One Piece #1
One Piece #1 from Carlsen Comics marks the German-language debut of what would become the best-selling manga series ever produced — introducing readers in the German-speaking world to Monkey D. Ruffy, Lorenor Zorro, and Nami, the founding trio of the Straw Hat Pirates, under their distinctively Germanized names. The volume contains the entire Romance Dawn Arc in eight chapters, planting every seed of the series' core themes — freedom, loyalty, and the dream of becoming Pirate King — in a self-contained story that doubled as both an origin story and a proof of concept for Eiichiro Oda's expansive world-building. Its publication in early 2001 was part of the first wave of Weekly Shōnen Jump titles to receive a German tankōbon edition, helping to establish a sustained manga market in Germany that has since reached over 112 volumes of this series alone. The Carlsen edition also introduced readers to a translation philosophy that deliberately adapted character names for the German phonetic and cultural environment, making this volume a landmark artifact in the localization history of manga in Europe.
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Eiichiro Oda first serialized One Piece in Weekly Shōnen Jump beginning on July 22, 1997, after developing the concept from his Romance Dawn one-shots of 1996–1997, having previously served as an assistant to Rurouni Kenshin author Nobuhiro Watsuki. The original Japanese first tankōbon was collected and published by Shueisha on December 24, 1997. Carlsen Verlag — a Hamburg-based publisher with a long history in Franco-Belgian and children's comics — brought the series to Germany via a collaboration with Shueisha, releasing the first German volume on or around February 15, 2001, coinciding with the launch of the companion Banzai! magazine, a monthly German-language adaptation of Weekly Shōnen Jump that ran from November 2001 through December 2005. The German edition featured localized sound effects, alternate cover designs with a blue background and a modified logo, and Germanized character names that were applied retroactively to wanted posters and visual text throughout the series.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published by Carlsen Manga (Carlsen Verlag GmbH, Hamburg) on February 15, 2001; ISBN 978-3-551-74581-1; 208 pages.
- First German-language appearance of Monkey D. Ruffy (Monkey D. Luffy), Lorenor Zorro (Roronoa Zoro), and Nami — the core founding trio of the Straw Hat Pirates.
- Contains all eight chapters of the Romance Dawn Arc, the complete opening story arc of the series — the only volume, along with Volumes 12, 61, and 90, to contain an entire arc.
- Chapter 1, 'Romance Dawn — The Dawn of the Adventure,' is the longest single chapter in the entire One Piece series as of 2026, at approximately 54 pages, with a partial color opening as was standard for new Weekly Shōnen Jump series premieres.
- Nami makes her first appearance in Chapter 8 ('Introducing Nami'), though she is only briefly introduced — her full backstory and permanent membership in the crew come later in the series.
- The German edition applied Germanized character names throughout: 'Ruffy' for Luffy (due to the L/R phonetic ambiguity in Japanese katakana) and 'Zorro' for Zoro, name changes that were then carried into the German anime dub on RTL II beginning April 22, 2003.
- The series also appeared in serialized form in Banzai!, the first German manga anthology aimed at boys, launched by Carlsen in November 2001 in collaboration with Shueisha.
- Creator Eiichiro Oda developed the One Piece concept from two prototype 'Romance Dawn' one-shots (1996–1997), working as an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki before winning the Hop Step Award for new artists.