One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.

Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!

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The other day, I settled in to read brand-new Jump serialization Ruri Dragon. I happened to see the magazine’s cover for the issue where the series made its debut, and noticed that, right there in the upper-right corner, looming over Ruri’s titular dragon girl protagonist, is Monkey D. Luffy. Rendered, admittedly, in a mildly frightening style.

I bring this up not just to plug my column on the first Ruri chapter (although you should read that, if you like these columns), but because it’s a serious testament to One Piece‘s longevity. A real reminder of just what, exactly, we’re all in for here. There it is, getting second billing on the cover of the same magazine it debuted in 25 years earlier. It’s kind of astonishing, in a way! Just something to keep in the back of your head as we start the second volume today. The second volume of 102 and counting.

I’m going to take a moment to discuss the chapter-opening splash art from this point onward, because regular commenter Robinhood recently informed me that they are actually canon to the manga itself, and sometimes cross into its main events. This one, for our chapter today, is on the chill side, depicting Zolo and Luffy hanging out with a cow. I’m curious about when exactly this is supposed to have happened—maybe after the two defeated Captain Morgan but before they left town?—but it’s a nice scene nonetheless.

The chapter proper is another matter entirely. Quite a bit happens here, but the first thing that gets established is the obvious. We’re introduced to the man after whom this volume is named, Captain Buggy.

I absolutely love his introductory sequence. In just a few pages, we get the sense that he’s powerful but temperamental. Already angered about his stolen map, Buggy uses his devil fruit powers to force-choke a crewman for a completely imagined insult about his nose. Not content to simply suffocate the man, Buggy floats him over in front of his ship’s cannon and, has the rest of his crew fire on the poor sap. That is how you introduce a villain.

He cuts a simultaneously ridiculous and intimidating figure. On the one hand; he’s a pirate clown. On the other hand, the sheer amount of anger he unloads for something so petty actually makes him seem more scary, not less. The heavy shadowing he’s depicted with helps too (a part of me just imagines how much of a pain in the ass getting something to ink like that must be, but it is quite a nice technique).

It becomes clear over the course of the chapter that Buggy and his crew have all but run the townsfolk out of this particular port. People are just that scared of him.

One person who isn’t, though? Nami, who, throughout the 15 or so pages dedicated to her and Luffy’s part of the story here, hatches a scheme to infiltrate Buggy’s crew and make off with his treasure. That’s a bold play, and it comes only at the very end of the chapter. But we get a good sense of who Nami is here, in general. She’s willing to camp out in some abandoned house not far from the tavern where Buggy and co. are making their base, while having stolen from him. That’s pretty gutsy!

Also, perhaps predictably, she and the rather blunt Luffy do not initially get on super well. Especially when Luffy reveals himself as a pirate and Nami makes known her strong distaste of the profession. She also takes offense to the notion that she’s just stealing stuff (or, y’know, houses) that Buggy’s crew have left lying around.

We don’t learn exactly what the deal is with her anti-pirate grudge here, although I suspect we will before too long. (This is ignoring that it’s not like it’s unreasonable to dislike pirates if you’re living during your world’s golden age of piracy. This is a genre manga, there’ll usually be some single, concrete explanation for such things.)

Nami does also reveal the motive behind her double-piracy here. Or at least, she kind of does. Because this is a sort of bonkers thing to say sans context, and she doesn’t really give us that context. It’s a great bit of plotwork, actually, because something this off-beat is pretty much guaranteed to stick in your head until we get an “ohhhh”-inducing explanation some number of chapters or volumes down the line.

^{Assuming a “berry” is roughly about a yen, a hundred million of them is about $743,000 USD. If it’s actually closer in value to a US dollar, then it’s about $100,000,000 USD.}

In general, Nami gets off some pretty great dialogue here. Luffy is almost able to convince her to sign up for his crew by appealing to her skill as a navigator, but she simply can’t ally herself with pirates. (….For now, anyway. I’m sure that will eventually change.)

Also, she says this?

^{“100,000,000 Berries can buy many tangerines.”}

^{“Explain how.”}

^{“Money can be exchanged for goods and services.”}

But in any case, she pretends to eventually acquiesce to Luffy’s need for a navigator, if only he’ll take her to see Buggy the Clown, first. Luffy, somewhat incredibly, agrees to do this. Nami promptly ties him up and offers him to the clown captain as collateral to join his crew.

^{Spare a thought for the teenagers who read this when it was new and promptly discovered something about themselves.}

And on this note, the chapter pretty much ends!

But, don’t worry too much about Luffy. A certain someone is coming to the rescue.

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