"Eiichiro Oda : The Real Captain of The Straw Hat Pirates"
Eichiro Oda was born on January 1, 1975 in Kumamoto. During the start of his career he immediately started to berecognized. In 1992 he recieved the Jun-Nyuusen award which was given at the 44th Tezuka Awards for the One shot "WANTED". He won the award at the age of 17. His career kicked off with his piece entitled "Kari Kara Mirai No Present" which was featured in Shuisha Jump's October 1993 issue. Later onwards, he recieved the Nyuusen award, (which was the top notch easily put) at the Hop-Step Awards. In 1994, Oda headed to Tokyo and became an assistant to many popular Jump mangaka's such as Shinobu Kaitani, Masaya Tokuhiro, and Nobuhiro Watsuki. But, he also went to college there for a year and sudied architecture. During this training period Oda published two short stories: Monsters in 1994 and the first two versions of Romance Dawn in 1996. These were featured in the Autumn and Summer Special of the now called Akamura Jump. Finally, Oda got his big break as Jump published the second version of Romance Dawn in 1996, Issue #41. And pretty soon One Piece was on it's way.
Oda-San worked for an assistant for Watsuki-Sensei on Rurouni Kenshin. In the Kenshin Kaden artbook, this drawing of his, along with a note for Watsuki was published.His One Piece sign also appeared on a cannon ball that Sanosuke kicks out of a guy in Volume 19, ch 161 of Rurouni Kenshin.
Oda admires Akira Toriyama a LOT! In the One Piece COLORWALK they had a talk with Oda and Toriyama. In 2003, Shonen Jump licensed One Piece. in Issue #3 of the SJ issue they had an interview with Oda san. The interview had some nice questions, a brief Bio, and some cool images of Oda’s workplace!
source: GumGum.org (Article), and Google Image Search (Pictures).
