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!
Something that may not have been immediately obvious is that yesterday’s chapter was the end of its volume. To me, this is a little odd, given that that felt more like the dead middle of a story arc than the start or end of one. But on the other hand, maybe it’s building to something more. Certainly, the new volume has a promising title.
We open on a dramatic irony, Kaya buying a gift for “Klahadore”, to commemorate the third anniversary of his arriving at the estate. This sets a pattern that recurs throughout the chapter. Despite her warm feelings for Usopp, Kaya very much believes that her butler is a kind person who has only her best interests at heart.
Usopp, meanwhile, has predictably found his warning of the impending pirate raid to be met with incredulity, and, eventually, torches and pitchforks. Things do not go any better when he tries to convince Kaya that her butler is out to get her. In fact, they escalate quickly and unpleasantly.
And indeed Usopp eventually resorts to trying to physically drag Kaya out of her manor. This goes about as well as you’d expect, and culminates with Kaya—who, remember, has no context for any of this—slapping Usopp.
Driven farther out of town, Usopp deliberately drives off the three children who follow him around and pretend to be his “crew” by claiming that this pirate attack, too, is all a lie. He does this so they won’t get hurt, but it’s clear that the hit to his pride bothers him. Toward’s the chapter’s end it really does seem like he intends to face the incoming horde of the Black Cat pirates all on his own.
But, of course, One Piece is not that sort of manga. Don’t go expecting Usopp to die heroically alone here.
Tomorrow; Luffy’s crew vs. Captain Kuro’s.
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Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Erase, delete, eradicate, and beautify.
It opens like this; sunrise over a peaceful Tokyo, a gleaming monument to some sin or glory enshrined in the skyline. Our lead, Chisato Nishikigi (Chika Anzai), does stretches in front of her apartment window. A call comes in, and she’s out the door like a bolt of lightning. She monologues, extolling the virtues of Japanese politeness and the serenity of her hometown at dawn while the visuals supercut through scenes of high school girls packing pistols as they apprehend criminals. One appears to execute somebody. These are the Lycoris—named for the spider lily—agents who manufacture the peace that this Tokyo’s citizens enjoy.
Halfway across town, she arrives in time to see another such high school supercop toting a chain gun—that’s Takina Inoue (Shion Wakayama), our other lead—gun down a room full of arms dealers, and nearly hit one of her teammates in the process. Chisato, watching from a building over, whoops and cheers.
Takina’s stunt, meanwhile, gets her expelled from her department—the “DA”—and transferred to Chisato’s, LycoReco, which is rather inexplicably based out of a cafe. (This was the source of much of the show’s early promotional material.) There, she meets Chisato herself, the enigmatic owner Mika (Kousuke Sakaki), and alternately tries to adjust to her new role and openly wonders how she might find her way back to the force.
This, all of it, is Lycoris Recoil. This missile barrage of violence, cute girls, cafes, and tension-ratcheting authoritarian imagery is how it chooses to open. There have been anime somewhat like this before—Princess Principal, RELEASE THE SPYCE, to a lesser extent Assault Lily Bouquet—but of them, this might have the most openly bonkers, beat-your-fucking-head-in introduction of all. There is a sublime unease to the juxtaposition of Chisato’s cheery, upbeat narration and the blunt violence of what we see, even as all of the visuals have a sleek, modern edge that distantly recalls but does not actually look like its ancestors in the “girls with guns” boom of the 2000s. (Rest in peace, Bee Train.)
The episode’s second half sees some additional context. The Chisato and Takina’s unit handles what one might charitably call odd jobs. Chisato’s description is….vague.
They help out at a daycare, then a Japanese-as-second language school, and deliver rare coffee grounds to a mob boss. In the second half of the episode, they help a woman deal with a stalker. The woman’s stalkers turn out to be connected to the same arms deal that got Takina shunted over to Chisato’s unit, and Lycoris Recoil quickly establishes that in its world, everything is a connected, dizzying clockwork of interlocking plots and motivations. Coincidence is for suckers. That’s how we go from “three girls talking out a problem in a restaurant” to “hostage situation” in perhaps ten real-time minutes.
Takina actually intentionally lets the woman get kidnapped, to lure them out. Real piece of work, this girl.
This is all also connected to a mysterious hacker named Walnut—think The Laughing Man from Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex if he had a fursona1—and an eccentric, sinister billionaire named Allen Adams, who at one point we see cause an explosion in a building by remotely tapping a few commands into his Tesla’s touchscreen.
The inevitable and valid question is what all this adds up to, but the fact of the matter is that we simply don’t know yet. It’s clear that Chisato, despite her sunny front, has seen some things. The “symbol of peace” in Tokyo is evidently the result of some situation that she was involved with, and in deed, if not by name, she’s famous throughout the country. She lets a few remarkably cynical comments slip a couple times, and, frankly, given that supporting character Mizuki Nakahara (Ami Koshimizu) notes that Lycorises (Lycori?) are often recruited from orphanages, it’s not hard to imagine why. She and Takina’s original department also seem to have very different ideas of how to keep a place safe and worth living in; her narration—and her habit of helping out just about anyone—point to a belief in focusing on the community itself. And the DA, well, we see them shoot people. It’s not hard to draw a contrast, there.
That may well be the source of Takina’s already-established tendency to use violence as her first and only solution to any obstacle in her way. And this is to say nothing of the Lycoris Cafe’s owner, Mika, who himself seems to be an old hand in the field, the aforementioned villains, the DA’s director, who seems to have her own agenda, and on and on. There are a lot of interesting characters in Lycoris Recoil, and an absolute ton happens, even in its first 24 minutes.
No matter what happens from here on out; Lycoris Recoil should be remembered for a premiere that hits like information overload. Between the silenced pistols and shining city streets, conspiracies form in the broken glass on the floor. I won’t pretend to have all—or even any—answers, as this is clearly a series with a lot going on. But to me, that is part of the adventure. What’s next is unknown and unknowable, and for us to discover together.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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!
I have to be honest, until now I haven’t been entirely on board with this arc. “Guy with a big nose learns not to lie” is….well, it’s pretty far away from my usual interests as a manga reader.
Today, secret murder plans get involved. That is drama I’m here for.
No wacky misunderstandings here; Klahadore has been going deep cover for the past three years as part of a winding long con to bump his ostensible mistress off and take her vast fortune. That weird backwards-walking hypnotist guy from last chapter is, of course, also in on it. As for Klahadore; there is no Klahadore. It’s a persona. His real name? Captain Kuro.
Despite his protests, I will be calling him “Kuro” from here on out, because it is easier to spell than Klahadore. Kuro’s plan is rather elaborate. Overly so, I might even say, given that it also involves Django’s hypnotism powers.
This step seems a bit unnecessary to me. Maybe it betrays a lack of confidence on Kuro’s part in his own plan? Maybe he’s just paranoid. In any case, the predictable happens; Luffy shouts from atop the cliff that they can’t do this thing, because the Silly Putty Pirate has never met a knot of rope he wouldn’t try to slash in half with a cutlass.
Although in this case, he meets something that being made out of rubber can’t help with. As he rushes down the cliffside, Django hypnotizes him—and also himself—and the two conk out simultaneously. Leading Usopp to play the role of the boy who cried….well you know.
Predictably, nobody does believe him, other than his own three little buddies. Zolo, though, notices that Luffy’s gone missing, and I suspect that no matter what Kuro may have planned, he’s probably not accounting for a guy with three swords.
Tomorrow: A guy with three swords saves Luffy’s straw hatted hide. (Probably.)
Also this.
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
I’ve changed my methodology for these a few times over the past couple seasons, but this time it’s very straightforward. After voting myself to break a tie (something I’ve not had to do in any previous community poll, things were much closer this season than they’ve been in any past season), I took a screenshot of the final vote tally at around 10PM last night (I checked again this morning just to make sure nothing had changed, don’t worry). I will be covering the top three shows, because honestly, I’ve been at a bit of a loss for what to cover this season. Putting it in the fans’ hands is a simple and practical solution.
Why don’t we make it a bit of an event? Here are the winners, starting from the third-place winner, and working up to the first.
Third Place: Call of the Night
Filling in the “exceedingly horny rom-com” gap that must have been left in all your hearts following the end of My Dress-Up Darling a season ago, Call of the Night is an interesting one. I read a very small bit of the manga for this, back when it was new. I liked it but failed to keep up with it (I am very bad at keeping up with manga), so I’m going into this just-shy-of-blind. Still, what I do know is promising. Take the Sentai blurb, for instance.
Wracked by insomnia and wanderlust, Kou Yamori is driven onto the moonlit streets every night in an aimless search for something he can’t seem to name. His nightly ritual is marked by purposeless introspection — until he meets Nazuna, who might just be a vampire! Kou’s new companion could offer him dark gifts and a vampire’s immortality. But there are conditions that must be met before Kou can sink his teeth into vampirism, and he’ll have to discover just how far he’s willing to go to satisfy his desires before he can heed the Call of the Night!
Sentai Filmworks
That’s really quite a lot to fit into your high premise. And it’s not like vampirism as a metaphor for coming of age—especially the less wholesome parts of that whole process—is anything new, but I do think this really has the potential to be something special. Whether or not it will actually deliver on that is another question, of course.
I do also want to point out the involvement of Tomoyuki Itamura in the director’s seat here. Just earlier this year, he wrapped up his work on The Case Study of Vanitas, a completely different horny vampire anime. That show is very good (if certainly not without a couple issues), so it gives me hope that Call of the Night will similarly be so. I suppose we’ll all find out together.
Coverage begins on July 8th. (If you’re reading this the day it goes up, that’s a week from today.)
Second Place: Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer
Ahahaha. Oh no.
This one getting as many votes as it did quite surprised me. If nothing else, you can take its presence here as evidence that I didn’t tamper with the vote in any way, because I actually wasn’t planning to watch it at all, at this point!
I love the original Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammermanga. It’s one of my favorite action manga full stop, actually, and that’s mostly because of its deep characterization and solid thematic core. But it’s also because Satoshi Mizukami is a goddamn genius, and everything he draws is gorgeous. The only other anime he’s ever had a strong hand in, Planet With, did manage the incredibly tall ask of translating his distinct visual style to animation. Because of that, it managed to stand out in a year that was absolutely stuffed with great anime.
But that was in 2018, four years that might as well be four centuries ago, given all that’s happened since. Now, it is 2022, and the Biscuit Hammer adaption is being handed to a studio of little note (NAZ, they did Sabikui Bisco earlier this year alongside the similarly named Studio OZ), a director who is basically a total unknown (Nobuaki Nakanishi), and a series compositor best known for an utterly infamous flop (Yuuichirou Momose, of My Sister, My Writer notoriety). Combine that with the utterly hideous key visual sitting at the top of this entry, and a pair of trailers best described as “absolutely terrible” and “okay I guess”, and this one is going to be an active challenge to get through, barring some miracle. It would not be the first time that Mizukami has drawn blood from a stone, but no one should be expected to pull that sort of thing off twice.
I guess we’ll find out if it really is that bad or if all this doomsaying will look foolish twelve weeks from now soon. Coverage begins on the 9th.
First Place: Lycoris Recoil
What is Lycoris Recoil?
The interesting thing about an original series that’s yet to premiere is that it can, in our hearts and minds, be literally anything. Lycoris Recoil has had Key Visuals and trailers and all the usual accoutrements that come with being a TV anime in the modern day, but no one really seems to have a good grasp on its character. Will it be lighthearted? Dark? How big of a role does the cafe` we know is a central setting point of the story play? The chrome pistols and spider lilies in the above KV art certainly imply something sinister is going on, and “Lycoris Recoil” itself is a two-language pun combining the scientific name of the spider lily with just one inevitable consequence of firing a gun. But all of these things raise more questions than they answer, and we’re all going into this show with little to go off of but our own notions about what makes art interesting.
To me, this is fascinating. I can recall an upcoming original series capturing the public imagination in this way twice in recent times. The first time, we got Wonder Egg Priority, an anime I dearly love, but that’s an opinion that puts me firmly in small company. The second, we got Sonny Boy, which I also really like, and is also divisive (although much less so). Putting Lycoris Recoil in that company is probably attaching unrealistic expectations to it; if you want my earnest guess, I’m thinking this will be more of a piece with anime like Princess Principal or the underrated RELEASE THE SPYCE than either of the aforementioned. But honestly, who knows?
Well, we will pretty soon. Lycoris Recoil premieres tomorrow. Coverage will begin then, barring some unexpected circumstance.
See you then, anime fans. But, as a parting item of interest, here is the entire top half of the poll, if you’d like to see what else got a lot of votes. I am particularly surprised at how well Uncle From Another World did.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
I find it hard to imagine a more “oh fuck this guy”-inducing phrase that a character could use than “ruffian heritage.”
But, ah, this chapter also gives us his sympathetic backstory. So it goes. It’s a brief one, mostly boiling down to the revelation that Klahadore himself used to work on a ship, only to be marooned for making “a mistake.” The word “pirate” goes unsaid but is perhaps implied. Kaya’s father took him in, and his overprotective streak toward her—which eventually leaves Usopp, and then Luffy, to storm off in a huff—comes from a desire to not fail him. It’s not explicitly stated that Kaya’s father is deceased but, again, it’s pretty strongly implied.
Anyway, you know what’s more exciting than butler / heiress interpersonal drama? Guys who walk backwards.
Hahahahaha what the fuck.
We do not learn Django’s deal here. My guess is that he’ll end up being this arc’s antagonist? But a guess is all it is. He does pull of a pretty impressive “trick” where he hypnotizes Usopp’s three little buddies, only to also conk out himself. Still more compelling than most Penn & Teller specials, if you ask me.
Meanwhile, it turns out that Luffy kind of knows Usopp’s dad! Or knew, anyway. This is the sort of thing I could’ve seen coming if I were a bit more diligent with note-taking. We get a flashback to Luffy hanging out with Yasopp, who was part of Red Hair Shanks’ crew. He’s noted as an incredible shot (fair enough). And, despite Luffy and Usopp’s remarks to the contrary, he kind of comes across as a deadbeat.
My own father left my mother shortly after I was born for dubious reasons, so I will not pretend I’m free of biases here.
In any case, Usopp and Luffy happen to randomly spot “that butler” from their clifftop perch, which leads to the chapter ending on this note.
Tomorrow: Butler Betrayal! (Or perhaps just a wacky misunderstanding.)
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!
Why does Usopp tell so many lies? Well, today we find out; mostly, to entertain a pretty girl. There are worse reasons to just Make Things Up All The Time. That girl is Kaya, the rich, ill heiress alluded to but not shown in the previous chapter. We meet her formally here, as well as her butler Klahadore. Their dynamic—and their relation to Usopp—becomes clear pretty quickly.
What the hell is he doing with his glasses.
Usopp sits outside of Kaya’s window and tells her tall tales of his “exploits” as a “gallant pirate.” These are nonsense, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she knows they’re nonsense, but they make her happy, which is all that matters to either of them. Klahadore is having none of this, as he apparently thinks that…being excited is bad for Kaya’s constitution. I suspect there is more to it than that, but that’s what he claims his motive is, at any rate.
Luffy and friends learn about all this from Usopp’s “pirate lackeys”—a trio of kids with vegetable names who look up to Usopp because they like his ability to tell stories—and promptly decides that this, clearly, is where he and his crew should acquire their ship.
Thus, the final scene of the chapter is a big morass outside Kaya’s bedroom window. Usopp, who’s been telling her a story is confronted by her butler, and then Luffy and friends show up to make things even more complicated.
But things really heat up when Klahadore starts laying into Usopp about his father being a pirate. This, apparently, is 100% fact. And Usopp does not take having his missing dad spoken ill of kindly.
There’s an overtone of class tension here. Not that “working class pirate falls for rich girl” is anything new even if Usopp really were a pirate, but it’s interesting how Klahadore deliberately provokes Usopp and then blames him for snapping. A dynamic that is, unfortunately, quite true to life. (On a level more immediate to One Piece’s original target audience, I imagine it reminded no small amount of kids of their school bullies, too.)
The chapter ends here, quite literally mid-thought from Luffy. What does he remember? That’s a question for tomorrow.
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.
“The Symphogear of Golf”
-Blurb for a now-deleted review of the first episode by Anilist user SolidQuentin.
Just accept that it makes no sense. Birdie Wing doesn’t care about your feelings—toward golf or toward anything else—and that includes how serious you think it’s being. This is sports anime as Rorschach Blot, a series that practically dares you to take it on its own terms even as it’s consistently the goofiest fucking thing that aired in its season.
Consider this; it’s ED theme (which I may or may not be listening to as I write this), is the achingly beautiful Tsukuyomi track “Nightjar.” For a series like this, it’s totally incongruous as an ending at first glance; a deeply sincere piece of work attached to an anime that is on its face, absolutely ludicrous. It’s right there in the premise; golf taken as deadly-serious as a shonen martial arts tournament or a mob movie, with all the camp that tonal dissonance implies. Over Birdie Wing‘s criminally short 13-episode first season, lives and livelihoods alike are staked on golf games. Pride is, too, and absolutely all of this is given the same narrative weight. (With one exception, as we’ll get to.)
Somehow, in that ED, when a shot of a golf ball dissolves into the night sky, an eagle cutting a shadowy figure against the moon, it makes a kind of sense. If it’s absurd, it’s not in a bad way at all.
It begins with illegal betting; our protagonist Eve (Akari Kitou) makes what little money she can to support her adoptive family by pulling off impossible shots. Golf balls fire like revolver bullets between moving train cars and lop the limbs off of trees. It’s totally insane, and, in its own way, hilarious. But as Eve meets her rival / golf girlfriend Aoi Amawashi (Asami Seto), and the series continues to tick on, things like that just keep happening. Every time, you expect Birdie Wing to tip its hand and reveal that the entire thing is a joke, but it never does. Not when we’re introduced to Golf Mafia Boss Rose Aleone (Toa Yukinari), not when we see that another mob boss owns an illegal underground course that can physically morph its shape into a new, random course every time, not when Eve’s first major hurdle as a player is a woman with a snake motif named Viper the Reaper (Kaori Nazuka) who tries to psyche her opponents out with a scented tattoo. Not ever. It almost feels like a challenge, Birdie Wing dares you to blink first, because it certainly isn’t going to. About the closest it ever gets is this joke about Eve’s inexplicable, fluent Japanese.
Rose Aleone eventually dies. Seriously, she loses a golf game, and her life is snuffed out in a pastiche of old gangster movies that is way, way better and more genuine than it really seems like it should be. Eve moves to Japan and effectively stars in a second, different, marginally more conventional absurd-serious golf anime for the series’ second half. That shouldn’t really work either. It does too, to the surprise of no one. I’ve barely even found time to mention the flirty toying that Eve and Aoi are constantly engaged in. It definitely slots the series comfortably next to, if not outright in, the yuri genre.
I’ve spent a lot of time describing Birdie Wing and rather little elaborating on my own feelings on it. To tell the truth, because of its nature wherein what one brings to Birdie Wing strongly influences what one takes away from it, I almost think it’s not really meant for people like me. Folks who can’t really shut off the analytical part of their brain even when they’re totally enjoying something. But enjoy it I did, so on the other hand, maybe I’ve been played as thoroughly as any other member of this show’s audience. (In this respect, it very much is like Symphogear, making it the second anime in as many weeks that I’ve reviewed to have some trace of the seminal singing-girls-punch-things anime in it.)
Let me put it this way. Late in the series, we’re introduced to supporting character Kinue Jinguuji (Mai Nakahara). Jinguuji is a fairly classic character in the “had to give up on her dreams because a passion for something is not the same as being good at it” mold, something many other anime have done before and plenty others have done in a way that is, at least on paper, more poignant. But somehow, the fact that Jinguuji’s dream is this—golfing, the most boring sport in the world, and one of the hardest to take seriously—makes what would ordinarily be a light tap feel like a sucker punch. Through sheer commitment to the bit, Birdie Wing will make you care about this.
In the end, the show’s first season ends in a shrug, setting up more plot points than it resolves. Why? Because it knows it’ll return like a golfing T-1000. The 13-episode count was a fakeout, and season two is slated for next winter. What else is there to say? Bury Birdie shallow, it’ll be back.
Update: Season two has premiered! You can read my coverage here.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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!
Oh boy.
Meet Usopp, the village idiot.
Every single day, Usopp runs around his village screaming his head off about an impending pirate invasion. Every single day, he is lying. Is he a mythomaniac and can’t help it? Is he just a dick, as teenagers sometimes are? Who knows. More pertinent to my personal experience is that this entire opening sequence made me want to go crawl in a cave and hibernate for three months. “Boy who cried wolf” situations just rouse some sort of deep, visceral nails-on-chalkboard feeling within me.
More to the point, what is this village anyway? It’s some place that Nami suggested the crew look for a larger ship, since going the Grand Line unprepared is likely to get them all killed. Fair enough, I say. That is the situation; they’re here on this island searching for a ship, and they have to deal with This Fucking Guy.
Who of course claims to be a pirate when he meets Luffy and friends. Nami does not really buy it. And no one buys it when Usopp tries to slide into their crew in a later scene.
I’m sure the character’s voluminous bravado will eventually get more endearing than embarrassing but—and maybe this is just because I’m rather sleepy as I’m typing this—in this moment, I am just a bit annoyed by him. Probably this will change, but that is how I feel in the immediacy of the now. (“The immediacy of the now” is one of my favorite overblown pretentious turns of phrase. I highly recommend trying to slip it into casual conversation sometime just to see what happens.)
More interesting than Usopp’s bloviating is the mysterious mansion, complete with an ill heiress, that he informs Luffy’s crew lies on the outskirts of town. The chapter ends on this note, a cut to said heiress (although honestly, she kind of looks like Nami. I suspect this will be a recurring pattern).
Tomorrow: We find out whatever’s going on here and hopefully I feel a bit more awake when I’m writing my next one of these.
One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!
Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
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!
Chapter 22 is called “Strange Creatures.” Now, I wonder why it might have a title like that?
Do y’all think there are like ZooBooks about these creatures in the One Piece universe? Is my audience even old enough to remember ZooBooks? Did any of you have the Free Tiger Poster? If you still do, I would exchange an anime commission for it.
Feathered and crested foxes aside, this chapter is actually a mostly self-contained little story. Its actual events, at the moment at least, seem to me to be of little consequence. But, we get some important worldbuilding and learn a few other interesting things. That’s more than enough to justify the slightly-longer-than-usual page count here (30 vs. the usual 20-something).
The basic plot is quite straightforward. Luffy spots an island through his looking scope, he and Nami make landfall while Zolo rests in the ship, and they meet a bunch of weird animals. And also this guy.
This fuzzy gentleman is Gaimon. He was stranded on the island nearly 20 years prior while searching for treasure (as part of a pirate crew, natch). He fell in an empty treasure chest, got stuck, and no one has come back to help him in all that time. A sad story in its own way, maybe, but Gaimon is quite the comical figure, being mostly a waddling head with his entire body, sans feet and hands, stuck in the box. He’s a bit of a human hermit crab, one might say.
Luffy eventually helps the man find the treasure he’s been searching for all these years, only for it to turn out that the chests are empty. Easy come, easy go. (Gaimon declines an offer to join Luffy’s crew, staying on the island as the protector of the many tiankeng-worthy creatures that live there.) The whole misadventure is a little inconsequential, and the chapter itself might feel that way too if not for some interesting things we learn about the actual world of One Piece during it.
For instance. You, like I, may have thought “The Grand Line” was a slightly odd name for a stretch of ocean. As it turns out, it’s not a stretch of ocean, it’s a strait that links two of them. Think The Bosporus if, instead of linking two large, economically-important and well-traversed seas, it linked the only two major of bodies of water on the planet.
This instantly explains a lot about the world of One Piece, especially its generally nautically-focused nature. The Grand Line is dangerous, though, even Gaimon, who’s been stranded on his island for two decades, has stories to pass on of the souls who survive a passage through it.
But, Luffy’s casual but overwhelming self-confidence must be infectious, as it’s not long before Gaimon is wishing him good luck when he departs.
This was an odd little detour for the series, but I’m glad we took it, if only for the interesting tidbits about the world of One Piece itself. As for Gaimon, he’s not too banged up about the empty treasure chests.
I wouldn’t be too shocked if he shows up again someday. But for now, it’s farewell to the weird warden of the island of strange animals.
As for tomorrow’s adventure? Who knows?
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Hi folks, as is often the case with these short “site update” PSA things, I’ll keep this brief.
The very short version is that I will not be doing any Anime Orbit Weekly posts anymore, and will be replacing them with something else. If you don’t really care about my reasoning, you can stop reading now, I’ve gotten the most important thing across.
If you do care about my reasoning; the fact of the matter is just that AOW posts are not read by most people. They get absolutely miniscule numbers, a fact that is especially stark when weighed against my other posts. We’re talking around 1/4th of those that articles dedicated to a single show or topic get, sometimes less.
This makes sense, if you think about it. Articles about a single subject are much easier to tag, which leads to better SEO, which leads to more page hits. It’s as simple as that.
As for what I’ll be replacing them with, my current plan is to just occasionally do “seasonal check-ins” on anime I think are doing something interesting over the course of a given season or are just worth talking about in some other way. This will preserve the function of AOW but in a form that’s easier to navigate and is more likely to draw in new visitors.
I will probably give these columns their own dedicated space on the front page, and the Anime Orbit Weekly archive will either be deprecated entirely or moved to the very bottom of the Anime section. (Frankly, the archive is itself another factor here. It’s ugly and extremely laborious to update, which is why it’s months behind everything else on the site.)
I might still call these new articles “Anime Orbit” or something related (it’s a good name, and it’d be a shame to waste it), but I don’t want to make any hard commitments at this juncture.
That’s about all, anime fans. Hopefully this change will improve your reading experience here on Magic Planet Anime. Stay safe out there.
The Magic Planet 