The readers of a manga are of course always in front of the finished work. Tables well designed, clean and with defined characters. But of course there is a lot of work behind the scenes that mangakas hardly ever show and that readers are often not even aware of. But now Oda is giving us a look at his ONE PIECE of storyboard.
For those who haven’t read Bakuman, Manga published in Weekly Shonen Jump between 2008 and 2012 by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. The first step a mangaka must take to produce a chapter is that of the storyboardwhat is also called in the jargon Surname. These tables are used to prepare the chapter and to give a little glimpse to the editor in charge, who will discuss with the author what should and should not be changed.
Also to Eiichiro Oda, Mangaka from ONE PIECEnaturally affects this phase, which is almost never shown. However, during the interview with the editorial team of Weekly Shonen Jump, one of these boards was shown: that of chapter ONE PIECE 997and below we see both the televised and the latest images that appeared in the magazine.
You notice how Oda uses a different and only sketchy lineto make people understand what is happening and what the main dialogues are. As can be seen from some cartoons, the expressions often change during work, and depending on the situation, texts and speech bubbles may disappear or appear.
The Eiichiro Oda staff on Twitter also checked out the final tables of ONE PIECE 997 before going to press and showed a good part of the working process of a mangaka.
Oda’s storyboards for chapter 997! pic.twitter.com/NlRWxNqPDg
– Artur – Library of Ohara (@newworldartur) December 27, 2020
