Originally posted by dadudemon
Says 4 hours, here:http://kotaku.com/5895485/one-pieces-creator-doesnt-sleep-much-sounds-totally-burnt-out
But, I take news reports like these as being propaganda by Jump to make it seem like the creators/writers are "ultra dedicated" to working on it. This is to endear the fans to be more loyal and also to encourage non-fans to consider the work because the mangaka's "work so very hard."
Take a page like this:
http://www.mangapanda.com/one-piece/737/9
Quite a bit going on in this panel. The art has improved, greatly, since initial serialization. It's clean, too.
Oda doesn't do most of that. 🙂
The art would be the most time-consuming aspect of One Piece, by the way. It contains the greatest amount of man-hours. The second largest time sink on mangas, from big names like One Piece, is on planning/administrative efforts. There are meetings about the story direction, presentations, voting on new characters, etc. It's weird but it is a business and it is treated just like a major project. The Demming Cycle is a huge part of Japanese businesses and mangas are not excluded from this business practice. I really wish I could find a link that says how many people work at Oda's office...but it is not just Oda making One Piece. I highly doubt Oda does much for the art in One Piece besides drawing up the rough sketches for the panels.
Now, let's pretend the 3 to 4 hour number is legit. That's his own choice. If Oda wanted an assistant to help with the illustration (an additional one among his multiple assistants) so he could sleep more, he'd only need to ask Shueisha for another assistant.
In conclusion, it's very naive of you to believe things such as, "Oda only sleeps 3 hours a night because he work so hard on One Piece!!" At this point, I think believing stuff like that is similar to believing in Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny. If you feel that I am talking down to you, it is because I am. You should know better because you're an intelligent skeptic and highly educated man.
I'd like to follow up my post, here, with another point of proof.
http://www.mangahere.co/manga/claymore/v23/c155.1/9.html
Claymore author, Yagi, has 5 assistants. While his Manga was moderately popular, it was not a mega-popular manga like Naruto or One Piece. The manga was also published monthly. While the chapters are 5-10 pages longer than the weekly One Piece manga (only sometimes), the art was not that much more complicated.
To put this into perspective, likely, Oda has much more than just 5 assistants. Probably closer to 10-12.
So when you read that he "works so very hard!!!" and sleeps 2-6 hours a night, that's most definitely marketing bullshit. Oda probably doesn't have to do much work at all except during the storyboarding and acceptance parts of his job. Keep in mind that Yagi stated that he spends "quite a bit of time on storyboarding" which was why he said it was 3 days (and the interviewer was utterly shocked at 3 days because that is a very long time to storyboard even for a monthly manga). And Yagi considered what he did to be an absurd amount of storyboarding. So it should be likely that Oda doesn't do that much storyboarding. After the storyboarding is done (and the producers accept the work), the work is handed off to the assistants to finish. Here's something crazy: Oda may only actually work 8 hours each week. He may work 4 here, 2 there, 2 here, but he definitely is not some 19 year old college student trying to hit it big as a mangaka between classes and studying.
Tite Kubo seems to be an extreme example of "doesn't do much." He seems to have delved further into the marketing of his "brand" than most mangaka's. He definitely enjoys and lavishes in his celebrity. Not that I blame him. And why not? He busted his ass over a decade ago and then hit it big. Good on him for enjoying the fruits of his labors! 😄