Watch One Piece’s Eiichiro Oda Create the Interconnected Covers for Volume 100

As part of the celebration surrounding all of One Piece's recent and upcoming milestones, a behind-the-scenes video showing series creator Eiichiro Oda designing and drawing the interconnected covers for Volumes 99, 100 and 101 has been released.

The video, released through the official One Piece manga Twitter account, shows how Oda planned out and drew the cover art for the three volumes, which are designed to be displayed side-by-side to create a single illustration. Volume 99 of the long running manga was released in Japan in June, with the highly anticipated Volume 100 scheduled to be released sometime soon. The cover for Volume 100 was recently revealed and features series protagonist Monkey D. Luffy at the center, alongside several of the manga's most iconic characters, including Zoro and Sanji. Volume 101, which completes the three part illustration, is not completely shown in the video because the cover is not ready to be officially revealed.

In addition to the upcoming 100th collected volume, the 1000th individual chapter was published in Weekly Shonen Jump earlier in 2021, and the anime series will also soon air its landmark 1000th episode. The behind the scenes video is just one of the many ways Oda and publisher Shueisha have celebrated the series' recent milestones: a number of "cover chapters," in which other Weekly Shonen Jump creators redraw famous moments from One Piece, have been released, the most recent of which was Nisekoi creator's Naoshi Komi's recreation of the "Vivi's Adventure" chapter from the Alabasta arc. A collaboration with the children's book series Where's Waldo was also released.

One Piece was created by Eiichiro Oda and was first serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. Oda's long-running opus has since become the #1 best selling manga series ever, with almost half a billion copies in circulation worldwide. An anime adaptation began airing in 1999 and continues to be one of the highest rated anime programs in Japan to this day.

The series tells the story of Monkey D. Luffy, a young boy who accidentally consumes the mysterious Gum-Gum Fruit, which gives him the ability to stretch and grow his limbs. Luffy, who has always dreamed of becoming the King of the Pirates, eventually becomes the leader of the Straw Hat Pirate crew, a motley gang of misfits that includes the intelligent but greedy Nami, the perverted cook Sanji, and the expert swordsman Zoro. Together, the group sets out to battle rival pirates and locate the One Piece, a legendary treasure left behind by an equally renowned pirate.

The One Piece manga is licensed and released internationally by VIZ Media. The anime series is currently streaming on Netflix, Crunchyroll, Hulu, VRV and Funimation.

Source: Twitter