Tag: Koby

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 7

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.

Hello once again, pirates! Let’s start with a bit of meta talk today. This is the first column written after I started actually publishing these, and I’d like to take a moment to sincerely thank each and every one of you who’s supported this project so far. Reading One Piece every day is a hell of an undertaking even with you guys also on-board. Without you, it would be nearly impossible. So yes, sincere thanks all around and I do mean it from the bottom of my heart.

Some points of contention have arisen, though! I’m eventually going to put up a small Frequently Asked Questions page that I can direct folks to for stuff like this, but just to very quickly explain the two things I’ve gotten the most question marks over:

  • “What are you calling him Zolo and not Zoro?” – The official translation uses “Zolo.” It’s worth noting that both are rendered the same in Japanese (and I do tag the articles with both names), but Viz says it’s Zolo, so “Zolo” is what I’ll be using, in much the same way that the guy from Spy x Family is “Loid” instead of “Lloyd.”
  • “Why are you reading the black and white version? There are full-color versions that cover most of the manga.” – I prefer to read the manga as close to originally written and inked as I can, and the black and white is better for that.

And that’s the reasoning behind both of those decisions.

But hey, you may well not care about any of that and just want me to get on with it already. Fair enough! Let’s get back to the story. (Though, if you do have any other questions, feel free to sound off in the comments below.)

So! Captain Morgan is dead! We see his damn body slumped on his back on the ground, so that’s pretty final, and I suppose I was wrong yesterday, because his son seems to be out of commission, too. This chapter, then, deals with the fallout of his death. Mostly, people are pretty grateful.

Koby is relieved to learn that Morgan ruled by fear and that the navy isn’t really like that. (Hmm.) Luffy, Zolo, and Koby are rewarded with a hearty meal from the mother of that little girl Zolo befriended. Luffy also impressively manages to scarf down more food than Zolo despite the fact that a bit earlier in the chapter the latter literally passes out from starvation. As they eat, Luffy boldly lays out his plan to travel to the Grand Line to find the One Piece. (A treasure whose name I constantly have to remember not to italicize, despite every bone in my body screaming at me to do so.)

Koby will not be accompanying them, given that he’s still determined to join the navy. But, as Luffy puts it, even if they go their separate ways, they’ll always be friends. That’s a nice thought; that even if the people we meet in life eventually leave us, the real value is that we met at all. And he thanks Luffy and Zolo for teaching him how to stick up for himself.

All this makes for a cute interstitial, but it doesn’t last. The navy boys inform Luffy that, despite his and Zolo’s heroics, they’re pirates, so they can’t be allowed to just lounge about in a navy town. To their limited credit; they do at least let Luffy and Zolo go without reporting them, but this is still a pretty rough thing to do, and it’s called out as such by a few background characters.

Koby, meanwhile, has his future employment with the navy put into jeopardy by this whole event, since the officer he pleads to let him join up thinks he might be a pirate spy. Luffy has a solution to this, of course; violence. Or rather, provoking someone else to violence. He pretends that he’s going to tell the officer about Koby’s past with Alvida, threatening Koby’s career with the navy. This spurs the former cabin boy to fight back (although, obviously, he’s not a match for Luffy, despite getting a solid hit in).

“Disturbing the peace” in this fashion gives Luffy and Zolo plenty of reason to leave, and they make their way to do so.

But it doesn’t take Koby long to figure out that Luffy was deliberately trying to push him away for his own benefit. Accordingly, he runs out to say goodbye to them as they leave anyway, and the sailors prove themselves good sports in their own way by doing this.

With their friend behind them, Luffy and Zolo set out toward the Grand Line, departing with Koby on amicable terms. But, the seas ahead aren’t quite crystal clear.

A single post-chapter page informs us that this is the Great Age of Piracy! An age where “pirates beyond number raise their flags to battle for fame and fortune.” Perhaps it could be said, then, that the true start of Luffy’s journey—and ours—is here.

That’s the first week of One Piece down, friends. Many more lie ahead of us.

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.

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 4

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.

I really like the opening panel of chapter 4.

Mostly the guy on the right. Look at him! He’s so scandalized! It’s almost adorable.

I’m not sure how true this remains going forward, but assuming that Luffy continues to act in a generally similar fashion throughout most of the manga, I think the fact that he’s just so blunt may be a factor as to its popularity. Kids love the idea of being able to just tell someone off, especially if they’re someone older than them. Luffy does that all the time, and if people continue giving him issues, he socks them in the face. (Except here he doesn’t, this is the first chapter where Luffy doesn’t punch somebody in the kisser. I’m a little sad, to be honest.) There are several examples of this attitude here, and they’re all charmingly kiddy. I’m particularly fond of Luffy totally blowing off Koby’s concern here.

And his not taking “no” for an answer when he tries to press-gang Zolo, here.

The newest target of Luffy’s attitude is Captain “Axe-Hand” Morgan. He combines his son Helmeppo’s massive self-regard with an obsession with status (literally! he goes on and on about his “rank” in the navy here) and the fact that, well, he has an axe for a hand. He’s not a nice man! Over the course of this chapter’s brief 20 pages he kills two subordinates, one just for scuffing the massive statue of himself he’s having erected, and on top of that orders his men to kill the little girl we met last chapter. (One of the two henchmen Morgan kills in this chapter meets his end because he refuses to even consider carrying out the order. Poor guy, imagine dying in chapter four of one of the longest-running manga of all time.) For “defying” him by talking to Zolo. Famously, small children are normally obedient and deferential.

Luffy doesn’t know or care about any of this of course, and literally rockets into a confrontation with Morgan. Again, the chapter ends on a cliffhanger, so we don’t see them actually properly fight here.

I do also want to mention that Koby gets a solid moment here, too, when he unties Zolo’s binds in the yard. Luffy doesn’t do this because he wants to make Zolo one of his crew members. His “plan” for doing so is to steal Zolo’s swords back from the tower they’re being kept in and only return them if Zolo joins his crew. This would be antiheroic if it were at all a competent plan. For his part, Zolo seems more in awe of how “dumb” Luffy is, and a little shocked about the whole “aspiring king of pirates” thing. Who wouldn’t be, I suppose?

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.

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 2

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.

“I’ve set myself to become King of the Pirates…and if I die trying…then at least I tried!”

The very first person Luffy D. Monkey tells about his ambition to become King of the Pirates is a dejected, down-on-his-luck cabin boy named Koby. I don’t know what it is, but that’s just absolutely hilarious to me for some reason. He’s the Jimmy Olsen to Luffy’s Superman, except I think if you put Koby and Olsen in a fight, Olsen would probably win.

I said when I began this project that I wouldn’t sugarcoat my opinion if I felt One Piece did something problematic or just straight up bad. We don’t cross into the latter at all here, but the former….eh, yeah, kind of. There’s just something a little weird about this chapter’s villain, a beauty-obsessed overweight woman with a huge mace named Lady Alvida. That said; I’ve definitely seen a lot worse, so I’ll not harp on it too hard, here.

Mostly, she serves as a decent starter villain for Luffy. Her modus operandi seems to be very simple; she asks her crew, under her wood-deck tyranny, who is the fairest of them all. If they don’t say her, she hits them with a giant mace.

When Luffy confronts her, he has an obvious opening; since his body is made of weird magic rubber stuff, he can’t be hurt by the mace, which Alvida doesn’t see coming because, well, why in the living thunder would she? Luffy takes advantage of her confusion, and promptly decks her across the face. I really hope he keeps doing this to every villain, it’s funny as hell.

More important is that we get a little bit of exposition here! Koby balks at the very notion that Luffy could ever be King of the Pirates, which eventually leads him to reply with this article’s lead quote. He incredulously mentions that Luffy will have to go to the Grand Line if he wants to accomplish such a thing. What’s the Grand Line? Who knows! A “graveyard for pirates”, apparently, which sounds suitably dangerous for our hero. Also, I had no idea that One Piece was named after an actual thing within its universe, but apparently Gold Roger’s treasure is called the “One Piece.”

In general this chapter does a lot to establish that, yeah, even ten years after the prologue, Luffy is still kind of amusingly dumb. It’s a likable sort of dumb; he doesn’t really sugarcoat anything and speaks his mind in an extremely straightforward way, even when he maybe shouldn’t.

The beginning of the chapter reestablishes that he can’t swim (who am I to judge? Neither can I), and he almost dies by being sucked into a whirlpool. Only to emerge like this a few pages later.

Luffy is an odd one, and he ends this chapter with a new boat (still just a small dinghy, but hey, it’s a new small dinghy), and a new companion; the aforementioned cabin boy, who wants to eventually join the navy.

A pirates’ graveyard and a mysterious bounty hunter. I wonder what sort of adventure our boys are about to sail themselves into? I suppose we’ll find out 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.

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.