One night back in the second grade my friend Harrison was spending the night at my house. It was a weekend, and I was showing my friend Naruto (this show I liked about ninjas). Normally after Naruto I had to go to sleep, but my parents let me stay up later because I had a friend over. This being the first time I ever staid up to watch TV I really didn't know any of the shows that came on after Naruto, so I had no idea that this show about pirates was about. Thankfully my friend Harrison was there to explain the show to me. Now their is more to this story including my original experience, my rediscovery, and my first time reading the manga, but those are not important for now. What is important is how that story relates to the show itself. One single small event (staying up just a little later) has turned into the first step to me entering one of my top 3 favorite fandom. So without taking up any more time let's dig into One Piece.
Plot:
Their once was a pirate named Gold Roger. He had wealth, fame, and power beyond your wildest dreams. After he got this, and everything else the world had to offer he become known as the King of the Pirates. His rain would sadly turn into a quick one as Gold Roger was one day caught and scheduled to be executed. Before the government publicly executed him as an example to any other future pirates they allowed him his final words. Suddenly, the whole crowd of people who came to see the last moments of the pirate king became quiet. Everyone wanted to here this. Their was a pause until someone in the crowd yield "Where did you hind all of your treasure Roger?" Then Roger spoke, "You want my treasure? You can have it! I left everything I gathered together in one place. Now you'll just have to find it!" Those words created a spark throughout the world. It was a spark fueled by the possibility of wealth, fame, power, and adventure. Whatever it was fueled by it caused people from around the world to head to sea as pirates. One of these people is a young boy named Luffy. Luffy wants nothing more then to sail across the world and to become the next king of the pirates by finding the legendary treasure Roger spoke of, now called the One Piece.
It is hard to really capture what works about One Piece because so much of it does. For starters the show's formula works well for a long running show. Each island can act as it's own story and when a new idea for a story comes up Luffy and his crew can just head over to the next island. However what makes this different from other things like Bleach or (for a while) Naruto is that One Piece has an ending. It has the same ending that it was going to have back when the manga was going to last 5 year. The reason is that the writer of the manga enjoys it so much and keeps coming up with new ways to expanded the story and the world.
Speaking of the world oh my god is it amazing. The world of One Piece has never been given a name to my knowledge, but it is amazingly detailed and interesting. I could (and have) spent hours discussing the political climate of One Piece and the power struggles the factions have. I could The geography of the world is also an interesting topic. One which I may come back to in a future post.
The character of the manga are amazing. At the moment their are 9 people on the Straw Hat Pirate crew (Luffy's crew) and all of them are very well developed characters. Yes they all have their quirks and some goofy moment's but every single of of these characters have a powerful backstory that define their motivations. And that's just the main cast. Every arc creates a lot of supporting cast members for that arc, and a lot of them get backstory themselves. These are characters who never needed back stories because they would only appear, but hey still got some. The characters of this world is really where the emotional wait of this series comes from.
One Piece is my favorite anime of all time. When I got caught up to the English dub I started watching it in Japanese. When I caught up to the anime I started reading the manga. I know wait for ever new chapter of the book to come out. Now after all the praise I gave this book this will sound weird for me to say this, but I don't really recommend this show. I say this for one reason alone. The show/manga is so long. The book is a year younger then me, That is an insane amount of reading and watching the anime will be even more because of the few filler arcs. While the other anime I've talked about could be watched in a weekend at most, One Piece will take months to catch up on. So, if you really want something to sink your teeth into I can say this is the series for you. If you think you may not have the time for it then you defiantly don't. But with all that said and done I still love One Piece from the very bottom of my heart.
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