In announcing the special one-shot One Piece chapter set to drop on Tuesday, April 5, creator Eiichiro Oda revealed that the chapter will be illustrated by acclaimed manga artist Boichi.
Boichi just finished a five-year gig with Riichiro Inagaki as the artist for Dr. Stone which ended earlier this month. While working on Dr. Stone, Boichi set himself apart as a manga artist extraordinaire. In 2018, he won the top award of the Shonen category in the 64th Shogakukan Manga Awards for his work on Dr. Stone. A year later, he won the Japan Media Arts Festival’s grand prize in the manga category, for his work on his own manga Origin. His work must have caught the eye of One Piece’s Oda because, in 2019, Oda asked him to join his "One Piece Cover Comic Project", which invites manga artists to reinterpret a One Piece chapter in their own style. Boichi started the project with a cover of the climactic fight in One Piece #51 between Roronoa Zoro and Dracule Mihawk. While the artwork in the original Oda chapter is solid, Boichi’s rendition raises its visual delight to another level. It makes a reader wonder how much better One Piece could have been if Boichi had been illustrating it from the start.
With such background and such success, it only seems fitting that Oda would invite Boichi back to illustrate yet another classic One Piece fight between Nami and Kalifa, the assassin and member of the World Government’s CP9 organization. As with the fight between Zoro and Mihawk, the original Nami versus Kalifa contest, which occurred in One Piece #411-412, is somewhat chaotically drawn with an abundance of visual chatter that distracts the reader's view away from the action.
If his past work is any indication, Boichi's relaxed style will not only give the characters more definition but also clean up the artistic clutter so that the reader can focus on what is most important in any manga fight scene, the interaction between opponents. Nami and Kalifa's fight is an exciting point in the story, so it will be interesting to see how Boichi's style will amplify the tension of an already thrilling fight.
While the quality of Boichi’s upcoming Rivals chapter is guaranteed, his past success with One Piece, Oda’s clear appreciation of his artwork, and his recent “release” from work on Dr. Stone beg the question: of whether he will be given more opportunities to illustrate One Piece, perhaps in a permanent, or semi-permanent role. It's unlikely that the One Piece fanbase would oppose the change. Indeed, after the April release, fans may prefer Boichi as One Piece's illustrator going forward.