During the summer of 1997, eighteen years ago, the Japanese manga magazine Weekly Shonen Jump was in decline after many of its big-hit series such as Slam Dunk, Dragon Ball, and others concluded. Jump was once seen as the “king of manga magazines,” but it had lost its place to another weekly manga magazine, Weekly Shonen Magazine.

A certain newspaper article by the Japanese newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun, talked about this big downturn in sales. The article mentioned Jump’s downfall, featuring one specific issue of Weekly Shonen Jump as the article’s featured image. Ironically, the Jump issue that the Asahi article in question used was the first issue of Jump featuring One Piece: Issue #34 in 1997.

When editors were asked if Jump was going to be alright, they apparently mentioned that Jump was going to be just fine.

“We found [someone with] amazing talent that only appears in one person in 100 — no 1,000 years. His name is Eiichiro Oda.” But Eiichiro Oda himself also got offers from all the other manga magazines to write for them. The only reason why Oda chose Jump is because Jump’s logo is a pirate logo. So “here’s where I’m going to write [One Piece],” Oda said.

See the whole story in our article on the beginnings of One Piece‘s serialization!

There has been a lot of debate as to when One Piece‘s birthday actually is: either the date listed on Issue #34 of Jump, or the date Jump was officially on sale. According to One-Piece.com columnist, and our Japan correspondent Greg Werner, who’s done extensive research on the subject, the official date should be July 19, 1997, “[a]s Monday the 21st was a national holiday.“ Other dates written in the issue, or even on the official Jump+ App, placed its original release date on July 21st or even July 22nd.

Either way, let’s all congratulate One Piece on becoming old enough to go to college and vote, and hope for another amazing year!