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A great editor is so important to the success of a manga. Not only do they need to understand how the publishing industry works and be able to support the mangaka with deadlines and how to make their work as good as possible, but they also need to be actually excited about the work. Kazuhiko Torishima had become an accomplished editor while working on Dragon Ball for years, but even he had to be convinced by his team to take on Eiichiro Oda and One Piece. 

During an interview ahead of his panel at Napoli Comic Con, Kazuhiko Torishima explained that when he became editor-in-chief of Weekly Shonen Jump, he was responsible for approving new titles for the popular magazine. However, he initially passed on what would become one of the most successful manga of all time.

“You might not know, but when I was the editor chief,” Kazuhiko Torishima said. “I said no to One Piece, to the manga version. But all my staff, the team, told me, no, no, no, we have to print it, print and support it. And after two hours, a two-hour-long discussion, I said, okay, we’ll try. So if, and this is a big IF, I was [Eiichiro] Oda’s editor, maybe One Piece was never around! Or I would have forged Oda more, and maybe he had worked upon something more than just One Piece!”

Think about that for a second. There is an alternate universe where the man who helped Akira Toriyama come up with Dragon Ball was also the one who stopped One Piece from being published in the first place. Such is the way in publishing; if it weren’t for a passionate team around him (and for Torishima knowing when to listen to them), One Piece may never have set sail into the pop culture world.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

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