(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧ Animes

[Niku]

Reading One Piece is a trap second only to watching it.

You're really going to have to hard sell me on that one, because I recall reading it for a while when it first came out (maybe, 1/20th of where it is now?) and IMO it was pretty standard big-roster shonen battle fare, albeit a better class of such. Never really hooked me in.

Not to mention now that it's at 1000+ chapters that only reinforces that perception.

I genuinely believe it's a fallacy to treat One Piece with the "it only gets good after X!" gloves, but I do think that what makes One Piece so good only really unfurls and reinforces itself over time. When it comes to world building, Oda is pretty much first-in-class (though Ryoko Kui as mentioned is REALLY DAMN GOOD at this too and I also definitely recommend DiD) and doesn't fall into a lot of the tropes of shonen power scaling and upgrades-for-upgrades sake to lead to Moar Fights. Even the moments that most feel like this tend to be planting seeds for other things down the line, because what he absolute excels at is the long-term payoff. There's a reason it's 1000+ chapters when stuff that happens in like chapter 50 gets an emotional resonance 300 chapters later that you don't expect to pop up and knock you on your ass. When he introduces THE GREATEST SWORDSMAN IN THE WORLD in the first couple of arcs, you don't find out there's some secret better Swordsman down the line when he gets his butt kicked by Power Level 3; 1000 chapters later he's still holding claim to that crown. There are entire arcs that subvert everything you'd expect about "and then they train and beat the NEXT bad guy" in really fun and interesting ways, and characters organically stay relevant to the plot even when you might think the story will be done with them or relegate them entirely to the sidelines like a lot of the DBZ family after their introductory arcs are over. The longer the series goes, the less the "each protagonist gets a silly little fight to do in their new location against their new adversaries" becomes the norm also.

The closest thing I can really compare it to in terms of long term character growth and planning is The Venture Bros because of just how clockwork everything feels; for all that One Piece is so goddamn long, I can genuinely only think of two moments that feel even vaguely like "ass-pulls" for the story it's telling, and even those are more a matter of plot convenience over "aw well he couldn't come up with a good reason for this to happen now so he just made up some crap that doesn't really fit the knowledge we already had up until now". And now that the series is in its endgame, stuff feels like it is moving at an absolute lightning clip to bring it all home for the grand finale.

It is still shonen battle fare, it's just the best shonen battle fare has ever been and might ever be. (Also the Netflix series is actually a very fun adaptation and easily the best of their ill-advised Live Action conversions even if I feel it fumbles the ball in a couple of places on driving home certain plot beats.)

The downsides: again, it is shonen battle fare for a lot of the readtime. There are some extremely unfortunate transphobic gags based mostly around a certain character kinda around the midpoint of the series which are thankfully somewhat made up for by some extremely good trans characters in more recent parts of the story and also Anime Frank N Furter. Some storylines feel a little more frivolous in the moment until you get to their eventual payoffs. Robin won't participate in Pirate Docking.

[Mongrel]

I genuinely believe... [snip]

So the thing is that those are all structural arguments, like, how the author works, but there's nothing really there about the story? I can respect Oda for being very good at his craft, but like, I want to know why I should give a shit about this actual story?

It's a nominally a pirate-based Shonen Battle series, but I recall it didn't feel very Pirate-y, really, which stood to reason because Luffy's goals were invariably going to lead to "I have to beat up a lot of guys". The piracy seemingly gave the story a more coherent reason than most Shonen Battles for having a "crew" as the Likeable Protagonist goes through the pretty common process of pokéballing adversaries as the saga shuffles along (as opposed to more solo-driven Shonen Battle series), but not much more than that.

[timeskip]

Anyway, sorry to disappoint, but after writing the above I wandered off to read up some, and it's all just a whirling galaxy of names, species, locations, powers, uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, and fighting techniques and I am preeetty sure One Piece never turned into something I'd ever be big on.

I mean, the worldbuilding, as you say is interesting, enough that I read about it for a few hours and am kind of interested in if Oda can possibly stick a landing even half-worthy of the buildup for that (i.e. what's the treasure, void century, D, etc.), but at no point was I like "Hey I wonder what happens to this specific character."

[beatbandito]

The overall story and lore of one piece is well-designed but pretty generic and boring. And the more big reveals we've been getting lately the more "oh... that was it?" it's becoming.

The actual value of One Piece is that every 100 chapters or so a character will say they feel worthless and are better off dead, then Luffy will yell at them and do something impossible to prove that there is value in all life. One of the first arc, Shells Town and meeting Zorro, shows this off pretty well. But it's far from the best realization of the concept.

[Mongrel]

I did chuckle that apparently Oda had to specifically state "No, the real treasure is not 'the friends we made along the way', it's... treasure."

[Niku]

Anyway, sorry to disappoint

Yeah to be clear no disappointment other than it’s always cool when people do get into something new, but some stuff just won’t be for everyone and that’s totally fine! If Shonen battle stuff isn’t your thing AND you even gave it a try and you bounced off, that’s more than most people who won’t try in the first place and I don’t think it’s the kind of series that can by itself turn around peoples opinion on Shonen tropes.

I do think anyone who won’t engage with One Piece but will read Naruto or My Hero Academia deserve to be launched into the sun, on the other hand.

Just to continue on the story/plot: the plot itself is exactly what it seems like on the tin. It’s a heroes journey; Luffy gathers his party in pursuit of his goal and overcomes obstacles along the way.

The story is, to mostly nutshell it, about the ways in which fascism stomps out individuals’ dreams and how the entire structure needs to be torn out at the roots. The big story points beyond “characters interact and bounce off of one another” and “the crew arrives someplace new, identifies a problem, and works to overcome it” making up the episodic bits tend to be about the gradual erosion of systemic oppression and rising resistance to a seemingly intractable world government. The reason Luffy et al rarely act like pirates should is because Luffy is a fuckin idiot who really thinks there’s nothing more to being a pirate than “no one can tell me what to do” and how this inevitably and eventually extends to “fuck you, YOU can’t tell anyone what to do” and leads to him declaring outright war against Waterworld Fascists. It’s very much a story about the new generation rejecting everything that the old generation takes for granted as simply being the way that it is. Which is why it resonates a lot right now. Luffy wants to be free, and he wants everyone to have the opportunity to be free, and that turns him into an unstoppable wrecking ball against the forces that want to keep the world oppressed and ignorant, and you love to see it.

The actual value of One Piece is that every 100 chapters or so a character will say they feel worthless and are better off dead, then Luffy will yell at them and do something impossible to prove that there is value in all life.

it’s also this and any time someone makes one of luffy’s friends cry you know you’re about to see the sickest shit

[Mongrel]

Yeah, I mean that much was pretty obvious, standard anti-fascism fare - which is fine! And yes, Luffy seems to be mainly revolutionary-adjacent, even if he's not on Team Dragon Dad (yet?).

But yeah, really my impression after a couple hours down the rabbit hole was "this world is really cool but I simply do not care about any of these characters... except maybe Gol D. Roger, and he's not an actual character, just more worldbuilding."

[Mongrel]

Decided to finally read OPM, and yeah it's just good solid, funny entertainment. It's pretty nice when hype doesn't let you down (even if it's old hype).

I doubt I need to do a review, but I just wanted to say that the bit where Saitama offhandedly compares the nazi MMA guy to corn was



Got a good 5 min of laughing outta me.

[Mongrel]

I was a bit worried about Dungeon Meshi at first because it didn't seem to really be going anywhere and I had some trouble in letting it hook me in. The cookbook gimmick is cute and Kui commits to it fully and completely, but that was never gonna carry a story on its own, at least no more so than any other gimmick-based or themed manga. Like other themed manga sometimes it actively detracted from scenes, moreso in the ending chapters (really, not EVERY philosophical musing or pivotal emotional moment has to be a mealtime analogy!), but we've all seen far more grating THE HEART OF THE CARDS stuff, and really it wasn't glaringly out of place too often. And in fairness, desire and appetite at least stretch to relate to far more material than, uh, tennis, or twintails or w/e.

On a more overall basis, I feel like it comes out a cut above (ho ho) mainly because Kui set it up in a more traditional novel-like format, bucking the common tendency for all comic-form media, not just shonen, or even manga, to publish until either the author or audience grows sick of it. In Dungeon Meshi's case, you just have a nice, tightly-structured plot, and once the story itself actually picks up to becomes more than an oddball Michelin guide, everything moves briskly and events come together quite nicely. The world-building is quite good, the characters pleasantly above-average, and the generally cheerful and upbeat tone made for a tidy little tale - it was noticeable how actively-malicious or venal people were by no means absent from the world or lacked a voice, but they tended to be relegated to the sidelines as minor characters, and even these had some dimensions to them.

For some reason OPM is actually better at making me hungry though? Hah. Funny how that turned out.

Also was it really running for 8 years? Jeez it felt like it's only been around for a couple, but then it's not like I pay super-close attention to new releases.