Category: Manga

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

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.

Posted on in anime, Manga, Other Posts

One-Week Hiatus For all Magic Planet Anime Activities

Hi all. I’ll keep this short, as I’m wont to do when I have an announcement.

I’m going to be taking (about) a week off. That means no MPA articles of any kind—no weekly recaps, no One Piece Every Day—until, at earliest, next Thursday when the next Call of The Night episode airs.

I do apologize to anyone disappointed by this turns of events, and usually I’d here go into a long spiel about why this is happening and be very apologetic. But frankly the reason this time is very simple; I have been having an extremely challenging past few days from a mental health point of view. I won’t go into details, but it’s been bad enough to be, you know, noteworthy, even as someone who’s struggled with mental illness my entire life. I’m recovering, and I’ll be fine in the long term, but I just need some time to rest and not think about tweaking paragraphs and staring at my metrics page and that sort of thing for a while.

As always, if you want to support me during my time away, you can do so via my Patreon or Ko-Fi, and if you’d like to socialize a little bit with some other MPA readers, you can do so via the site’s Discord server. Y’alls comments on here really make my heart light up with joy. Every single one of you is seen and appreciated, and I hope to see you again when the hiatus ends.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE EVERY DAY One Day Hiatus Notiice

Hi everyone. Short announcement here: it was bound to happen eventually! There will not be a One Piece article today. My internet was out for a while yesterday and I just didn’t have the time to get around to it because of that. I’m going to try to get a couple written up tonight to hopefully prevent this from happening again anytime soon.

I hope you’re all doing well, and I’ll see you tomorrow, Straw-Hats.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 42

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 42 is what you might call an interstitial. If One Piece were a piece of prose, chapter 42 is a “and then” clause, serving primarily to link the previous and the next story arc, without doing too much of its own. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be some interesting or fun ideas in it. For instance; here’s Luffy’s shot at a pirate flag.

Usopp ends up giving it a shot a short while later and, well, he does a much better job.

This chapter has a bit of a “Usopp shows off some skillz” thing going on, actually, because just after this, we learn that he’s a crack shot with a cannon. I’m not sure I buy his slingshot skills transferring, but what matters much more is that the random rock he uses for target practice was occupied.

By two people Zolo knows.

Because coincidence is for suckers.

The pair, after some initial swords-first confusion, establish themselves as Johnny and Yosaku, old colleagues in the pirate-hunting biz of Zolo’s. (Johnny actually uses the term ‘brother’ but I’m not clear on how literal he’s being. I think it’s being used in a colloquial sort of way, but if I turn out to be wrong then, well, throw me overboard.) Yosaku is basically dying on the deck of the Merry Go at first, before some quick thinking from Nami makes it clear that his problem is that old pirate’s ailment; simple scurvy.

Grateful, and taking note of a conversation about how the Merry Go could really use a cook, the pair point our heroes toward an ocean-going restaurant, and in doing so, presumably set up the Straw Hats’ next adventure.

Personally, I’m interested to see where this goes. I assume “ocean-going restaurant” means that it’s literally a restaurant on a ship? But maybe it’s something more exotic. We’ll see in the days to come.

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 41

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!

Did you think we were done with our big emotional climax after last chapter? Well, we mostly are, but not quite yet.

Two things happen in this chapter; for one, Kaya gifts Luffy’s crew a caravel, which I and any other former Civilization III players reading this will recognize as a mid-sized vessel common in the 16th century. It’s hardly the Queen Anne’s Revenge, but this ship, the Merry Go, is the first proper vessel our heroes have ever had. 41 chapters in, we’ve already covered a lot of ground (even if we’re still very early on in the greater scope of things), so it’s nice to see them tangibly upgrading to something bigger and better.

Secondly, Usopp says his last goodbyes to Kaya. Granted, not before overpacking to the extent that his comically large backpack causes him to topple over and role down a hill in true slapstick fashion.

Other than a few other jokes (including a great bit where Luffy has to be told not to eat the entire bones of a fish), the main takeaway here is that Kaya will be just fine, and that Usopp’s chronic lying actually has a reason behind it. A pretty sad one! Although you could probably guess that much.

To be honest, this strikes me as a little unnecessary? The simple fact that Usopp’s mom isn’t around kind of makes it obvious from the start that something’s happened to her. That said; the target audience for this manga is, or at least was at the time, kids, so maybe being a little obvious is fine.

As the chapter ends, Kaya talks to Merry—her actually loyal butler—about her dreams for the future, while Usopp’s former “crew” gallavant through the town, continuing his, ahem, sacred work.

Usopp himself and the rest of Luffy’s crew? They’re gone, back on the deep blue sea.

Tomorrow: new adventures.

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.