Eiichiro Oda, the author of the internationally popular One Piece manga series has posted a New Year's illustration on the franchise's official portal site ONE-PIECE.com, featuring the protagonist Monkey D. Luffy in kimono wearing a monkey hat (2015 is the year of monkey in Chinese zodiac).

The manga's latest 80th volume was released in Japan on December 28, 2015. As expected, it took

first place in the Oricon weekly manga chart selling 273,824 copies in its first week, which was 18.6

percent of the previous 79th volume's first week sales of 1,467,741. The reason of the difference is

that the Oricon's sales data was gathered from December 21 to 27, one day before the volume's

official release day, so the number figures only the amount of the advance sales.

Source: One Piece.com, Oricon

© Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha