The richest mangaka ever.
One Piece is one of the highest-grossing IPS in existence with over 21 billion dollars from over 500 million copies sold video game, Anime adaptations, merchandise, and film releases; One Piece is one of the highest-grossing IPS in existence.
This mind-blowing amount of berries has ranked One Piece as the 20th-grossing media franchise of all time, with a net worth between 230 and 280 million dollars. Oda Sensei is easily the richest mangaka ever.
However, you would fall for Oda even more when you get to know how he spends his money. So, in this article, we will be taking a look at Oda’s life as the richest mangaka and how he spends his money. And if you want to know about the back story of Oda sensei, you can check this article: Eiichiro Oda.
I’ve been earning a lot of money despite just enjoying my ridiculous drawings. So I’ve decided to spend my money on ridiculous stuff. I have Things like a dragon bath and a shark toilet.
Eiichiro Oda and Luffy (Credits: Toei Animation)Oda Studio
Oda is notoriously one of the most private people on the planet. It’s been nearly a decade since anyone has even been able to capture a photo of what he currently looks like. He doesn’t much care for the fame side of being a best-selling mangaka.
He does do the occasional interview, but his face is always hidden in various clever and hilarious ways. But over the last few years, a few Japanese Comedians and internet entertainers have been given golden tickets with the opportunity to explore the author’s home.
So, because of them, we have been able to know how the elusive Creator spends his free time and money. When you walk down the stairs in Oda’s gorgeous living room, the first thing you notice is the towering life-sized giraffe.
I couldn’t even find the exact reason for this interesting but awesome purchase. However, there are some threads claiming that Oda just has a comedic obsession with giraffes. And even stating that you can find one in almost every One Piece arc.
Oda’s life-sized giraffe (Credits: One Piece on YouTube)Oda Living Room
But this isn’t the only wild animal in Oda Safari-like home. You can take a ride on his robot zebra, and the zebra can move on its own and can even carry you around his house. But if this still doesn’t impress you, how about the four thousand dollar life-size Bruce Lee statue?
Oda is a massive Bruce Lee fan. He used to watch Bruce Lee’s movies countless times when he was growing up. The statue was designed and built to scale by Infinity Studio, and it really is insanely detailed.
It is in the same room as a pirate ship that Oda built himself, and in the center of it is a gigantic 10-person table. It’s perfect for hosting several guests at once because Oda doesn’t get much free time to spend with his friends or family.
Oda’s Living Room (Credits: One Piece on YouTube)Oda Inviting Guests
When he is feeling social, he wants to see everyone he cares about, so he throws parties that are so awesome even the straw hats will be proud.
This is a picture from a big barbecue through all the One Piece voice actors. Look at this massive grill that is cooking the biggest decks you might ever see. The person who is Shifting up the meat is Toshiro Furukawa, voice actor for Ace.
Ace’s Voice Actor (Credits: One Piece on YouTube)
The other party guests include Luffy’s voice actor, Boa Hancock, Brock, Jinbe, Usopp, Nami, Sabo, and even J-pop singer Yusuke Kamaji.
If you’re more of a fan of the sea train arc, you can take a ride on Oda’s personal indoor train that runs along his entire residence. Of course, Luffy’s voice actor was the very first one to take a joyride on the One Piece Express.
Maki Otsuki with Japanese professional wrestler Minoru Suzuki (Credits: One Piece on YouTube)
Sitting behind Mayumi is J-pop Superstar Maki Otsuki, also known by One Piece fans as the singer behind the iconic OST memories. Sitting toward the rear is a Japanese professional wrestler, Minoru Suzuki.
When Oda has an idea, he doesn’t have to travel far to get to work on it, as he has a massive home manga studio built in. To really appreciate the size of his home studio, you have to remember that Japanese houses are way smaller on average than Western ones. Even having a yard in Japan is considered a luxury.
Eiichiro Oda with Iñaki Godoy (Credits: Netflix)Oda’s WorkStation
On the way to the studio, watch out for the Thriller bark zombie. They might jump out and scare you. To actually enter the studio, you have to spin a pirate ship stealing a wheel-design doorknob.
Oda’s personal workstation is huge, but like most creators, it is very messy. His desk is covered in the tools of his trade as well as thousands of books and research papers along with previous and future One Piece Concepts.
He creates hundreds of ideas that never make it into the story, but sometimes, he has an epiphany or a better spin on old ideas, so he keeps the references close. We can see one of the shelves completely full of Wano Concepts.
Oda also has a love for history and various mythologies, so books on these topics take up most of his shelf space. His impressive level of knowledge on these topics is reflected in his talent as a World Builder and lore-crafter.
Oda’s workstation (Credits: Toei Animation)Oda’s Assistance
There are also just Legos everywhere, but that’s just because Oda loves Legos. Oda keeps a Rubik’s Cube nearby at all times that he uses for brain exercise. He can solve it with one hand in under a minute.
As the creator of the greatest pirate story ever told, you could find pirate memorabilia just lying around, like several authentic pirate pistols. Oda doesn’t forget about his assistance, and they also have their own workstations not too far from his own.
Eiichiro Oda (Credits: Toei Animation)
Compared to most mangaka assistants, their workspace is huge, much bigger than the industry standard. Plus, it even comes with some unique amenities like digital atmospheric windows that can project any scene in the entire world.
His assistant said that they loved the fact that Oda added this feature for them and that their personal favorite theme is the aquarium. We can see how much Oda cares for his assistance.
When they were fish on display, we just felt less stressed.
Tour
The studio also comes with a full bar, a Candy Island, a popcorn machine, and even a crane game with rare items inside of it. None of these things are cheap, but it shows that Oda really cares a lot about his crew. If they ever do slack off, they have to deal with their supervisor, who looms over them at all times.
Oda loved the Terminator franchise, and it even inspired his lifelong fascination with cyborgs and robots, as I’m sure you can tell by watching One Piece.
A life-sized Terminator (Credits: Toei Animation)
A fun fact about this studio is it has a 100-inch TV. When Oda was buying it, the store clerk said it was way too big, and he even recommended the 90-inch TV to Oda instead, but Oda thought it would be way cooler to surprise his friend’s assistants with his original idea.
So he bought the one he envisioned. When he got back to the house, it was too large to fit through the entrance, so he had to destroy the entire wall of his house to have it carried in. This sounds exactly like something Luffy would do.
Action Figures
A hilarious part of the tour that would make any one-piece fan jealous is that Oda has a humongous figure collection, but the entire exhibit is only filled with One-piece figures.
I guess when you make the best series ever, you don’t really need any other series merchandise. If you thought you could even poop normally in Odar’s house, you underestimated Oda.
You have to sit on a shark toilet with giant sharks that hover over you and an entire shark-themed bathroom that is only a little bit terrifying. Why? It’s just because Oda really loves the classic movie Jaws.
When Oda has an idea, he just goes for it, which is one of the main reasons he is able to build such an interesting world filled with unique character designs. He just doesn’t do it normally. Oda’s bath is a dragon bathtub that he designed himself. He likes it so much that it even got a cameo in a One Piece cover art featuring Vivi scrubbing it.
Oda’s action figure collection (Credits: Toei Animation)Ai Waifu
But what do you do when you’re tired of just drawing Waifu, and you want to talk to one for real? Well, when you’re as wealthy as Oda, you just buy a real one. Oda admitted in an interview that he bought an AI holographic waifu.
The virtual anime girl can carry on full conversations. She can tell you good morning when you wake up and bye when you leave for work. It even welcomes you home after a long day.
This isn’t the only holographic purchase; and he also has a projector that can create virtual soccer or football fields. Oda is basically living in the future.
Ai Waifu (Credits: Gatebox)Charity
Oda has bought a lot of cool stuff, but in Japan, he is also renowned as a hero for using his vast resources to help out those in need. On April 16, 2016, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated the Kumamoto prefecture.
The massive earthquake destroyed thousands of homes, businesses, and several important historical sites. In the following weeks, two huge donations were made to help out the recovery effort. The first one was a 300 million yen donation by Eiichiro Oda.
Oda was born and raised in Kumamoto, and seeing it destroyed really hurt him. But not just Oda, apparently because shortly after, there was another donation, this one for 500 million yen, and it was submitted under the name Monkey D. Luffy, making Luffy the only anime protagonist to do real-life philanthropy.
Luffy Statue Around Japan (Credits: Toei Animation)
Oda has helped and donated to several other rebuild projects and Charities, like making train mappings and giving away custom art that can be sold and donated to other recovery Charities.
He’s also done several other collaborative projects that donated 100% of their progress to charities—helping out earthquake victims across Japan. In case you didn’t know, Japan suffers from the most earthquakes of any country.
Straw Hats Statue Around Japan
Oda did another art giveaway to help with covert efforts as well. In 2018, to show their gratitude for Oda’s numerous contributions, the local government erected a broad statue of Luffy outside of their office.
They announced a project that eight more statues were coming soon for other members of the Straw Hats, each in an area that was damaged the most by the earthquakes.
Immediately, 31 other statues were requested by various areas. Sanji’s was located in the town of Mashiki—Usopp’s in front of Aso station. Tony-Tony Choppers was revealed in front of Kumamoto City Botanical Garden.
Brooks is located in Mifuni town. Franky is guarding the Takamura station. The most recent additions were Zoro’s, Nami’s, Nico Robbin’s, and Jinbe’s.
Straw Hats Statue Around Japan (Credits: Toei Animation)
And if you’re wondering why they are spending so much of their relief money on statues. It actually makes a lot of sense. Besides honoring Oda, the idea is that it will make the area a new tourist attraction in hopes of drumming up some new business and rebuilding the local economy, which does seem to be working.
Shoka University surveyed thousands of people between 2019 and 2020 who had visited the loopy statue. The study estimates that around 55,221 visitors per year come just to see the straw hats, bringing in at least 2.6 billion yen directly into the city.
If you thought this story couldn’t get even more wholesome, Oda wrote it up back, so that’s how all these statues come together, giving the monuments their own Canon lore.
According to the story, Luffy’s crew landed in Kumamoto, saw all the damage, and decided to help out. Luffy deployed his crew around the prefecture, sending one to a place where their skill set would be the most useful. Each statue has an information board, teaching visitors about the local areas, and the damage is abstained.
