In the mentally challenging work of creating a manga, creative genius Kohei Horikoshi, the creator of My Hero Academia, has often found inspiration from Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece. The mangaka often drew amazing storylines from the rich and immersive manga that showcased Oda-Sensei’s brilliance as an artist and how he has kept his audience hooked for 27 years.
Needless to say, the Shonen series has significantly impacted the manga and anime industry as OP has become the manga with over 523 million copies sold. When Horikoshi got an opportunity to meet his idol, he was delighted and sat down with him for a talk. However, during the chat, Oda-Sensei praised the mangaka for his work, which eventually made him delay his MHA.
Eiichiro Oda Praises Kohei Korikoshi For His Creative Brilliance
Kohei Horikoshi has made a major impact in the anime and manga industry with his magnum opus, My Hero Academia. The manga narrates the story of Izuku Midoriya, a boy living in a world where everyone possesses superpowers. However, he lacks superpowers, but he never let his shortcomings come between his dreams of becoming the greatest superhero like his idol, All Might.
Soon, he joins a school to get closer to his dream, and he faces several foes to understand what it means to be a superhero. Horikoshi-san often finds himself drawing inspiration from Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece and often challenges himself to create a story that could rival his idol.
During a special interview featuring both Eiichiro Oda and Kohei Horikoshi shared by a fan on r/BokuNoHeroAcademia, a subreddit dedicated to discussing everything about MHA, the creator of MHA shared “To be honest, that single piece of art was enough to satisfy me…”
Oda-sensei asked the young mangaka if he had thoughts such as ““My art is good enough to be published!” or something along those lines?” Horikoshi-san replied,
“Well, simply knowing that my name would forever be etched into the annals of One Piece was enough for me. [laughs]”
Oda-Sensei praised Horikoshi-san for his fan art that was published in a volume of One Piece in 2002, saying, “Maybe I should’ve given you something to be frustrated about instead. [laughs]”
The comment made the mangaka ecstatic as he went on to take a longer duration in coming up with the arcs of his series so that he could come up with arcs that were longer and rivaled Oda-san in terms of quality.
Kohei Horikoshi Was Inspired By Eiichiro Oda To Create The Longest Arc for His Series
During an interview from 2018 with Comic Natalie via AitaiKimochi, Kohei Horikoshi shared how he wanted to challenge himself in creating one of the longest arcs in his Shonen Series, that matched the story quality of One Piece. The mangaka shared that he commenced the Internship Arc inspired by One Piece’s Wano Arc, which went on for a long time.
He said,
“When I started the internship arc, I was thinking that I wanted to make this the longest arc so far. Up until now, even the longest arcs for BNHA spanned no more than two volumes. However, series such as ONE PIECE have arcs that keep going and going, right?”
He added,
“I wanted to challenge myself in creating a long arc like that. Also, I needed to introduce characters that will be present in the last arc of the Boku No Hero Academia story, so I wanted to plan this all out. To tell the truth though, when I was writing the internship arc, it was really hard to push through. In the middle of the arc I thought to myself, “I can’t do this.””
Nevertheless, the mangaka lived up to his challenge, as the arc continued almost the whole of 2017, having a total of 41 chapters that were divided into 5 different volumes.
One Piece can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
