Aaron McClendon

A few surprising things I learned from reading about Eiichrio Oda, the creator of One Piece: 1. He slept 3 hours a night for 15 years. 2. He created the most successful manga of all time with more than 600 million copies in circulation. 3. He said he would have missed his parent’s funeral because it conflicted with his work. 4. He is extremely private. He does not allow his face to be photographed and when he appears on video he has a giant fish avatar placed on his head. 5. When he hires a new editor the first thing he says to them is you need to be willing to die for One Piece. 6. His editor said he might someday encounter a writer more talented than Oda but he would never meet anyone who worked harder. 7. He doesn’t want ideas, he wants criticism. 8. He would hand draw entire Disney animated movies to learn how to give his characters emotion. 9. He said he only saw his family once a week because family time was too relaxing. 10. He holds the Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author. 11. He is often described as a maniac due to his unbelievable work ethic and inhuman daily habits. 12. He believes in having the least number of people possible touching the work. 13. He says he gets his best ideas by not sleeping or eating. He says humans can only come up with truly new ideas when they reach their limit. 14. He started working on One Piece when he was 22. He is still working on it at 51. 15. He once spent 12 consecutive hours on the telephone discussing a single story with his editor. 16. He has an extreme tolerance for repetition. 17. Imagination is the organizing force of his entire life. 18. He's a perfectionist who has repeatedly admitted that he cannot make himself work in a more efficient way, even when he desperately wants to. 19. He never finishes before a deadline. He equates using every available minute with giving his maximum effort. 20. He believes it’s impossible to create something great unless you do everything yourself, attend to every detail, and test it exhaustively. 21. He believes the more experience he has the harder it is to create. 22. He was 4 when he decided to be a manga artist. He said he wanted to avoid ever having to get a real job. 23. He creates his work for an audience of exactly one person: himself at 15 years old. 25. He has dedicated his entire adult life to writing a story about freedom and adventure, while accepting an extraordinarily restrictive life in order to create it. 26. To this day he does not feel successful. -- Eiichiro Oda is a relentlessly obsessive creative genius who has devoted nearly every waking hour of his adult life to building one of the most extraordinary fictional universes ever imagined. You don't want to miss this episode: