Cover looks pretty good, I just want to get a better look at it.
Volume 52 Discussion Thread
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I bought the volume 52 today. (so early @_@ I thought it would be avalaible only next week on Paris' japanese bookshop Junku. How lucky I was to found that they already had it __)
This is a fuckin' awesome art found at the last pages of this volume (the usual Usopp Gallery Pirates^^) :
Kidd looks so badass in this fanart __D'une graine plantée avec amour ne fleurit parfoit que des regrets…
From a seed planted with love flowered sometimes only regrets...
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I imagine by now Oda's getting a lot more mail then he can read in one hit at any point… So if any good questions are there, but hidden in the mountain of mail. Plus so others have said, he must get quite a few plot reveallers.
SBSs though have been bad since OP hit its 40s. Oda stated he committed to continuing them but he might be running out of steam with them. After coming up to 50 SBS sessions, there isn't much more he can say that won't give things away to much. Storyline will either reveal what he wants the reader to know and the SBSs will pick up anything the Reader doesn't need to know.
If we take DFs, we know the greater explaination is coming later from Vegapunk so theres little point in Oda even mentioning them beyond the odd question.
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At least we could have learnt some new hights and birthdays of other characters… T_T Duh.
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I am descended from you, and exist in your future. Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.
You're kinda creepin' me out.
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@Al!naJames:
At least we could have learnt some new hights and birthdays of other characters… T_T Duh.
Thats if anyones botherd to ask him tha in a etter or Oda's picked it up ad readit.
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Thank you Dixxy Mouri. Summed up my points perfectly. And at any rate at least compared to the regular questions in the SBS it's a freakin' goldmine.Why do you have PREACH!!! the way you do? I wasn't sure if that was a positive or negative reaction at first :blink:
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Because it related to me so much that I had to make it special
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ITT Greg acts like a massive bitch
like always
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SBSs though have been bad since OP hit its 40s. Oda stated he committed to continuing them but he might be running out of steam with them.
Oda stated they're tiring but that he refuses to give up on them because of how Toriyama burned him when he was a kid.
Yes, there exists the chance that he doesn't read 'good' letters in time for a volume, but Oda has said time and again that he does at least read every fanmail. Fans of OP can't be THAT immature overall, Nuzzie being an exception. Oda could just as easily set aside good questions.
And again, it's not even anything to do with plot points, simply questions about sources, character inspiration, details about locations from the past, more questions about who/what he bases characters/objects on and so forth.
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Because it related to me so much that I had to make it special
Oh, ok! Still not sure why you chose the word "preach" but that's fine! :)
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To me, it doesn't have to be SBS– or as much SBS-- per se, as long as it's things that provide insight and interest.
With Oda's excellence in world-building, I could see a lot of opportunities to expand the OP world with little side-information pages. Like mini-databooks. These need not be spoilers, but even things like "Here's the typical career path of a Marine", "Beri currency looks like this", "What the other 30 Battle Frankies were like", "The political structure of various nations we've encountered", "What types of ships do the Marine use" could be exciting in the way the SBS were when it was good. Honestly, at 50+ books into the series, I'm guessing most of your audience is the obsessive freaks who would be interested.
I've seen a wide range of how different artists handle the volume addon. Some do a really formal (no silly openings and closings) question-and-answer. Some do 4-koma strips. Some do "Scenes from the author's and assistants' life". All of these could work too.
Just because you're not answering really low-quality questions does not mean you've given up on the fans-- especially if you're blowing past the garbage to target what they're more seeking, rather than filling the pages with gibberish.
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Oda stated they're tiring but that he refuses to give up on them because of how Toriyama burned him when he was a kid.
Oh, mind elaborating?
I remember hearing something like that before, but never the specifics.
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Thanks as always for the photos and translations, Greg.
The cover is (of course) better close-up, but (of course) still a disappointment.
And the SBS ….
.. yeah. -
Oda stated they're tiring but that he refuses to give up on them because of how Toriyama burned him when he was a kid.
Yes, there exists the chance that he doesn't read 'good' letters in time for a volume, but Oda has said time and again that he does at least read every fanmail. Fans of OP can't be THAT immature overall, Nuzzie being an exception. Oda could just as easily set aside good questions.
And again, it's not even anything to do with plot points, simply questions about sources, character inspiration, details about locations from the past, more questions about who/what he bases characters/objects on and so forth.
He also admitted that at one stage he had to stop reading every letter because he couldn't keep up. Let to say that if he gets about a hundred mail a day, theres about 2-4 hours of reading ahead of him. 2-4 is a lot to expect. :wassat:
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Hmmm. what exactly do you guys hate about Caimie's OD color scheme?
That's actually how I thought she'd look like…perfectly actually, it fits with all the other colorful people...right? -
The volume is up for sale brand new on MKBOOKS, a great seller who I've gotten several volumes from and is getting another one (I guess volume 45) today: http://cgi.ebay.com/ONE-PIECE-Eiichiro-Oda-JUMO-COMICSJapan-52-Brand-New_W0QQitemZ380087572705QQihZ025QQcategoryZ73576QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem
Cause it's brand new, it's $5.99 instead of $3.50.
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And it`s a bid, btw :P
I got mine for 7$ from this seller -> http://myworld.ebay.com/raising_arrow2007/ -
Hmmm. what exactly do you guys hate about Caimie's OD color scheme?
That's actually how I thought she'd look like…perfectly actually, it fits with all the other colorful people...right?Cause it's trash? Someone just slapped random colors on it it looks like, hard to imagine someone got paid for that.
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He also admitted that at one stage he had to stop reading every letter because he couldn't keep up.
He said he was behind but never that he didn't read a letter. Plus that was quite a while ago. No excuse for what's happening now.
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With Oda's excellence in world-building, I could see a lot of opportunities to expand the OP world with little side-information pages. Like mini-databooks. These need not be spoilers, but even things like "Here's the typical career path of a Marine", "Beri currency looks like this", "What the other 30 Battle Frankies were like", "The political structure of various nations we've encountered", "What types of ships do the Marine use" could be exciting in the way the SBS were when it was good. Honestly, at 50+ books into the series, I'm guessing most of your audience is the obsessive freaks who would be interested.
priz-neach
Oh, mind elaborating?
I BELIEVE it was in the interview I translated last year about this time that BF found. He mentioned that when he was a kid there was a Q&A section in a comic he really liked but because it was too much work the author gave it up and Oda was crushed so he promised that if he ever became a mangaka, he'd never give up on it.
He never named the manga but it's blatantly obvious considering that's exactly what happened in the DB tanks.
What he's doing now though is almost worse, he's patronizing those of us that want new information and not the same goddamn stupid-ass jokes month after month and year after year.
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Wait I'm confused - what is an OD color scheme?
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Yeah, it was posted last page or so.
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Nobody to make a proper scan of the Cover, SBS, Ussop Gallery Of Pirates…?:sad: -
I'm still amused by the fact so many people had a fit over Zoro having a pink shirt… only for him NOT to have a pink shirt. Yeah, no scan yet it weird. Especially cause I've seen several downsized scans on places like eBay.
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Here is a better version :
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priz-neach
I BELIEVE it was in the interview I translated last year about this time that BF found. He mentioned that when he was a kid there was a Q&A section in a comic he really liked but because it was too much work the author gave it up and Oda was crushed so he promised that if he ever became a mangaka, he'd never give up on it.Greg, sorry to sound like an ass about this, but from what you've said, that seems like the exact situation: that Oda's realized he's got no time to devote to the SBS anymore, but that he doesn't want to go back on his words, and doesn't want to upset the people who are fans of SBS. So instead of killing it off properly (because we all know how hesitant Oda can be about killing things off properly …) he's keeping the SBS on a bare minimum of life support -- so that he can console his conscience by saying to himself: "I didn't abandon it" (even though by most definitions, he did).
These days, when he sifts through his letter piles and sees pages of thoughtful, complex questions like yours, he probably says to himself: ""&*$#! This will take HOURS to answer properly!" and throws them into a Sometime-In-The-Future-Hopefully-Bin. Then he sifts the pile again to find less-informed -- and therefore less time-consuming -- letters like: "Hey Oda-sensei, pull my finger!" (Which reguires only a 3 second reply: "Pbbbbttttggggtthhhh! Oh! you got me!" etc.) And having sifted out four or five of those type of letters, he now has enough for a full SBS -- Sweet! -- and an extra three hours to go spend with his wife and kid.
I found it amusing that in this volume, he's solved his chronic time-crunch problem in a way that's similar to a world-wide corporation:
outsourcing.
By outsourcing the most recent SBS to the anime VAs, Oda's not only bought himself some more time, he's also raised the quality of the SBS (in comparison to the SBS in the rest of the volume), so that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a compromise, but one we'll see a lot more of in the future. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he permanently outsourced the SBS to Toei's VAs, or to someone else (editor? assistant?) who was close enough to the story to answer thoughtful questions, but not so close as to be a another burden to Oda.
One last thing worth considering: OP has a worldwide fandom. It's on par with some rock-stars in terms of devotion of the fandom. And from what I know of rock-fandom, hundreds of letters a week is a very conservative estimate. With that kind of fan mail volume, an artist usually hires a crew to read and sort his mail for him. The artist himself sees maybe 3% of that pile. And since it's all been presorted for him, the taste of the sorters influences what the artist will ultimately see. the sorters may be screening out thoughtful stuff because they don't find it as amusing, even though Oda might think otherwise.
It's also possible that Oda has no reading crew -- that he reads all the letters himself. If that's the case (and assuming that the fan mail volume is the same) then he's probably still reading only about 3% of it, because there just isn't time too read more than that. The man has a wife and kid and full-time job already. Even the most devoted mangaka needs to sleep, eat, and chill with his family occasionally.
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Greg, sorry to sound like an ass about this, but from what you've said, that seems like the exact situation: that Oda's realized he's got no time to devote to the SBS anymore, but that he doesn't want to go back on his words, and doesn't want to upset the people who are fans of SBS. So instead of killing it off properly (because we all know how hesitant Oda can be about killing things off properly …) he's keeping the SBS on a bare minimum of life support -- so that he can console his conscience by saying to himself: "I didn't abandon it" (even though by most definitions, he did).
Why would this make you sound like an ass? It makes sense. But for me, taking a break from it would actually be better than page after page of, "CAN I JOIN THE SHICHIBUKAI?!" I don't think that's the real point though. Oda put real time and thought into his zany answers. I don't like them, that's for sure, but it's not a sign of laziness.
By outsourcing the most recent SBS to the anime VAs, Oda's not only bought himself some more time, he's also raised the quality of the SBS (in comparison to the SBS in the rest of the volume), so that's not necessarily a bad thing.
This time, by some miracle, yes I completely agree. You'll note I even praised the questions and answers. Tanaka took on some REALLY interesting questions and gave some really interesting answers. I dread the day it's Yamaguchi's turn though.
It's also possible that Oda has no reading crew – that he reads all the letters himself. If that's the case (and assuming that the fan mail volume is the same) then he's probably still reading only about 3% of it, because there just isn't time too read more than that. The man has a wife and kid and full-time job already. Even the most devoted mangaka needs to sleep, eat, and chill with his family occasionally.
As mentioned above he does read every fan letter. Timing-wise I dunno how it works out but still, there's no excuse for the influx of stupidity transpiring on the pages.
Hold on, Oda has a kid? When did this occur? I totally missed this.
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so what is that guy supposed to be on the spine with the long ears? a dog? has oda said? is he an enemy or friend of pandaman? also, did pandaman's head change or am i crazY?
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Dinty, ain't you talking about Togashi or someone else with the kid?
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so what is that guy supposed to be on the spine with the long ears? a dog? has oda said? is he an enemy or friend of pandaman? also, did pandaman's head change or am i crazY?
Yes. He
s Pandamans rivalUnforgivable Mask. -
ah yes, the dreaded "unforgivable mask."
i decided to stop being lazy and look at the other inner covers and yeah, pandaman's head is usually just a round shape, but now its got an open, squarer bottom (like an upside down bucket), especially noticeable on the front inside cover. what's the deal? is it a pandaman imposter?
maybe i shouldn't be worrying over such a minor detail… ;_;
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But for me, taking a break from it would actually be better than page after page of, "CAN I JOIN THE SHICHIBUKAI?!" I don't think that's the real point though.
Same here. But I don't foresee that happening any time soon – for the reasons I gave in the first paragraph. So if putting it on hiatus isn't an option for Oda, then the next best thing for us would be an outsourced SBS. Especially if he can outsource it to an assistant who will give us the sort of fun and informative stuff that B1B was suggesting: Marine training, life on other islands, a tour of Doskoi's
sweatshopsfactories, etc …I don't like them, that's for sure, but it's not a sign of laziness.
I don't think it's laziness so much as good intentions being drowned by obligation (created from those same good intentions) … Actually, It's nothing new in the art world: Raphael had the same inability to say "no" to his benefactors, patrons and fans -- the only way he could keep on top of his obligations was to hire a dozen apprentices and to farm out all but the most important commissions to them. Let's hope Oda doesn't have to go that far!
I dread the day it's Yamaguchi's turn though.
Why ? Does he have a reputation for being worse than a sub-par SBS?
As mentioned above he does read every fan letter.
It may be true – even though I'm somewhat skeptical about it -- but there's still no way he can get to them all even if he does try to read them all. Let's whip out our calculators for a second here:
Say he gets 500 letters a day and manages to read approx 20 of them -- that means each day he works up a deficit of about 480 letters. So after a week, he's read 140 letters, but he's got a deficit of some 3,360 letters! And if he puts the new stuff in the back of the pile and takes the oldest stuff first, something that you submit one month may not be read until a few years later!
As long as he never throws out a single letter before reading it, he can honestly say that he "reads every letter" -- but "reads every letter" is not the same as "reads every letter within one month'. Hopefully that makes some sense?
Again, I think it's an honorable thing that he cares so much about his fans and their happiness – but just by being as popular as he is now, it's become impossible for him to keep all the promises that he made, and the standards that he established, back when his fandom was much smaller.
There's no excuse for the influx of stupidity transpiring on the pages.
Other than the excuse of not having enough time to devote to it anymore…
Hey, I just thought of something: he's already practiced outsourcing of SBS before -- didn't he let his fans draw the headers for the SBS column? Yet another clever way to keep it going without spending a lot of time on it, because he can always ask an assistant to sort the fan drawings for him.
Hold on, Oda has a kid? When did this occur? I totally missed this.
He doesn't?
Crap.
I must have crossed my facts with another mangaka.Greg – That you don't remember him having a kid is proof enough for me that he hasn't got one! ^.^
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Same here. But I don't foresee that happening any time soon – for the reasons I gave in the first paragraph. So if putting it on hiatus isn't an option for Oda, then the next best thing for us would be an outsourced SBS. Especially if he can outsource it to an assistant who will give us the sort of fun and informative stuff that B1B was suggesting: Marine training, life on other islands, a tour of Doskoi's sweatshops factories, etc ...
By all means. I completely agree.
Why ? Does he have a reputation for being worse than a sub-par SBS?
I wish Carter was here. He is one of the few who knew Yamaguchi well enough to know what a screwball he is. He
s like a walking SBS. Oda gets heat for a panel of toilet humor withmushrooms? This guy makes that look like Calculus 3\. But to his credit, at the last JUMP Festa he was under control. It was Frankys VA that was hungover as shyt spouting insane stuff.It may be true – even though I'm somewhat skeptical about it -- but there's still no way he can get to them all even if he does try to read them all. Let's whip out our calculators for a second here:
Believe me, I know what you mean and how much time it takes. I`m not questioning that. But the fans of OP simply cannot be SO immature to the point where the overwhelming majority of mail he reads is as sophisticated as infants playing with a bowel movement.
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Ahahah, funny SBS
Yes, it was a disappointment, but i really don't care that much about the information besides the story, so i guess the jokes are good enough for me.Also, the supernova question seems good enough for one SBS, i remember worse SBS before the Thriller Bark era than this one :S
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@CCC:
So Kuina and Mihawk aren't Zoro's only influences anymore…
[hide]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y23/Awasai/badman.jpg[/hide]
Ha ha Just remembered that shirt - BEST SHIRT EVER !!
Not that i'm biased in any way ….
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Here is a full scan of the cover (just the "other related One Piece releases" that I cut out)
Enjoy !
Edit :
And the SBS !!! (more upcoming !)
Edit #2 !!
Usopp Gallery
"Under-cover"
<–------ 3 separate pictures ! -
Great job Sanji-kun! thanks for the scans T_T
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Is there any translation of the SBS online?
I don't understand a single word of japanese but I'm really looking forwars to them^^. -
Here is a preview posted by Greg earlier:
! @Greg:
! > SBS 1He wastes time starting as usual.
Someone asks if the mermaid met someone called 'Ochin' what she'd call him.
Ochin-chin, or penis in Japanese. Oh, that's so funny you fucking shit.Oda says he only writes the masculine 'Ore' in hiragana because that's how he feels like writing it.
Someone asks if he's an Esper. Oda doesn't know. So interesting.
SBS2
Someone asks what the thing using Soru in his kitchen is. Oda says it's a cockroach. Almost a half page is wasted on this.
Someone asks IF CHARLOS WAS ABLE TO PICK HIS NOSE BECAUSE THE BUBBLE WAS THE SAME AS THE BONCHARI BUBBLE.
Fucking moron.
Someone asks why Nami kicked Brook on page 95 of volume 51. Oda said it was because he asked about her panties again. Wow, didn't see that coming.
SBS3
Someone asks if SBS actually stands for Shimoneta Boshuu Shimasu, (Looking for Dirty Talk). The reader goes on to admire Franky confusing the word 'hentai' (change formation) for perv during the Duval battle. Half a page is wasted on this. The other half is wasted on that fucking retarded "Let me join Shichibukai" dumbfuck.
SBS4
The wild and crazy antics continue with a similar style used by a fan to introduce a retarded-looking Jinbei.A fan asks if his shadow was stolen. Oda asks Moria and finds out it belongs to the zombie with the My Life t-shirt.
ha.
Someone asks if Oda uses assistants or not since his art style is so consistant. Oda replies that he draws all moving things in the comic. Any mangaka that leaves moving things to assistants comes away looking somewhat 'different'. He specifies: crowd scenes, animals, smoke, clouds and the sea.
SBS5
A fan lists all the pirate name origins of the Rookies. Oda agrees with all but the source of Capone who he says is from Al Capone and William le Sauvage. Killer he just made up.Then finally we get the first VA SBS.
First is Tanaka. Next volume will have Zoro and Nami.
I'll get to doing these in a bit.
But yeah. The SBS is dead.
I will say though. The cover, is far better than any of you ever imagined.
We'll have to wait for Stephen to have a proper translation of it I think. Don't know when :wassat:
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Yay, thank you Sanji-kun! I've been waiting for a full scan.
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Looking at that scan brings a question to my mind: since when did Zoro have two earrings?
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Whoa, didn't notice that… It makes him look strange somehow. Think it was a small mistake? They aren't on his other ear in the chapters.
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On the first scanned page of the Usopp Gallery, could someone please translate what it says about that Going Merry sculpture? It looks an awful lot like a cake my friends made a few months back.
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It's a professionaly made wooden model.
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Baroque Works Docking, love it.
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Ok, thanks. It's so hard to tell with a tiny b-w pics and Japanese language.
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Looking at that scan brings a question to my mind: since when did Zoro have two earrings?
Where do you see it ?? :wassat:
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Right underneath the part of Chopper's hat that's smushing Zoro's face, you can see three bangles for a second earring.
