During the first episode of Fuji TV’s new show, “The Amazing People That the Elite Are Jealous Of” (一流が嫉妬したスゴい人), it was revealed that One Piece author Eiichiro Oda is “jealous” of a certain manga series. Considering that One Piece is the best-selling manga series ever with close to 400 million copies printed worldwide, and even the recipient of a Guinness World Record, it seems hard to believe that a manga author like Eiichiro Oda could envy another manga.

Thanks to the help of Suguru Sugita, Oda’s current manga editor, the show was able to get Oda to answer to some of their questions in written form. Here’s an excerpt what Oda said:

“Sometimes I get this urge to read some interesting manga, so I occasionally search online for ‘interesting manga’ and read them. Since I don’t have [a lot of] time, I generally only read one or two volumes and then go, ‘Oh okay, I see,’ after which I stop reading that series. Even though I thought it’d be a change of pace right before my deadline [for the weekly One Piece manga chapter], I ended up reading the entire series and I almost missed the deadline to hand in my manuscript [on time]. The series just really pulls you in to a point that it’s not funny (because it almost made me late with my manuscript).”

Oda continued to describe why he liked this particular manga series:

“It has some [great] panels and a good atmosphere with a unique sense of distance that Japanese people show in films and illustrations, to the point it almost feels like a shame to continue on to the next panel.”

The manga series Eiichiro Oda is talking about is none other than Your Lie in April by Naoshi Arakawa.

As an aside, in this year’s Manga of the Year award by Japanese magazine Da Vinci, One Piece ranked No. 2 and Your Lie in April ranked No. 18.

Your Lie in April tells the story of Kousei Arima, a young genius pianist who tragically loses his mother. Since she was the one teaching him the piano as a child, the shocking event makes him lose the ability to hear his own music. He meets the lovely violin player Kaori Miyazono, who helps him get back behind a piano and introduces him to a new musical world, free of the rigid black-and-white style Kousei was used to.

And it is exactly this part that Oda seems to particularly like about the series:

“You can hear the music, the one genre manga has the most difficulty [portraying]. The way music is portrayed [in this manga] is incredible.”

SOURCE: 2ch via One Soku