One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda pays a bittersweet tribute to Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama and one of his favorite hobbies

Manga creator Eiichiro Oda – who last week announced that One Piece would be taking a three week “scheduled maintenance” break – has commented once again on the recent passing of his friend, and fellow legendary mangaka, Akira Toriyama.

As spotted by the One Piece Podcast on Twitter (@OnePiecePodcast), Oda, writing in the latest issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump, said of his friend and colleague, “Right now he’s got a halo on his head and he’s saying ‘Sure is tough to be a mangaka’ while building models without a care in the world.”

This is a bittersweet reference to the Dragon Ball creator’s well-known love of model making. Another twitter user, @NamedPuff followed the post up with a couple of vintage photographs of Toriyama and his mountains of models – mostly cars and motorbikes, but also Star Wars vehicles, including an A-Wing fighter and an AT-AT Walker.

This is not the first time that Oda has commented on Toriyama’s passing. Hours after the news broke that the creator had died at the age of 68, Oda reminisced of an early meeting with a creator he had long considered one of his personal heroes. “I have admired him so much since I was a child, so I remember the day he called me by name for the first time,” he wrote, adding, “He showed us the dream that manga can go worldwide. It was like watching a hero going forward.”

The final episode of One Piece for now is published today in Weekly Shōnen Jump #17. The series will resume in Weekly Shōnen Jump #21, date for April 22.

While One Piece is on hiatus, why not dig into some of the best manga of 2023?