go out and watch ONE PIECE?!!

Thank you for checking out my first "Who's who in the world of Otaku!"