One Piece

Toriyama in comparison with Oda writes from the seat of his pants. On the other hand, this meant he gave us some awesome memorable villains.

One of Toriyama's strengths, I think, is his ability to knit things together in spite of coming up with most of his stuff on the fly.

There's only a couple places where the pants-seat-writing is obvious - the most glaring, I think, being the fact that the Gohan high school drama arc just sort of randomly concludes.

@Hamburger Time

It was supposed to be Gohan taking the place of his father as the protagonist, but then the public said they wanted Goku so he changed it.

Yeah, writing from the seat of your pants can work, but on the other hand it can cause some problems if you don't know how to tie it all up.

Oda's apparently known what the ending will be for a long time. I've heard every time he gets a new editor, the very first thing he does is tell them the ending.

It has to be one heck of an ending that only a few people know about it. I do wonder if he has had this ending ever since he first started One Piece, or it's changed over the years.

Given the sheer degree of a juggernaut OP is, I actually find it surprising nobody's tried greasing an ex-editor's palm to learn what the ending is, or something like that.

Me too, it's really something people would be itching for.

I've also heard some, errm, morbid-minded speculation that given Oda's various health scares, the reason every editor learns the ending first thing is as Author Existence Failure insurance.

That could sadly be the reason.

The whole "Toriyama intended to have Gohan and or Goten be the new hero" is an invention. Kanzenshuu has many articles on the subject.

As I recall he did intend to have Gohan become the new hero...but changed his mind because he didn't think the role suited Gohan. It wasn't because of fans wanting Goku back or anything.

What would happen in that event? I'm assuming Oda just tells them the ending and not the whole outilne of everything leading to that point, so if Oda were to suddenly pass away (God forbid), would the editor just sort of do a press release to announce how it ends without any other necessary context?

I certainly would want him to live to see his series finished.

As we speak a lot of the dangling plot threads from Bleach are being tied up in an epilogue novel, so I suppose Oda could fall back on that if he becomes too sick to continue, as happened with Kubo.

On the other hand, I think he would want to show those plot threads wrapped up in person rather than some book.

For something that creates such fun stories the manga industry sounds like a... very very depressing place.

Indeed, its some fucked up irony.

Well it is a last resort method if again God forbid the worst were to happen.

Yeah, it's also a good reason why he takes breaks, or he could be hospitalized again. The manga industry really needs some reforming.

The other day I had the idea of replacing the current weekly magazine with four monthly magazines. Increase variety, and decrease the pressure on individual authors, while keeping the amount of content stable.

Would probably be more expensive to produce, but I feel like it wouldn't be that much more expensive.

Well, as you said it would certainly take off pressure from the manga writers and give them more time to be with their families.

Sad Oda doesn't get to see his family much.

It's no wonder family is a big theme in his work, even though he started a family after he started his manga. I do think that since he has been a father the theme of family seems to have grown stronger with time.

I know that Jump has been trying to introduce more series made by artist-writer teams to reduce the strain on individual creators.

Yeah, that really needs to happen.

Their recent initiative was a bit of a failure though.

6 new series & two are already cancelled & the rest are at the bottom of the ranking with only one making it to the middle.