As My Hero Academia ends, One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda pays a touching tribute to its creator Kōhei Horikoshi with a gorgeous reworking of his teenage fan art
Aug. 5, 2024Horikoshi sent him the art 22 years ago
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After 10 years and more than 400 instalments, Kōhei Horikoshi’s world-conqueringMy Hero Academiahas finally come to a close. Chapter 430 of the hit manga was published in the most recent issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump andon the VIZ websiteyesterday, offering a tantalizing glimpse at the future of Deku and his classmates. To mark the occasion, One Piece creator – and Horikoshi’s friend –Eiichiro Odapaid tribute to the series with a drawing that highlights the bond between the two artists.
The cover of One Piece Chapter 1,122 (below) depicts the villainous Smoker blazing away on two cigars, with the words “Hero Academia” visible in the background. It’s accompanied with the caption: “Cover request: Redraw the artwork of Smoker a boy from Aichi Prefecture submitted 22 years ago.” The boy in question was actually the then-teenaged Horikoshi, who sent some fan art of Smoker to Oda all those years back before he was himself a professional artist.
Accompanying Oda’s drawing was a message that (when translated) reads: “So now you get to play Pokémon Go as much as you want! Congratulations on 10 years, Horikoshi Sensei!”
This isn’t the first time that Oda has used One Piece covers as a way to honor his fellow creators. He previously paid tribute to Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto with the cover for One Piece #766, which saw Luffy eating noodles with an unseen character implied to be Naruto himself. In a delightful bit of symmetry, Masashi Kishimoto added a Straw Hat Pirates logo to the cover of Naruto #700 as a nod to Oda and One Piece.
The final chapter of My Hero Academia is out now and can beread on the Shonen Jump website.
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Will Salmon is the Comics Editor for GamesRadar/Newsarama. He has been writing about comics, film, TV, and music for more than 15 years, which is quite a long time if you stop and think about it. At Future he has previously launched scary movie magazine Horrorville, relaunched Comic Heroes, and has written for every issue of SFX magazine for over a decade. He sometimes feels very old, like Guy Pearce in Prometheus. His music writing has appeared in The Quietus, MOJO, Electronic Sound, Clash, and loads of other places and he runs the micro-label Modern Aviation, which puts out experimental music on cassette tape.
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