One Piece mangaka, Eiichiro Oda, left a message for Tite Kubo, the author of Bleach manga, at the 20th anniversary art exhibition of Bleach, saying he still held a grudge against the latter.

The exhibition, BLEACH EX., featured original artworks along with messages from many big names in the anime industry including Eiichiro Oda. It is here that Oda decided to bring up the friendly feud between him and Kubo.

“Years ago, Kubo publicly announced on the radio: ‘I hate Oda-san’. Do you want to know if I hold a grudge against Kubo? Yes, I do! That said, his entire statement didn’t strike me as particularly rude. Actually, I don’t dislike Kubo considering his audacity for making such a public statement. Lol,” Oda wrote in the message.

In 2017, Kubo appeared on TBS Radio to talk about his career and work on Bleach. The artist went into detail about his beginning as a manga author, and it was there that Kubo revealed he had a spat with Oda in the 1990s.

During his interview, the author stated that he made his debut in a special issue of Weekly Shonen Jump with a one-shot. Kubo was apparently outvoted by Oda, as the One Piece artist debuted ‘Romance Dawn’ in that same special issue. After recalling the encounter, Kubo stated that he began to resent Oda after debuting beneath him, but fans should not put too much weight in the claimed rivalry.

In his message at BLEACH EX., the One Piece creator further revealed that Kubo is an extremely competitive, hard-working, talented, and a “pretty confident guy,” embarrassing the Bleach author, and finally congratulated him for the 20th anniversary of the manga.

BLEACH EX., an original art exhibition featuring art from Tite Kubo’s popular manga, Bleach, is being held on the 9th floor of Shibuya Hikarie in Tokyo from Dec 18, 2021- Jan 16, 2022.

Bleach was serialized in Shueisha’s shōnen manga magazine, Weekly Shōnen Jump, from August 2001 to August 2016, with its chapters collected in seventy-four tankōbon volumes. Studio Pierrot adapted the manga in an anime television series from 2004 to 2012. The final arc “Thousand-Year Blood Arc” will air from October 2022. The franchise also constitutes two OVA episodes, four animated feature films, ten stage musicals, and numerous video games.

Bleach received the 50th Shogakukan Manga Award for the shōnen category in 2005. Despite significant downturns in both the Japanese and English manga markets, Bleach continued to perform well commercially, and had over 120 million tankōbon volumes in circulation worldwide as of 2018, making it the eleventh best-selling manga in history.

Source: CBR, Kudasai