I went to Japan for a 3 week trip last year at this time. At first i went to the anime expo in Tokyo for 5 days, then went up to Sapporo and travelled all the way down south to Okinawa. All that time, I visited small towns, medium cities, and large cities, and the whole time I was looking out for anything interesting. What I found, in terms of people openly displaying animation characters, I found (outside of Tokyo) only two shows that people hung up posters, had dolls in cars or windows of homes, or commonly read in public…
Winnie the Pooh
and
One Piece
Anyone else notice this?
I was kind of amazed by that, because back then i had never known of One Piece, but bought manga #32 and was turned on by the quality of the art for japanese comics. Ever since, I downloaded the show and purchased the full manga run.
In August I went back and was reading a One Piece manga in a hair salon my girlfriend went to. The hair stylists were shocked a gaijin was reading One Piece... wasn't sure why.