Hey Greg, been a while! Hope you’ve been well.
Every single day is a fight. But I'm a stubborn bastard so I give as much as get when I'm not TKO'd.
I have a couple questions, first being about the status of your column. Any idea when it’s gonna be updated?
Hehe…..yeah....um.... I kinda took a little unannounced break. As a poster cleverly mentioned I was working on a crunch-schedule Dai translation for Viz and it absolutely murdered me. When spring vacation came around I was still pretty busy at home and this past Golden Week was the first time I had a vacation with ZERO deadlines looming over me in....I dunno, maybe 9 years? So I just kinda went AWOL for a bit. In other words...
I COMPLETELY FING UNDERSTAND ODA'S BREAKS NOW*
I'm getting stock together so I'll start back up but I'm going to skip chapters because so very much has happened and so very much has yet to happen that by the time they get published we'll probably have moved on.
That said…if you need some more Gregishness, an upcoming 'Nakama ga iru yo TUBE' should suffice (along with another familiar face) and we're about 2 months out from One Piece's birthday so I'm sure they'll have some fun stuff planned. (Not sneakily hyping major releases/announcements)
The next, I was having a discussion about the topic as old as time- “when will one piece end”. People I’ve talked to seem to think 4 or 5 more years, but I’m certain on at least 6 more… what are your thoughts? Do you think it could be in publication for its 30th anniversary?I know this topic has been beaten to death, but it’s interesting.
Corona has not had a major impact on One Piece's pace specifically (maybe a month or two worth of chapters at best) but Oda's breaks certainly have and of course Oda is his own worst enemy. I'll say that I would not be surprised if One Piece went out exactly on it's 30th year. A LOT OF THAT depends on the tie-up of this arc and what Elbaph is/isn't in terms of importance.
I can't say 'expect' but I would 'not be surprised' if One Piece ends 5 years from this coming July.
It's a big flashy number for Oda and it places him (five years) safely below the WSJ serialization king, Kochi Kame so there's no sempai/kouhai disturbance in the 'Foosu'.