One Piece is the highest selling manga in history.  In 2009, it was announced that 176 million copies of the manga, written by Eiichiro Oda, had been sold so far.  The 56^th volume was released in tankobon format in December of that year and there is also an anime series that has been running for over four hundred episodes.  An amusement park based on the series is even set to open in March of 2010.

In One Piece (Wan Pisu or ワンピース in Japanese) a seventeen year old boy named Monkey D. Luffy wants to become king of the pirates by finding the ultimate treasure called the One Piece.  This treasure was left by the legendary pirate Gol D. Roger at the end of the Grand Line – a sea that runs perpendicular to the two gigantic oceans covering the world.  These two oceans are split by a mountain range called the Red Line and intersected by the Grand Line, leaving four seas – North, South, East, and West Blue.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kudumomo/ / CC BY 2.0

A normal compass cannot be used on the Grand Line, and instead a compass called a Log Pose must be used.  Fortunately for Luffy, he ate a Devil Fruit that has given him the supernatural ability to manipulate his body like rubber.  This comes in handy when fighting against the bad guys encountered, which are usually either bad pirates or the marines.  In this world, the marines are run by the corrupt World Government that want to end the age of the pirates.

Luffy’s special powers are usually accompanied by him screaming things that start with Gomu Gomu No, which comes from the name of the Devil Fruit he ate called the Gomu Gomu No Mi (ゴムゴムの実).   Gomu means gum or rubber in Japanese and this term is used because Luffy gained the ability to stretch his body and absorb blunt impacts like rubber.

This manga has gained an enormous following around the world and there are seemingly endless collectibles (probably even Japanese erasers) based on the series available.  One of my favorites are the different desktop wallpapers.  With how funny the characters are, the images do a good job of bringing the fun moments in the stories to mind.  There are several different sites for finding One Piece wallpaper, such as this one, but a search will bring up all different options.

One Piece is definitely worth a read; particularly for anyone learning Japanese that would like an easier manga to start out with.  It is still very entertaining even if a lot of the vocabulary needs to be learned while reading.  In regards to finding the best One Piece wallpaper, I’ll have to leave that up to you.

Last Modified : March 3rd, 2010 Filed under : Anime, Manga Navigate : Previous post / Next post