ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 52

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!


Zolo isn’t really dead. You’re probably not shocked! I know I’m not, because he’s one of the franchise’s main characters. How is he still alive? Well, Hawkeye just….uh, cut him in a way so he won’t die. Look, just roll with it.

More than that, most of this chapter is about Zolo redoubling his oath to become the world’s greatest swordsman (it’s even called “The Oath”). Hawkeye—who gives us his improbably cool real name here—finds Zolo too strong in spirit to kill, and that’s why he’s spared him. He gives Zolo a pretty awesome speech here, actually. I really like this guy!

Zolo vows not just to eventually defeat Hawkeye, but to never lose again. Not just for himself, or for his late friend, but for Luffy’s sake, too.

All told, this is a pretty excellent scene, and Hawkeye caps it off by leaving as dramatically and mysteriously as he came. Or at least, he goes to do that, but there’s one person who still has other ideas.

Yes, Krieg makes the astounding decision to try to kill Hawkeye, despite the man single-handedly wrecking his entire fleet before, and despite what he just did to Zolo. It goes about as well as you’d expect, and our story here splinters in to as Hawkeye once again unleashes his sword techniques to completely mulch a boat Krieg is on.

And Luffy, in the final piece of this particular puzzle of timber and saltwater, vows to drive off Krieg’s pirates, who are now swarming the oceanbound restaurant en masse, in exchange for being able to ditch his choreboy obligations.

Tomorrow: one sea, two ships.


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ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 51

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!


Before we even start talking about today’s actual chapter, turn your eyes up to that cover.

I’ve been basically just letting the whole Chibi Buggy Saga play out without much commentary in the headers of these articles (always cropped, to make them not look absolutely awful on desktop) but this one actually introduces a new character! A mysterious lady-pirate rocking a cowboy hat who seems to have taken in Buggy as her pet short king. Good for him, I guess?

As for the chapter itself, this is the first one in a while to basically be pure action. An honorable duel between the villainous Hawkeye and the heroic Zolo (eh, more or less, on both counts). I also want to highlight Zolo’s quip here off the top, because, yeah, I am also surprised that we’ve gotten to actually meet Hawkeye this early.

Part of me wonders; was One Piece being allowed to publish basically indefinitely not a sure thing yet this early on? That would make sense, we’re 50 chapters in, but given that as far as I know One Piece has always been a weekly, that only represents around 2 1/2 months of publishing time. Maybe it was not yet the utterly massive hit that it would later become, and Oda wanted to start bringing some plot threads to a close, or at least moving them closer to a conclusion, just in case? This is all speculation, if I’m wrong and 1P was a total smash basically right away feel free to correct me in the comments.

In any case, much of this duel is devoted to showing how much better at Sword Hawkeye is than Zolo. Zolo hasn’t really had a proper challenge in this series yet, and Hawkeye less gives him one and more completely wipes the floor with him.

Did I mention, he doesn’t use that big fancy cross-shaped sword across his back with the black blade to do it? No, he uses a little dagger. Like a really little dagger.

I bet people ship these two really hard.

Spoiler alert; he does not need anything bigger than the dagger.

This sends Zolo into a bit of a spiral, with Oda again deploying his technique of “fading” memory panels in and out to create a flashback that’s actively weaved with the manga’s present-tense. (It’s worth noting that alongside all the memories of his late friend to whom he promised to become the world’s greatest swordsman is a memory of Luffy recruiting him to his crew.) Zolo refuses to believe that they could possibly be this mismatched, but they are, and Hawkeye cuts his belly open to prove it.

Hawkeye is, at the very least, impressed by Zolo’s bravery as he manages to spit out that to him, death would be better than defeat. Hawkeye, out of a sense of honor, makes him stick to that, and the second slash he delivers to Zolo’s frame is a lot more lethal.

Tomorrow: How will the swordsman survive?!


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!

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ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 50

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!


The water around the ocean restaurant is a wooden graveyard as chapter 50 opens, with the splintered tatters of Don Krieg’s flagship littering the ocean.

This chapter is mainly about two things; for one, we see that yes, Nami really did make off with the Merry-Go and all the treasure on it. Most of Luffy’s meager remaining crew are willing to write her off, but not the captain.

To that, he sends Zolo and Usopp after Nami while he stays to help the ocean restaurant fend off the attack from Krieg’s pirates. But, before that can even be acted upon, the other person this chapter is about shows up. Someone I’m very surprised to see so early, given the nature of the foreshadowing just a few chapters ago.

I’d introduce the man, but that’s kind of the sum of it right there, isn’t it? “World’s Greatest Swordsman” is not a title that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. This is, in fact, the man Zolo’s been looking for, and it doesn’t take long for the two of them to start doing the whole “circling each other menacingly while talking shit” routine. The fight doesn’t actually happen here—that’s next chapter, presumably—but the tension is palpable. (And marginally homo-erotic. Par for the course for this sort of thing.)

As for Nami and her floating trove of stolen treasure, well, that’s a bit of a mystery for the time being as well. The chapter closes on this page, and this particular note. Much is in the air, just waiting to fall down.


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 Directory to browse by category.

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 49

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!


Gonna just warn you ahead of time here, folks. Today’s chapter and tomorrow’s are going to be covered by a decidedly tired Tired Jane. What is the main distinction between regular and Tired Jane? Well, mostly, the tiredness. But a general laxness of grammar, tendency to fixate on minor details instead of actual plot developments, and an increase in profanity are some of the common symptoms. Just a heads’ up if the next two columns are a little looser than usual.

The main thing we learn in chapter 49 is that the guy who wrecked Krieg’s fleet is not just some random background character. No, he’s a specific background character.

This Hawkeye fellow seems pretty darn important. He’s both the man who wrecked Krieg’s armada and the guy that Zolo’s been after. (Or at least, Zolo seems pretty sure that he is.) There’s a fairly lengthy scene after this about the various dangers of the Grand Line that mostly rehashes things we already know or could easily infer.

Meanwhile, back on Krieg’s ship, his pirates return themselves to health, and he announces his plan to hijack the oceangoing restaurant and then return to the Grand Line. One of his crew objects to this plan, and is promptly dealt with in, ah, pirate-y fashion.

But before Krieg’s men can actually launch their attack….well, something happens. To be honest, the art gets a little difficult for me to parse here? It seems to be that Krieg’s flagship is suddenly rocked by an explosion or similar force, and promptly sinks like a stone, leaving the pirates to distribute themselves between the restaurant ship and Luffy’s ship. Except that’s not quite right either, because Nami seemingly takes the ship and runs as the chapter comes to a close!

What just happened? Questions for tomorrow, one supposes.


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!

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ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 48


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!


Battle shonen is a bit like wrestling. For instance; you can usually divide the characters firmly into faces (good’ns) and heels (bad’ns), the storylines are usually fairly over the top and dramatic, and everybody’s got a gimmick. Yesterday we learned that Don Krieg’s is that he’s a god damn cyborg. Today, we learn Zeff’s. Krieg is evidently knowledgeable about this kind of thing. (Though not about the Grand Line, as we’ll get to.)

But Krieg’s no fanboy. He uses this knowledge of Zeff’s past to make an interesting—and correct!—deduction, that he must still have his logbook somewhere. Naturally, he demands that, in addition to the ship.

Krieg leaves with the sinister warning that, after he feeds his crew, he’ll be back to take the ship and the book, and that anyone who’s not gone by then will be “buried at sea.” Rough guy, that Krieg.

But the chapter’s truly interesting revelations come from Gin, who is still a bit in shock that Krieg turned on the ocean restaurant’s cooks so quickly. (I’m not sure why, given everything we’ve learned about Krieg over the past few chapters. Maybe Gin is just a terrible judge of character, or maybe Krieg didn’t used to be like this. Who knows!)

Gin says that, yes, he and the rest of Krieg’s men were, in fact, at the Grand Line, but the things they saw there went well beyond anything we’ve seen in the story so far. Consider this a kind of far-foreshadowing, I doubt we’ll see the Grand Line ourselves ‘in person’ for many, many chapters yet. (I’m betting at least 100, absolute bare minimum. Even that’s probably very low.)

The chapter ends there, with Zolo’s knowing (?) / shocked reaction, and the threat of Krieg hanging in the air.


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 Directory to browse by category.

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 47

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!


Here’s a thought I’d had but not directly articulated until just now. After the last two arcs’ main villains were, respectively, a clown with bizarre powers and a butler-pirate with cat paws, it seemed a little that Don Krieg, in this arc, seemed to just be A Guy. A hulking, towering figure for certain, but still just a man.

Well, in this chapter, we learn that he’s not, and it’s possibly my favorite moment of One Piece thus far? Definitely of the arc so far, at the very least.

But we’ll get to that, let’s start at the start. Krieg opens the chapter by demanding 100 full meals for every one of his still-living pirates. Of the cooks present, only Sanji—who declares that it’s a cook’s job to feed the hungry, not judge whether they’re good or bad people—is at all willing to do this, and the others do not take it terribly well.

Name a meal you’ve cooked that had people acting like this.

Patty then just whomps him over the head, taking matters into his own hands as he fires a fish-shaped hand cannon(?!?!) at Krieg. It does not do anything.

Because, you see, Krieg is actually a cross between a World of Warcraft character and a nautical Iron Man.

Yes.

But even this display of raw firepower can’t intimidate everyone. Quick shonen manga writing tip; what’s the quickest way to make a character seem like a badass? Have a more obvious badass show up, and then make it clear that this guy isn’t intimidated by that guy at all.

In this example, it’s Krieg who is “that guy.” Who’s “this guy”, then?

The head chef, obviously. Who straight up accuses Krieg and his men of cowardice.

Who, in the final panel of the chapter, Krieg finally puts a name to.

I do love this. Just from Krieg’s reaction alone we know that “Red Shoes” Zeff must have been, in his day, some truly hot shit. With a name like that, I’d guess probably the kind of pirate who turns up as the villain in movies even centuries later, but it’s probably too early to make any definitive calls. I’m sure we’ll learn more tomorrow.

Until then!


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 Directory to browse by category.

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 46

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!


AHOY!

Yes, after a long time being—ahem—lost at sea, we’ll say, the column is back. In the grand scheme of how long this is going to take us, a week-ish off is not that much time to be away from One Piece, but I did miss the series while I was gone, and I’m excited to see where this whole thing with the Dread Pirate Don Krieg is gonna go. So, without further do, we return to the ocean-going restaurant ship, Baratie.

As we do, we open on a fight between Sanji and the head cook / captain. The chef wants him gone; Sanji’s a lousy cook, flirts with women, and gets into fights. He has no reason to want Sanji on his boat, and because of that actively tries to get him to leave with Luffy. Sanji, of course, refuses. Although, even as he goes back to work, he spends a fair amount of time flirting with Nami (who is entirely willing to take advantage of his weakness for women).

I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen the noun “digestive” in a comic of any kind. Also isn’t it actually “digestif”? Whatever.

In any case, Luffy must spend quite a while washing dishes here, because shortly after this scene, he’s hauled off to do more chore boy work, and we promptly get perhaps my favorite transition panel in this entire manga so far.

This is how I feel whenever I get a letter from the government.

You can probably, and properly, guess that the thing that comes “out of nowhere” is Don Krieg and his flagship, flying a jolly roger flanked by hourglasses (which a pair of randos helpfully point out symbolizes that his enemies’ “time is up.” Thanks lads). However, not all is as it appears, because Krieg’s ship is in bizarrely bad shape.

Sanji (correctly?) guesses they were caught in a typhoon, and soon, Gin returns, quite literally propping his captain, who is on the brink of death, up on his shoulder.

The restaurant’s other patrons—and for that matter, the cooks themselves—are pretty unwilling to feed and house a notorious pirate. Over the course of a brief page of exposition, we get a sense of why. This dude is bad news!

It’s almost like he’s a pirate or something.

Sanji is more than willing to feed him, though. And surprise surprise, as soon as the dread pirate is finished chowing down on some white rice that Sanji whipped up, he decks the cook right in the face and says this to close out the chapter.

It’s good to be back.


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 Directory to browse by category.

ONE PIECE EVERY DAY – Chapter 45

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!


In another more setup-y chapter, we open with Luffy and Sanji still on the deck. How will Luffy try to entice Sanji to join his growing crew of vagabonds and pillagers and oh who are we kidding here? He just asks him. Sanji says no.

The reason, as given a bit farther in, is that Sanji wants to make head chef someday despite not getting on with the current head chef. (The head chef actually tries to get him to go with Luffy at one point. Simply blowing him off or something more?) This is fair enough, but it makes Luffy’s ambition of getting him aboard the Merry Go difficult. How he might eventually change Sanji’s mind isn’t really addressed here. In fact, a pretty big chunk of the chapter is dedicated to Hijinks. Since Luffy’s been drafted as a choreboy, the restaurant employs him to undertake various tasks, almost all of which he fails comically at. (Favorite bit for me here; when one of the chefs asks how many plates he’s busted and he admits that he’s lost count.)

Elsewhere, conversation turns to the dreaded Don Krieg, the pirate who is apparently the “most ferocious” in the local waters, and I imagine will be this arc’s actual, eventual antagonist.

You see, Gin—the pirate Sanji rescued by giving him some rice—doesn’t take a directly antagonistic role here, and he’s even very friendly to both Sanji and Luffy, showing genuine gratitude to the former and being yet another in the growing list of more veteran sailors trying to wave Luffy away from the Grand Line. But he does take an indirectly antagonistic role, because when he heads back to Krieg’s ship, he finds the don pirate’s vessel in what looks to possibly be disarray. And there, he promptly, and conveniently, forgets all that kindness he showed to Luffy and especially Sanji earlier, promising to take his boss right to the oceangoing restaurant.

Such is the way of pirates! Perhaps a clash of crews here is inevitable. I look forward to finding out tomorrow. I have to admit that the stuff with Kuro and Kaya was solid but it took a while to really grab me. With this arc I’m invested straightaway. I hope this Krieg fellow is as fearsome as his name (literally just German for “war”!) and reputation suggest.


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 Directory to browse by category.

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 44

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!


We open today immediately after the conclusion of yesterday’s chapter, on Luffy and the floating diner’s head chef arguing over whether our boy will work for the chef for a week, a year, or if he’s willing to pay a different sort of price.

I am reasonably sure that this is not how that works.

This actually isn’t the main plot of the chapter though—it’s more a humorous B-side, as the whole thing is played pretty goofy—instead, the real Point A to Point B here comes from a conflict between Sanji and a new character, a surly cook with a….Brooklyn accent? I think that’s what they’re going for? Named Patty. Patty is not a very good cook apparently, and he frequently minces common customer service sayings (there’s even a ‘monsieur’ -> ‘mon-sewer’ bit straight out of Looney Tunes). But he does very strongly believe that the customer is king, which puts him into conflict with Sanji who, you’ll recall, is beating the shit out of that Fullbody fellow because he didn’t like Sanji’s soup. There’s some pretty great dialogue here and, honestly, all throughout the chapter. Lots of little bits of wordplay and double meanings and stuff like that, it’s fun.

This continues even after the chapter socks you with its main twist; one of the captive pirates from Fullbody’s ship has escaped and, oh no, he’s on the restaurant boat.

Despite this colorful introduction, the fellow isn’t actually much of a threat. Patty, who is apparently crazy strong because of manga reasons, knocks him in the head and tosses him out onto the deck. Here we get the chapter’s actual twist, which is that Sanji, despite absolutely ripping Fullbody earlier, is the kind of guy who’ll give some rice to a starving man even if that man might not necessarily “deserve” it. (Everyone deserves food whenever they need it, in my world view, but Patty does not seem to agree.)

The chapter—and the volume!—end here, with Luffy observing Sanji’s act of kindness and thinking that just perhaps, he’s found his cook.


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 Directory to browse by category.

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 43

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!


Today on One Piece; a lesson in not wasting your food.

It starts off simple enough; our heroes pull up to the oceanbound restaurant mentioned last chapter, a magnificently goofy thing that is shaped like a fish.

But we’re introduced in short order to the guy who I was pretty sure was going to be this arc’s antagonist, but I’m actually not so certain at the moment for reasons I’ll get to in a bit. In any case, he’s quite the character.

Yes. A Navy Lieutenant. Named Ironfist Fullbody. I imagine in the dub they had someone do a really gruff and low voice for him for maximum impact. Again, I think this is a slight bit of misdirection, but he does make quite the first impression here. Almost immediately after this, he orders one of his cannoneers to sink the Merry Go.

Now, our heroes’ ship is fine, because Luffy blocks the cannonball with his, ahem, ‘gum gum balloon.’ The restaurant on the other hand, is not, because it turns out that Luffy doesn’t have great finesse as to where the things he deflects with that little trick end up.

Cut to the inside of the restaurant—the main body of the ship has thankfully not been hit by the deflected cannonball, evidently—and we get to see Fullbody trying to impress his, one assumes, fiancé, by dazzling her with his knowledge of wine.

Yes, Ol’ Ironfist here is a sommelier. But it’s actually worse than that, because as we soon learn, he’s a wannabe sommelier, as shown when he asks the restaurant’s ‘waiter’ if he’s right about the wine.

Sanji here—one of those rare few One Piece characters I knew by sight before reading this—basically clowns Fullbody’s entire existence. He denies his attempt at coming off as a Cool Wine Guy, and when Fullbody finds (or, I think, plants) a bug in his own soup, Sanji tells him to just pick it out. Which hey, fair thing to Fullbody here; that’s fucking gross. But on the other hand, you’re in the middle of the ocean. Perhaps you don’t get to be picky, navy boy.

Things keep escalating like this, but eventually Sanji’s had enough, simply because he can’t stand to see good food wasted, and the end result is that the big invincible monster heel we’ve been building up all chapter ends it looking like this.

That’s not quite the end of the story, though. While all this is happening, Luffy is taken aboard the restaurant. This leads to some further, ah, interesting conversations.

Thankfully Luffy is misunderstanding this whole scene and he did not actually blow off a guy’s leg. But still, you can see why he’d think that. Luffy is here drafted to work aboard the ship without pay for a year to make up for the damages incurred by his, you know, blowing a hole in it, and the chapter properly ends there, leaving the whole rest of this to be resolved tomorrow.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this slightly-longer-than-normal column, pirates. I’m hoping it makes up for my absence yesterday. See you all 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 Directory to browse by category.