news culture One Piece: “I am grateful to him”, Eiichiro Oda’s long message for the creator of Hunter × Hunter
During the event celebrating 35 years in the business of Yoshihiro Togashi (Hunter x Hunter in particular), it was One Piece’s dad Eiichiro Oda who showed his support for the mangaka through a message.
Summary
- “Writers can become slaves to their readers”
- Two mangakas with a long career
“Writers can become slaves to their readers”
It is often rare to see the mangakas exchange, reinforcing this received idea of the draftsman recluse in a small room surrounded by scribbled and crossed out sheets. However, the authors of our favorite works know each other more than we think and can even sometimes appreciate each other. For example, we saw the complicity of Eiichiro Oda (One Piece) and Gosho Aoyama (Detective Conan) during a crossover interview that aired months ago. A complicity that the creator of One Piece also showed with Yoshihiro Togashi, the father of Hunter × Hunter.
It’s during the exhibition Togashi Yoshihiro, organized in Japan in honor of the 35 years of the mangaka profession, that Eiichiro Oda illustrated. Like other cartoonists, he published a note praising the work done by Yoshihiro Togashi:
A few years ago, I met Togashi-sensei for the first time in a long time at a certain place and thanked him. Togashi-sensei said “Isn’t it?” to me. I can’t tell you what we were talking about, but I can tell you that I’ve been grateful to him ever since he judged my work for the Rookie of the Year award (…) Amanuma’s Story and Kurama in Yu Yu Hakusho gave me goosebumps. I admired the freedom of Lift it. I believe that writers can become slaves to their readers. In this sense, Hunter Hunter is also free. It’s cool !
Two mangakas with a long career
Only Eiichiro Oda and Togashi Yoshihiro will probably understand the meaning of these lyrics, especially through the word free. A speech that allows us to remember that the careers of mangakas often often longer than the longest of their mangas, even within the framework of Eiichiro Oda: the creator of One Piece, before moving on to his biggest project, participated to the realization of Kenshin the Wanderer and also made short stories (which we find the features of some essential characters of One Piece) from 1992.
Ditto for Togashi Yoshihiro: if Hunter × Hunter is probably the most famous work of the mangaka, Yu Yu Hashuko and Lift it are also essential for anyone interested in the author. A career that began in 1987 with the pre-publication of Tonda Birthday Present. Careers that can sometimes be long and difficult, evidenced by the long break taken by Yoshihiro to regain his health. It was four years later, on October 23, that the eleven new chapters of Hunter × Hunter have been broadcast.