StrangerAtaru wrote:
First of all, the week One Piece started was the second week of Takeshi-kun, Shimabukuro's first notable series.
Secondly, you also sort of need to remember the period which OP started in. For the most part people were spelling "doom" for Jump once DB ended and the mid-90s were somewhat of a weird transitional period for the magazine. There were a lot of variety, from the "hits" (Kenshin most notably) to the weirder "cult series" that made up that period (Pt. 5 JoJo, BOY, Nube, Makibaou, Houshin Engi, Wild Half) to those that were still sort of finding themselves (most notably YGO, which was still in or approaching the end of it's first year and was not in "obsessive card-game mode" yet...I''s is a maybe here but the mangaka was well known yet it was still newish) to...well, downright bombs or series that didn't quite bring out the fullest in the mangaka. (a few weeks later, Konomi's first series "COOL: Rental Bodyguard" started...which essentially bombed and was his first taste of the magazine pre-PoT) The only real consistent between the eras is KochiKame...but that's the old tortoise of the magazine so it essentially is exempt from this equation.
The fact that OP essentially captured lightning in a bottle and exploded onto the Japanese scene so early and so amazingly is somewhat of a fluke and doesn't happen that often. It's especially even harder now than it was then, with so many series lasting way longer due to both the magazine's obsession with consistency and mangaka obsessing in stretching out their stories to no end (and their readers letting them get away with it), whereas many 90s series would be impressive to get to 200/250.
What this has to do with Toriko...well, it pretty much impressed Japan from go, but there is still a bit of time to see whether or not it really is something that is what we think it is since it debuted in '08.
