If you haven’t read the introduction and first post to this series, be sure to do that before reading on.

Hey, welcome back to this trip through the history of One Piece‘s popularity ranking. Last time we ended our little journey at the end of the Arlong Park arc, a two-year period where One Piece was the reigning number one series in Weekly Shonen Jump. This time around, we’ll be covering the chapters starting from Loguetown arc up until the Alabasta arc.

￼As you can see from the Loguetown arc of One Piece, not a lot changed for One Piece. It was still holding on to its first place for all 3 ranked chapters of that arc. So while the Loguetown arc’s performance was identical its predecessors, there is one thing that happened during its run that I would like to point out: the series Naruto started its serialization in the same issue that the now well-known, long-running, popular series Ruroni Kenshin ended. This also happened to be the same issue of Jump where chapter 99 was ranked.

￼In the Reverse Mountain arc, One Piece began with two second place spots, a rough start caused by a rise in Seikimatsu Leader den Takeshi!‘s ranking. Chapter 101 coincided with Takeshi getting a lead color page, which might have given the series the extra boost in votes for those chapters. But the more interesting part in this arc’s ranking is the relatively low ranking for One Piece‘s chapter 105. Hikaru no Go, which ranked first, and Hunter x Hunter, which ranked second, kept their spots on top for the issue of Jump with One Piece‘s chapter 104 (which was itself not ranked due to a lead color page, thus removing it from the ranking). Furthermore, chapter 105 coincided with Naruto‘s first chapter. Similar to how One Piece lost a few spots when Hunter x Hunter‘s started its serialization, It also lost some ground to Naruto.

Again, it’s possible that Hikaru no Go and Hunter x Hunter‘s rise to first and second place was simply due to an increase in their respective chapters’ quality or a drop in quality for that specific One Piece chapter, but it is also possible that those who would normally vote One Piece in first place opted to instead vote for similar series that were getting fresh starts in the magazine. While we don’t know whether the first, second and third place votes get equal or weighted values when tallying up a series’ ranking in Jump, it’s definitely something to keep in mind as a possibility (as it is often done in other rankings). Interestingly enough though, in a recent interview between One Piece artist Oda and Naruto artist Kishimoto, Oda praised Kishimoto for making sure One Piece and Naruto didn’t overlap in genre. All the same, it seems that at this point in time, Naruto‘s fanbase overlapped at least a little bit with One Piece‘s.

￼Now with the addition of Naruto to the Jump line-up, the magazine’s ranking would be a lot less predictable than the previous 100 or so issues. More and more series competed for the top spots, with One Piece still coming out on top. Hikaru no Go, Hunter x Hunter, and Seikimatsu Leader den Takeshi! continued to frequently duke it out in the top 5, with the occasional Prince of Tennis or Yu-Gi-Oh! jumping in to shake things up. Shaman King grew inconsistent in popularity, jumping around from the middle of the magazine, to the back of the magazine, and to the front again. Previously popular series Hoshin Engi and I”s, however, were almost always tucked away in the back half of the magazine, losing steam due to the new budding series that kept coming in.

￼The Little Garden arc showed the lowest average ranking of a decent-sized One Piece arc yet. Of course, this might not just be due to the quality of the arc but to the increasingly fierce competition in Jump.

The issue of Jump featuring chapter 120 of One Piece coincided with Naruto getting its first number one ranking in the magazine. This feat was repeated five weeks later when One Piece hit its 125th chapter. It’s also worth noting that Naruto maintained at second place between chapters 120 to 125, as well as chapter 127. Chapter 127, in fact, was the biggest dip in popularity for the Little Garden arc, resulting in One Piece being kicked out of the top three in Jump for the first time in ages. First place went to Takeshi, Second to Naruto, and third place to Hunter x Hunter.

￼The Drum Island arc got off to a weak start as well, losing spots to series such as Naruto and the occasional Prince of Tennis and Rising Impact sporadically rising from the magazine’s middle ranking. Prince of Tennis would continue to keep a high ranking for a while. While Hikaru no Go experienced a little period of more volatile popularity during the first half of this One Piece arc, it is worth noting that all the second places for One Piece in the second half of the Drum Island arc were all due to Hikaru no Go running off with the gold medal, a trend that continued on in the next arc as well.

￼Last graph for today: the Alabasta arc. Remember what I said about Little Garden arc having the worst average ranking? Yeah, scratch that. THIS arc had the worst average ranking for One Piece up until this point in the series. This is understandable, as more series in Jump started becoming actual contenders for this sought-after weekly trophy.

Because it would quickly become monotonous to start summing up each series that ended in first place instead of One Piece, I will only be going over the noteworthy weeks. Over the coming few chapters, One Piece would lose mainly to Naruto and Hikaru no Go. But the biggest surprise here is the Jump issue between chapters 171 and 172, and the issues following chapter 173.

Weekly Shonen Jump‘s Issue 12 of 2001 brought about One Piece‘s very first one week break after 171 chapters. While this isn’t anywhere near the longest a series has gone in Jump without taking a break, it’s at the very least, an honorable mention.

Eiichiro Oda’s Jump comment in the following issue revealed that the reason for this break was that he had gone on a trip to the U.S., where he also claimed to have found a lot of inspiration for the series.

Chapter 175’s second place was due to the new series, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo taking first place in its fifth chapter. This would happen again in One Piece‘s 183rd, 184th and 186th chapters a few weeks later. Other than that, the arc continued with the previously mentioned series taking over the helm of Jump from One Piece for a week or two at most, while new series like Bleach and Ichigo 100% tried to find their place in the magazine.

Now, what have we learned from all this? First, we’ve learned that One Piece might be more susceptible to losing ratings to new series than it is to losing ratings to the longstanding rival series. The Weekly Shonen Jump line-up also changed quite a bit, with the older remnants of the “Golden Age” series slowly dying off, leaving their legacy to newer series.

It was also mentioned by former Dragon Ball Editor Kazuhiko Torishima that the 1997 marked a transitional period, when the editorial department of Jump tried to change the way Jump was built*. It could be that this change in regime and manga policy resulted in stronger new series to be created. While we don’t know the specifics of this “change” as mentioned by Kazuhiko Torishima, we do know that it involved a change in attitude towards the way of creating manga by Jump‘s editors. Of course, just as Rome wasn’t built in one day, it most likely also took some time for Jump‘s Editors to prepare some new, stronger series to compete with this “beacon of hope for Jump“* that was One Piece.

Note: *Please refer to NHK’s SWITCH interview between former Weekly Shonen Jump Editor-in-Chief Kazuhiko Torishima and SCRAP‘s Takao Kato.