The official Twitter account for One Piece manga announced on Tuesday, June 7, 2022, that the series will go on a one-month break (four issues) starting from its 30th issue in Weekly Shonen Jump, which will be released on June 27.

The manga will resume and start its final arc in the 34th issue, which will go on sale on July 25.

Author Eiichiro Oda posted a handwritten comment explaining his reason for the long break. The comment will be published in the 28th issue of Shonen Jump set to release on June 13.

“Four weeks! Give me time to steady my breathing!,” he said in his comment. “I want to reorganize the last arc so that I can close it as soon as possible.”

Oda also revealed in the comment that the one-month break is necessary to prepare for the 25th anniversary of the serialization and the release of the upcoming new anime feature film ONE PIECE FILM RED. He also expressed a desire to travel to Africa to supervise Netflix’s upcoming live-action manga series.

Oda previously said in an interview in August 2020 that he plans to end the story in four or five years.

Commemorating the release of the 100th compiled book volume of the manga, a newspaper advertisement revealed a photo of Oda drawing at his workspace with the words, “The story is in the final stage. (物語 は 終盤 で す)” back in September 2021.

In addition, the One Piece production team revealed that a live-streaming program will be held to announce important information about ONE PIECE FILM RED at 19:00 (JST) / 03:00 (PT) on June 8 on the official One Piece YouTube channel. The following details will be revealed:

1. Gordon’s voice cast
2. Uta’s voice cast
3. Main trailer
4. Theme song information
5. Details of the Uta Project
6. Poster visual drawn by Oda
7. Announcement section
8. The latest information on the original manga

One Piece Film: Red will release on Aug 6, 2022, in Japan.

One Piece is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda. It has been serialized in Shueisha’s shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump since July 1997, with its individual chapters compiled into 102 tankōbon volumes as of April 2022.

One Piece was the best-selling manga for eleven consecutive years from 2008 to 2018 and is the only manga that had an initial print of volumes of above 3 million continuously for more than 10 years, as well as the only one that had achieved more than 1 million copies sold in all of its 100 published tankōbon volumes.

The 100th manga volume shipped on Sep 3, 2021. Oda published the 1,000th chapter in this year’s combined 5th/6th issue of Weekly Shonen Jump magazine on Jan 4, 2022.

Source: Oricon, Twitter