In an offering to One Piece and Luffy fans who are likely to experience disappointment and withdrawal during the manga’s hiatus, publisher Shueisha will offer a special one-shot edition in the interim. Fans will get a chance to see pictures, scenes, and proposed ideas that were “deleted” or otherwise not included in the official series.
For more than a year, One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda has consistently been pushing out content to the tune of nearly one chapter a week. In early June 2022, however, Oda announced that with the publication of One Piece chapter 1053, the manga would take a month-long break. One of the main reasons for the break, Oda stated, is to allow time for the preparation for the final story arc of the saga. Naturally, once news of the hiatus dropped, Luffy fans who have grown accustomed to the generous delivery of content, were not happy. Indeed, One Piece fans flooded social media to voice their anguish on hearing the news of the break in publication.
Perhaps sensing the potential backlash that could result in the month-long absence of One Piece, Eiichiro Oda announced on Twitter that during the month in which One Piece will not appear as regularly scheduled, Shueisha will be publishing Road to Laugh Tale, a special edition of “sketches and scrapped ideas” and images by Oda that, for some reason, never made it into the official manga. This collection of One Piece art and storylines would have never been possible for fans to see but for the somewhat hastily announced hiatus. Indeed, fans should consider that, if publication would have continued as normal, they perhaps never would have had access to the content that will be included in Road to Laugh Tale.
While the One Piece manga is off for 4 weeks , a special project will be published during that time. A booklet called “Road to Laugh Tale” will be included in Weekly Shonen Jump. https://t.co/gMC1mO7Mh0
— The One Piece Podcast (@OnePiecePodcast) June 8, 2022
While Oda did not provide exact details of what will be included in Road to Laugh Tale, previous special publications of Oda’s sketches may provide some possible ideas. For instance, in 2021, in celebration of the publication of the manga’s 100th volume, Shueisha offered several original prints of Oda in never-before-seen color and detail. Since One Piece has been in publication for 25 years, there should be a plethora of content available from Oda that could be included in the edition. Whatever is included in the special edition is bound to spark vigorous debate among the fanbase on all the “what ifs” that could have occurred had the content been chosen for inclusion in the main One Piece series.
So while fans have a month to contemplate the final leg of Luffy‘s quest for the One Piece, Shueisha has come up with a great way to fill the vacuum of content with a rare, and potentially great, look behind the scenes of a manga masterpiece.
Source: Eiichiro Oda