This is somewhat old news by now, but, since we don't seem to have covered it here on this page, I'll go ahead.

First, here's a little blurb from the article:

"The statue of Luffy, raising his fist into the air, was erected to support post-quake reconstruction and also to celebrate the prefectural people’s honor award given to Eiichiro Oda, the author of "One Piece," who is from Kumamoto."

I happened to job by well after dark on the weekend the statue was installed, even at night, quite a few people were there to admire it.

-- Kirk