One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda pays a bittersweet tribute to Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama and one of his favorite hobbies

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By Will Salmon
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The One Piece creator shares his thoughts

Art from One Piece
(Image credit: Shueisha)

Manga creator Eiichiro Oda - who last week announced that One Piece would be taking a three week "scheduled maintenance" break - has commented once again on the recent passing of his friend, and fellow legendary mangaka, Akira Toriyama.

As spotted by the One Piece Podcast on Twitter (@OnePiecePodcast), Oda, writing in the latest issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump, said of his friend and colleague, "Right now he's got a halo on his head and he's saying 'Sure is tough to be a mangaka' while building models without a care in the world."

This is a bittersweet reference to the Dragon Ball creator's well-known love of model making. Another twitter user, @NamedPuff followed the post up with a couple of vintage photographs of Toriyama and his mountains of models - mostly cars and motorbikes, but also Star Wars vehicles, including an A-Wing fighter and an AT-AT Walker.

This is not the first time that Oda has commented on Toriyama's passing. Hours after the news broke that the creator had died at the age of 68, Oda reminisced of an early meeting with a creator he had long considered one of his personal heroes. "I have admired him so much since I was a child, so I remember the day he called me by name for the first time," he wrote, adding, "He showed us the dream that manga can go worldwide. It was like watching a hero going forward."

The final episode of One Piece for now is published today in Weekly Shōnen Jump #17. The series will resume in Weekly Shōnen Jump #21, date for April 22.

While One Piece is on hiatus, why not dig into some of the best manga of 2023?

Will Salmon
Will Salmon
Comics Editor

Will Salmon is the Comics Editor for GamesRadar/Newsarama. He has been writing about comics, film, TV, and music for more than 15 years, which is quite a long time if you stop and think about it. At Future he has previously launched scary movie magazine Horrorville, relaunched Comic Heroes, and has written for every issue of SFX magazine for over a decade. He sometimes feels very old, like Guy Pearce in Prometheus. His music writing has appeared in The Quietus, MOJO, Electronic Sound, Clash, and loads of other places and he runs the micro-label Modern Aviation, which puts out experimental music on cassette tape.

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