How One Piece Shot Up In Popularity After The Paramount War

One Piece is one of the most popular manga series today, but it took a while for the story to establish itself as the hit it eventually became. Although it has always been quite popular, it was during the Marineford arc that One Piece sales started to skyrocket in Japan.

How was it that the Paramount War Saga was able to bring One Piece to its highest level ever, at least when it comes to manga sales in Japan? Let’s try to understand the series’ manga sales from 2008 until today.

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One Piece: Oda Sets Up Marineford 2.0 In The New World

Marineford marked the end of the first part of One Piece. Oda sets up a huge war, similar to Marinford, in the Final Saga.

One Piece’s Paramount War Saga

The Paramount War Saga, also known as the Whitebeard War Saga or the Summit War Saga, is the sixth saga of the manga, following the Thriller Bark Saga. It is the last saga before the series entered the New World Saga, which is the current and final saga of the series (but the manga has been in the New World Saga since the Fish-Man Island arc). It includes the following arcs:

• Sabaody Archipelago (Chapters 490–513, Volumes 50–53)
• Amazon Lily (Chapters 512–524, Volumes 53–54)
• Impel Down (Chapters 525–549, Volumes 54–56)
• Marineford (Chapters 550–580, Volumes 56–59)
• Post-War (Chapters 581–597, Volumes 59–61)

The Summit War Saga begins when the Straw Hat crew arrives in the Sabaody Archipelago and is eventually separated. The Paramount War itself happens during the Marineford arc. It starts after Blackbeard fights Portgas D. Ace — Blackbeard hands Ace over to the New Government after defeating him. This prompted the Whitebeard pirates and their allies to try to rescue Ace before he is executed. Luffy is also trying to save his brother.

The Marines were expecting the Whitebeard pirates to come to Ace’s rescue, and their main objective was to kill Ace and as many Whitebeard pirates as possible, as they aimed to eliminate any possible heir of Roger. The Blackbeard pirates also joins the war, aiming to kill Whitebeard.

While Luffy is able to rescue Ace, his brother ends up dying to protect Luffy. The Blackbeard Pirates are also able to kill Whitebeard. Shanks comes to bring an end to the war, forcing both the Blackbeard Pirates and the Marine to retreat, threatening to join the war with his Red Hair crew if they do not retreat. With many losses, this war had huge consequences for the following plot.

One Piece Manga Sales On the Rise During the Summit War

Analyzing Oricon’s manga sales estimates (which, unfortunately, only go back to 2008), there is a huge increase in One Piece sales from 2009 to 2011.

In every year from 2008 to 2018, One Piece was the best-selling manga in Japan. But, while in 2008 it sold over 5.9 million copies and the runner-up (Naruto) sold over 4.2 million, in 2009 One Piece sold more than twice as many copies as Naruto: 14.7 million versus 6.8 million. In 2010, One Piece grew massively, and sold over 32.3 million copies, while Naruto sold 7.4 million.

2011 was the peak, with 37.9 million copies sold. From 2011 on, One Piece sales started to progressively drop until they reached some sort of plateau:

What these estimates suggest is that sales began to increase considerably during the Marineford, Post-War and Return to Sabaody arcs (2009–2010), then reached a peak and began to decline during the Fish-Man Island arc (2010-2012). From Punk Hazard onwards, sales seem to be somewhat stable, which means newcomers likely kept reading the series. There has been a significant drop since 2020, but this could be influenced by other factors, such as digital sales.

Why Did One Piece Become So Popular?

The question “why is something popular” is hard to answer, but Marineford is one of the most popular arcs in the series up to this day. It is one of the first arcs in which “One Piece politics” becomes more important than ever.

The focus isn’t on the Straw Hats crew, as the political tensions and Ace’s origin and destiny became more important. Also, Ace’s death is a major event in the series, and, back at the time, many were eagerly reading new chapters to find out what would happen to him.

With so much going on, the way Oda handled everything in this arc and teased that even more was to come probably helped attract new readers to the story, who are eager to know the rest.

Of course, the anime, which was closely following manga events (and eventually adding fillers) probably played a huge role in boosting sales, as it usually does. More recently, Netflix adding the anime and producing a successful live-action series helped to boost the series even more around the world.

One Piece Dethroned: Manga Sales Panorama Today

Some would say that One Piece is currently in a much more interesting phase than even Marineford, as the series is heading towards the end (it will to take a while, though) and introducing major characters. Even so, the manga has not topped manga sales in Japan in the last few years, at least according to Oricon.

After Demon Slayer “dethroned” One Piece in 2018, the series has never reached number one again. But that actually seems more related to market dynamics than to the series itself. The manga market has been growing since the pandemics, and sales are seemingly becoming more diverse. What seems to be happening is not that people are losing interest in One Piece, but that they are also looking for other series to read.

One Piece

Release Date

October 20, 1999

Network

Fuji TV

Directors

Hiroaki Miyamoto, Konosuke Uda, Junji Shimizu, Satoshi Itō, Munehisa Sakai, Katsumi Tokoro, Yutaka Nakajima, Yoshihiro Ueda, Kenichi Takeshita, Yoko Ikeda, Ryota Nakamura, Hiroyuki Kakudou, Takahiro Imamura, Toshihiro Maeya, Yûji Endô, Nozomu Shishido, Hidehiko Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou

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  Mayumi Tanaka

  Monkey D. Luffy (voice)

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  Kazuya Nakai

  Roronoa Zoro (voice)