ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 62

Magic Planet Anime posts will be extremely irregular for the foreseeable future. See this post for details.

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 Cover Issue: Ritchie the Lion leads what is now his crew to a mysterious island. I’m interested to see where this goes.


Poor Gin. The guy’s got a sense of honor and compassion, but he’s sworn his life to Don Krieg, who has neither. You do wonder how people like that get mixed up in situations like this.

But mixed up Gin very much is; Krieg is so unhappy with Gin’s recent face turn that he fires a cannonball filled with poison gas onto the ship. His pirates have masks to filter the gas out, including Gin himself. But Gin, bless the foolhardy bastard, does this.

Thus, when the gas hits, Gin scrambles to help out a few of the others onboard, willfully abandoning his own life.

Death is never a certain thing in One Piece, but Gin certainly appears to die from exposure to the toxin not long later. The chapter, and thus, the volume, end on this image. Luffy is Gum-Gum gonna kill somebody. (Specifically; Krieg.)

And that is, unfortunately, also where we leave One Piece Every Day itself, for at least a time.

I’ve really enjoyed doing these articles, but I think I overestimated my own personal ability to literally do them every day. I want to continue with them in some form or another but I’m not sure what would be appropriate and would actually keep y’all engaged. If you have any suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comments or on my Discord server. Otherwise, I am going to take some time to brainstorm and hopefully come up with a solution that is both enjoyable for all of you and practical for myself.

Until next time.


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 61

Magic Planet Anime posts will be extremely irregular for the foreseeable future. See this post for details.

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!


Of all the bit characters One Piece has introduced so far, Gin is one of my favorites. Pin the guy to a dial with “total softie” at one end and “badass dual-wielder of what look like but probably aren’t tonfas” on the other, and then just wiggle it back and forth really fast. That’s basically Gin, who makes his third turn in the manga. To put it in wrestling terms; he’s gone from a face, to a heel, and now back to a face again.

Most of this chapter consists of he and Sanji actively fighting, and for most of the fight it really doesn’t seem like he’s pulling any punches. One of the spectator pirates describes Sanji having his “bones beaten to shards”, which is certainly a colorful bit of description if nothing else. The visuals we get as Gin’s legendary brutality is described are pretty evocative.

But of course, we don’t care about the scores of anonymous pirates that died before the start of this story, which is why the big tentpole moment of this chapter is Gin doing this.

Yeah, the guy has a change of heart because Sanji was so nice to him. The consequences of this? Questions for tomorrow’s chapter, although I will note that Krieg does not seem pleased.


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 60

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 Cover Issue: A lionizing figure leads a revolution, it would seem. I really, really want these guys to show up in the main story now. There is nothing on Earth funnier to me, in this moment, than a lion leading a pirate crew.


In today’s chapter, the battle for the hull and soul of the restaurant ship continues, but not without an interesting new wriggle. Yesterday it seemed like Gin might be betraying Don Krieg outright. Today’s chapter makes it clear that’s not true, he just feels honor-bound to kill Sanji himself. A peculiar buccaneer’s honor, if ever I’ve seen it.

Another important thing happens; Don Krieg reestablishes his bad guy bonafides. How? By tricking Luffy into almost wrecking the rest of the ship. He makes a huge show of firing a “poison gas cannonball” (yes) at the rubber pirate, but surprise, he actually filled the cannonball with shrapnel.

No, sorry, with shuriken. My mistake.

There’s also a fun small detail here, where Krieg tells his men off for letting the fact that Luffy called them “wimps” get under their skin. He says that being bothered by it only proves Luffy’s point. Not ten pages later, he absolutely seethes over the fact that Luffy won’t acknowledge Krieg as proper King of the Pirates material. Some pirates are just always telling on themselves. Things don’t get immediately resolved here, and we can assume that the battle for the oceangoing restaurant will continue well into the next chapter.

See you then, pirates. But before I do, here’s an intriguing bit of cultural flotsam included at the end of this chapter.

The very first One Piece popularity poll, so far as I can tell. I’m a little sad that Nami ranked behind Red-Hair Shanks, who hasn’t shown up since the prologue, but eh, young boys, am I right?


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!

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 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 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.