Watsuki also credits Oda for the creation of the character Honjō Kamatari, who appears in Rurouni Kenshin. At the age of 19, he worked as an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki on Rurouni Kenshin, before winning the Hop Step Award for new artists.
#EIICHIRO ODA AGE SERIES#
That got him into a job at the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine, where he originally worked as assistant to Shinobu Kaitani's series Suizan Police Gang before moving to Masaya Tokuhiro on Jungle King Tar-chan and Mizu no Tomodachi Kappaman, which gave him an unexpected influence on his artistic style. Pandaman was not only used in a chapter of the manga but would later return as a recurring cameo character in Oda's own works.Īt the age of 17, Oda submitted his work Wanted! and won several awards, including second place in the coveted Tezuka Award. He submitted a character named Pandaman for Yudetamago's classic wrestling manga Kinnikuman.
He recalls that his interest in pirates was probably sparked by the popular TV animation series titled Vicky the Viking. Oda claimed that he resolved to become a manga artist at age four in order to avoid having to get a "real job". The series' popularity resulted in Oda being named one of the manga artists that changed the history of manga. With over 490 million copies in circulation worldwide, One Piece is both the best-selling manga and the second best-selling comic series of all time, in turn making Oda one of the best-selling fiction authors. Eiichiro Oda (尾田 栄一郎, Oda Eiichirō), born Januin Kumamoto City, Kumamoto Prefecture in Japan, is a manga artist, best known for his manga series One Piece (1997–present).