[Manga] One Piece - Page 998

On January 28 2015 04:56 Hyperbola wrote:
In a recent radio interview Oda confirmed that the reason for Sanji and co's disappearence was the declining popularity of certain straw hat characters. Jump saw a decrease in enthusiasm in their best seller and with the ending of one of their more popular series (naruto) they needed to revamp the popularity of some of their long running serials like One Piece. Basically they told Oda to add in more "fresh blood" and thus we have the introduction of so many new reoccuring characters. This arc is in some sense a trial by fire to add new real estate to the manga while scrapping some of the old temporarily.
My biggest fear is that this won't be a temporary change and that some of the least popular straw hats will stay gone or become side actual characters. And while I do think getting rid of Sanji is the right move, I dont want to lose Brooke or Nami. We'll see where this takes us but it's very possible that this temporary change might turn into something less temporary.

On January 28 2015 10:21 Sentenal wrote:
One Piece's plot, and which characters get focused on, isn't dictated by the character polls. I mean hell, look at #6, and hes been dead for what, 5 years? Holy shit, has it really been 5 years...?