Career
At the age of 17, Oda submitted his work Wanted! and won several awards, including second place in the coveted Tezuka Award. That got him into a job at the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine, where he originally worked as assistant to Shinobu Kaitani's series Suizan Police Gang before moving to Masaya Tokuhiro on Jungle King Tar-chan and Mizu no Tomodachi Kappaman, which gave him an unexpected influence on his artistic style. At the age of 19, he worked as an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki on Rurouni Kenshin, before winning the Hop Step Award for new artists. Watsuki also credits Oda for the creation of the character Honjō Kamatari who appears in Rurouni Kenshin. During this time, he drew two pirate-themed one-shot stories, called "Romance Dawn", which would debut in Akamaru Jump and Weekly Jump in late 1996-early 1997. "Romance Dawn" featured Monkey D. Luffy as the protagonist, who then became the protagonist of One Piece. While Oda was an assistant of Watsuki, his colleague was Hiroyuki Takei, and the three of them are good friends.
In 1997, One Piece appeared for the first time in Weekly Shōnen Jump and promptly became one of the most popular manga in Japan. His biggest influence is Akira Toriyama, who is the creator of Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump.
In an interview with Shonen Jump, when asked what his three favorite manga by other authors were, he stated 'everything by Akira Toriyama'. Oda and Toriyama have made a one shot called Cross Epoch containing characters from Toriyama's Dragon Ball and Oda's One Piece.
Read more about this topic: Eiichiro Oda
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)