A pop-up fan event taking place at Cosm LA on August 25 and 26 testifies to the runaway popularity of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, one of the most successful franchises in animation history. Although Baby Boomers and members of Gen-Z may only be vaguely aware of the manga and/or animation, it’s popularity among Millennials and younger audiences is staggering.

Oda’s pirate comic-adventure, has sold over 600 million books worldwide, surpassing the “Harry Potter” series. More than 1,100 episodes of the broadcast series have aired, and it’s still going strong. The third season of Netflix’s live action version—a rare successful adaptation of an anime property—is slated to air in December. The 15th theatrical feature, One Piece Film: Red outdrew Top Gun: Maverick to become Japan’s #1 Box Office hit in 2022. One Piece has also been adapted to stage shows and the kabuki theater. 

At the Los Angeles Anime Expo (or any anime con), visitors will see scores of people in full One Piece cosplay regalia and hundreds wearing Luffy’s trademark straw hat. On a typical day, eBay will have more than one million One Piece-related items up for bids.

Oda is notoriously reclusive; he avoids being photographed and when he caricatures himself, he draws a human body with a tropical fish for a head. In an extremely rare interview three years ago, he explained he had wanted to be a manga artist since elementary school. When he began One Piece, he set out to draw the manga he wanted to read when he was young. 

“When I started, I had to draw things that didn’t exist to get attention,” he recalled. “There were plenty of heroes who fight the demons and save the world; the market was saturated with that kind of story. I wanted to do something different but relatable. I understood that I had been supported and helped by a lot of people to get to where I was, so friendship became a central theme. I knew I wanted to write a pirate manga, and just drew from instinct the kind of young boy I imagined in the role.”

That “young boy” is Monkey D. Luffy (it rhymes, fittingly, with “goofy”), who sets out to become King of the Pirates by finding the fabulous treasure known as the One Piece. While Luffy is not exactly the brightest doubloon in the Deadman’s Chest, he is unfailing warmhearted, upbeat and devoted to his friends. He frequently uses the Japanese term nakama, which can mean mate, comrade or friend. Because he ate the gum-gum devil fruit as a boy, Luffy’s body can stretchy almost infinitely, a quality that makes for dramatic or comic drawings and animation, depending on the situation.

The manga debuted in July 1997 in the Japanese magazine Weekly Shonen Jump and scored an immediate hit: The story that Oda had wanted to read as a boy appealed to millions of others. As it worldwide popularity has grown, an increasing number of One Piece events have taken place in the US, including One Piece Night at Dodger Stadium earlier this year.  (Oda reportedly takes pride in having beaten major league baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani in a One Piece trivia contest.) 

One Piece Fest will cover 95,000 sq ft of indoor and outdoor space and include a special 180° immersive One Piece video featuring “The Elbaph Experience” in The Dome; recreations of locales from the series’ 19  past story arcs (from East Blue to Elbaph); reimagined immersive environments and giant manga cover installations; curated exhibition of props and costumes from the live-action series and live musical performances on the outdoor stage

The event is largely sold out, and tickets must be purchased in advance. For more information: onepiece-fest.com