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 return to the realm of the chapter-long action sequence here. At the end of the last chapter, Buggy popped the top half of his body off of his legs and chased down Nami, knives akimbo. Obviously, Luffy manages to save her right off the top, here. Because Buggy leaving the lower half of his body behind gives him a completely foreseeable weakness.
You Will No Longer Load The Buggy Balls
Thus begins the systematic dismantling—both literally and figuratively—of Buggy the Clown. Luffy kicks him between the legs, he bickers with Nami over whether or not his treasure is “hers” even if she hasn’t technically fully absconded with it yet, and he makes a desperate attempt to launch an all-out assault by flinging his limbs every which way. This does not go well for him either; Luffy happens to notice that even though every other part of him can fly around freely if he detaches them from his body, the same is not true of his feet, which must remain grounded.
Yes, I am about to post Buggy Feet. You’ve been warned.
Although maybe I should’ve warned you more about some of these facial expressions….
Having Luffy attack his other obvious humiliating weak point distracts Buggy long enough for Nami to round up the rest of his limbs and tie them up. Meaning that, when he does finally pull himself together, he looks like this.
And Luffy finishes off the Clown Prince of the High Seas with a “Gum-Gum Bazooka.” Which mostly just seems to involve chucking him as far away as possible. And with that, it’s bye-bye Buggy, at least for now.
To the victor go the spoils, of course.
Tomorrow: What will Luffy do with that marvelous map he’s found?
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!
Unsurprisingly, Buggy the Clown is not dead. But in contrast to last chapter’s pure, streamlined punch-and-stab machine, this chapter is a bit more all over the place. Not in a bad way, but it’s a lot less Just One Thing than yesterday’s.
Mainly, we learn a couple things here; about Red-Hair Shanks, about Buggy the Clown, and about the Devil Fruits themselves, which, it’s becoming increasingly obvious if it weren’t already, are the manga’s central plot tokens.
It’s worth taking an aside here to point this out; it seems like Mayor Boodle’s bravery has inspired his citizens, and they arm themselves while preparing to fight Buggy off. They don’t arrive at the site of the battle in this chapter, though. My guess is we’ll circle back on them tomorrow.
Much more of the chapter is taken up by a flashback from Buggy, where we see a slice of his youth serving as an “apprentice” aboard a pirate ship. We also learn why he ate the Devil Fruit in the first place and why he doesn’t like Shanks. In order, he ate it because he was trying to steal it, and he doesn’t like Shanks because Shanks saved his life. No, that was not a typo. Why did he want to steal the Devil Fruit? Turns out, a lot of people will pay good money for superpowers if the only downside is that they can’t swim.
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.
Buggy, via an ill-considered harebrained scheme, ends up both accidentally eating the fruit and nearly drowning. Shanks has to save him, and in spite of that, Buggy ends up blaming him for the failure of his get-rich-quick plan. This is the rare shonen flashback that actually manages to make a character even less sympathetic than they already were, it almost comes across as parodic. (Obviously, that’s intentional, but still, it’s pretty funny.)
Importantly, though, it does establish that Buggy’s fixation on literal gold-and-jewels-style treasure is deep-rooted. Which makes it make sense when he actually cuts and runs from his fight with Luffy. Literally! He pops the top half of his body off and flies at Nami like some kind of cutlass-wielding aerial drone, a shot on which the chapter ends.
Tomorrow: Buggy vs. the thief of pirates!
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In which Buggy the Clown learns not to mess with Luffy’s hat.
Today’s One Piece chapter is another that’s essentially just a single, uninterrupted action scene. It’s also a bit longer than normal, with a few extra pages, presumably to commemorate the start of a new volume. But if you’re inclined to worry that this will dilute the action somehow, rest easy. There really isn’t much to this chapter but 20-some pages of blood and iron, but a series like this doesn’t always need much else.
We do learn one thing, though. That cliffhanger from the end of the last chapter is followed up on immediately; Buggy and Red-Hair Shanks once served on the same ship. Beyond that, we don’t get much detail, and it’s not like Buggy is going to tell Luffy anything else without a very good reason.
Of course, Luffy interprets Buggy’s reluctance to share info in a somewhat different light.
The remainder of the chapter’s pages are largely a tangle of rubber limbs and detaching heads; Luffy and Buggy seem almost an equal match, and I like the comedic detail of the more normal members of Buggy’s crew knowing to stay out of the fight.
What gives Luffy an extra edge? Buggy damaging his hat, of course, first just by nicking the brim and then by full-on impaling it with a trio of stubby daggers. That much is enough to turn the tide in Luffy’s favor.
Will it be enough to actually take the clown down? Well, we’ll find out together, 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.
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 I like about One Piece is that it has a certain “ah, just one more chapter” quality to it, at least in the format I’m reading it in. As I write this it’s a few minutes shy of 2AM local, and I should really probably be in bed, but I seriously want to know how this fight between Zolo and Cabaji went, so here I am, reading another chapter at two hours past midnight.
My utterly dreadful sleeping habits aren’t the focus of this column, though. Watching Zolo fuck Cabaji up is.1 And to that end, we get a really great page right near the top of the chapter here, complete with Cabaji dropping an old-timey pirate insult.
To be fair it’s not literally all about these two. Somewhere in here, Nanami sneaks off, assuring Luffy that she’s happy to team up with him….if he can get ahold of Buggy’s treasure and the map of the Grand Line, that is.
Far be it from me to criticize perhaps the most successful mangaka of all time, but what’s going on with Nami’s hand there?
But apart from that little aside, this is very much the Cabaji and Zolo show.
Buggy’s second mate leads with a bunch of crazy, vaguely “circus”-themed bullshit like this.
And Zolo counters by being a much better swordsman than Cabaji is. Eventually, Cabaji has to resort to cheating, and Buggy tries to ‘subtly’ help out his third-in-command. A classic heel move, but it doesn’t work. Luffy is still around, after all.
The trickery doesn’t help, and despite literally bleeding out the entire time, Zolo trounces Cabaji. Eventually finishing him off in what is probably the single best page of the whole chapter.
Proving that he isn’t actually an immortal sword demon and instead just fights like one, Zolo collapses from blood loss shortly thereafter, leaving Luffy and Buggy to finish the fight on their own.
And then, just as Volume II draws to a close, Buggy drops this particular bombshell.
And much as I am genuinely dying to know what’s up with all of that, it’s probably time for this old sea hag to turn in for the evening. (Besides, I’m leaning a little too heavily on screencaps, which is always a sign that it’s probably time to stop here for the day.) Before I do though, now that we’re two volumes and a couple weeks deep, I just wanted to ask how you’re all feeling about the project so far. Please sound off in the comments (or on my Retrospring) about any thoughts you might have; positive, negative, whatever they may be.
I look forward to hearing from you. See you tomorrow for the start of Volume III, pirates! 🏴☠️
1: A danger of late-night writing: I forgot the “is” in this sentence when I first wrote it and only noticed it later. This would be a very different kind of column if that were what happened in this chapter!
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!
Alright, so I accidentally lied yesterday! Today’s chapter is less about the fight between Buggy and Luffy—presumably, that’s still to come—and more about the fight between Zolo and Buggy’s third-in-command Cabaji, who we met yesterday.
There is a little bit of Luffy-centric material, though. Especially when Nami freaks out about his balloon stunt from yesterday’s chapter. (And hey, to be fair to her; I would too.)
But yeah, mostly this chapter concerns the locking of blades between Zolo and Cabaji.
Despite Cabaji’s ‘noble blademaster’ posturing, he’s as dirty as the rest of Buggy’s crew, and he spends a lot of this chapter deliberately trying to re-open Zolo’s wounds.
But if Cabaji thinks that doing so will even out the fight, or even make Zolo an easy target, he’s sadly mistaken.
Live Buggy Reaction
Zolo actually does the rest of Cabaji’s job for him, deliberately injuring himself, just to prove that he doesn’t need to be on level ground with Cabaji to take him down. This kind of hot-blooded vainglorious nonsense is exactly what makes manga like this worth reading.
This pic goes hard, feel free to screenshot.
Once again, this chapter is mostly action (and that looks like it will continue to be the case for at least a little while longer), so I don’t exactly have a ton to say. But certainly, it’s a good chapter; solid, entertaining, and pulpy, exactly what you want out of your weekly comics. (They’re daily for us, but we’ll ignore that little foible.)
For lack of anywhere else to put it I do also want to mention the impressive opening sequence where Buggy uses his crewmen as human shields. Why do they like him again? Oh, but it is such a cool page. Maybe that’s why.
Tomorrow: The two swordsmen battle on!
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!
Once again, today’s chapter is very simple. Spare a thought for poor Mayor Boodle, though, who comes out of it looking a bit silly.
He opens the chapter up by continuing his blustering demand to fight Buggy. We return again to the ‘what is treasure?’ question here, and both Boodle and Buggy make their very different opinions on the subject extremely clear.
Initially, Buggy’s third-in-command, one Cabaji the Acrobat, offers to take care of the old man, but Buggy is having none of it.
Not one to respect other people or their wishes, Buggy zoops his hand down to strangle Boodle without even leaving the deck of his ship. The only thing that saves him is Luffy and the gang finally catching up with him.
Even after this, he still wants to fight. But Luffy isn’t going to let that happen. Understandably, he doesn’t really want to see an old man waving a spear around get himself killed, pride or not. So, in something he usually reserves for the villains, Luffy knocks him out cold. (There’s a fun parallel here between neither Boodle nor Cabaji ‘getting’ to fight. I wonder where, if anywhere, that’s going.)
He then insults Buggy’s nose, this time very much on purpose. Buggy’s crew launch a cannonball—sorry, Buggy Ball—at him in response, only for Luffy to do….this.
It’s a bit grotesque if I’m being honest.
The chapter basically ends mid-faceoff. I feel a little silly for complimenting Oda’s ability to make every page count just a few days ago only to now be dealing with a chapter that very much just feels like 18 pages of scene transition, but hey, if that’s all it is, it’s still a pretty good one. I like the strong contrast drawn between Boodle, who is physically weak but morally principled in his own way, and Buggy, who is powerful but doesn’t care about anything but gold and jewels. Bits of characterization like that prevent any chapter of One Piece from feeling truly inessential.
(Which of course, isn’t to say I’m not eager to see the actual fight, but that’s tomorrow’s chapter! Probably.)
Tomorrow: The Straw Hat Kid vs. The Clown Prince of Piracy
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!
After a few chapters in a row where quite a bit happens, today’s is refreshingly straightforward. There’s only two real events that occur here; Mayor Boodle decides to take the fight to Buggy, and Nami allies with—although she’s very hesitant to use words like “join”—Luffy’s crew.
Boodle has a decent motive for wanting Buggy & Co. out of town; he helped build the place!
To me, this entire sequence raises tons of questions, and I’m not sure if they’re questions One Piece is interested in answering. This patch of land is one thing, but in general, where did these people come from? Where have they arrived at? Is this a “Europeans crossing the Atlantic for the first time” situation or something more innocuous? Are there natives? If so, where are they?
Many, many questions, and few answers. Maybe One Piece will eventually answer some or all of these questions, but it’s far from a certainty. For now, at least for me, they’re just something I will keep in the back of my mind.
More importantly, there’s a pretty funny sequence earlier on in the chapter where Mohji, stumbling back aboard Buggy’s ship, tries to warn his captain of the “rubber man”, but passes out halfway through his sentence. This leads to some misunderstandings.
And the chapter also establishes that Chou-Chou is fine. In fact, him ending up back at the shelter tips off the townspeople that their mayor has gone and done something reckless. They are absolutely correct about this, as previously established.
Boodle’s situation would probably be hopeless did he not have some backup; namely, Luffy and a newly recovered Zolo.
And even Nami, in her own way, offers something like support.
And just to not leave anyone out; the mayor himself is no slouch. I haven’t really talked much about Boodle because as someone who’s not even quite 30 yet, the whole “spending 40 years building a community only to have it destroyed” motive is a bit abstract to me. But it is executed well, and that means that at the end of the chapter, when he has a dock-to-ship stare-off with Buggy, he earns being drawn in that classically sketchy shonen style that conveys that someone is about 90% burning justice by volume.
Tomorrow: Luffy’s crew and the iron-willed mayor vs. Buggy the Clown and his circus on a ship.
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!
The introduction art for today’s One Piece is a curious one, which appears to depict Luffy racing against a….I think that’s a cheetah. Is Luffy a Speed Force user? We may never know.
In any case, today’s chapter opens with what was pretty obvious at the tail end of yesterday’s. No, Buggy the Clown is not dead. He survived being cut to bits just fine, a fact that catches Zolo enough off-guard that Buggy’s able to get a nasty stab in with his cutlass. Why don’t I let Buggy himself elucidate?
There are many good things about these three panels, but I think Luffy’s Extremely Look Who’s Talking reaction is my favorite.
Buggy genuinely seems to have our heroes on the ropes. But in the nick of time, Luffy resorts to the most powerful weapon in his arsenal; unintentionally pushing somebody’s buttons.
This is enough to make Buggy so furious that he chucks his hand—he’s still cut to pieces, remember, he’s just not hurt by it—and at Luffy, who then catches Buggy’s cutlass—attached arm and all—between his teeth, because manga is the highest form of art.
Buggy isn’t impressed, and, totally distracted from Zolo and Nami, takes the time to taunt his captive.
This distraction is enough for Zolo and Nami to turn the tables. Almost literally, since the real issue for Buggy’s crew is that Zolo flips their ship’s cannon around, still loaded with one of the—ahem—‘Buggy Balls’, and Nami does the honors of lighting it and wrecking their ship. The three escape in the confusion, while Nami deals with some confusion of her own; after all, why would a pirate risk their own life and limb to save somebody else?
The turnabout is enough to set Buggy, already a pretty angry guy, absolutely seething. And the chapter closes on Zolo, Luffy—still in a cage, mind you—and Nami fleeing into the city as Buggy makes his full intent known.
Tomorrow: Clownwar!
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.
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!
Today’s opening art—that’s it up there in the banner—depicts Nami walking side by side with a very cute pig. It’s quite charming, if I do say so.
The chapter itself adds a new dimension to Buggy the Clown’s personality. Yesterday in his proper introduction, he was mostly pretty angry, and it had the effect of making him simultaneously intimidating and more than a little silly. Here, we get another side of his personality; boisterous, as most good pirate captains are.
There’s a pretty good sequence right near the top of the chapter where Nami drinks several of Buggy’s crewmembers under the table. (Because I am, at heart, kind of a mom, I was only able to admire her feat after an initial reaction of “wait a minute, isn’t she too young to drink?” Then I remembered that I was reading an adventure manga about pirates. Moving swiftly along….)
The good times don’t last, though. Buggy’s plan to punish Luffy for “stealing” his map of the Grand Line is to blow him to smithereens. to this end, he orders his crew to do something distinctly unpleasant-sounding.
I Do Not Want To Load The Buggy Balls
We quickly learn what ‘Buggy Balls’ actually are, as Buggy shows them off by firing one from his ship’s cannon, and absolutely wrecking an entire neighborhood of the town in the process. It’s a really impressive looking sequence. There is a certain sheer kinetic energy to the cannonball knocking a hole through a dozen buildings in a row, making them crumple like towers of matchsticks.
Buggy then tells Nami that actually, he’d rather have her light the cannon fuse that blasts Luffy into oblivion. As a test of loyalty, sure—I doubt Buggy is as easy to fool as Nami’s assumed—but also just because he can. If the fact that he gets kicks out of this kind of thing wasn’t obvious already, it’s made so when he doubles down on the order, with a panel that—and I say this with love—I am genuinely shocked never became a meme.
The visuals assume a panicky quality here, as Nami tries to stall for time while trying to figure out what she should do as Buggy and his crew heckle her and her hands shake.
The egging-on, both from Buggy’s crew and from Luffy himself (who tells her she can’t expect to tangle with pirates without putting her life on the line, probably true), eventually wears her to the breaking point. She impressively flips over the crewman trying to show her out to light the cannon, and yells this.
Which is a really nice, economical slice of character-building, only slightly undercut by Luffy explaining the barely-subtext in the immediately following panel.
Live Luffy reaction.
She doesn’t have to fight alone for long, Zolo makes his grand return just moments later. Buggy takes an immediate interest in the ex-pirate hunter, which Zolo does not return, to say the least.
I really love the “DOOOOOM” sound effect in the background there.
The clown pirate doesn’t initially appear to put up much of a fight. Almost as soon as Zolo engages with Buggy, he cuts him to ribbons. Is this the end of Buggy the Clown….?
I somehow doubt it. We’ll find out together tomorrow, pirates.
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.
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!
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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