Color Walk 6: Gorilla

ONE PIECE Color Walk: GORILLA Highlights

On January 4, 2014, the latest volume of the One Piece Color Walk series was released. The Color Walks each feature color pages from the One Piece manga series.

The volume includes color illustrations published between 2008 to 2010 (from the Saobody Archipelago Arc to the Marineford Arc) as well as a special Strong World poster, sketches and more.

Color Walk: Gorilla also includes a discussion (or “Monochrome Talk”) between Eiichiro Oda and the legendary doll-maker Tsujimura Jusaburô. The interview includes high quality pictures of the dolls made by Tsujimura.

The four-page discussion talks about all sorts of topics and gives us also some insight into how Oda decides to draw certain of his characters. Oda explains that Tsujimura’s figures were the inspiration for the face design for Fukaboshi, the oldest son of Neptune in the Fishman Island Arc. According to Oda, the scope of what is defined as a “cool character” in manga is rather limited, and it results in a lot of similar character designs. By taking inspiration from other media, such as Tsujimura’s figures, that is based on the Kabuki’s concept of stylistic beauty, Oda wants to try and broaden the possibilities for “cool” character designs in manga. However, Oda found out afterwards that the readers believed his character art had deteriorated after introducing Fukaboshi, meaning that Oda would risk readers not approving of his new designs if he were to want to experiment anyway.

Finally, the first edition of the One Piece Color Walk: Gorilla also includes small stickers of One Piece volume covers 1 to 60.

The book is 114 pages long, A4 size and is available at ¥1550 (approximately US$15.00).