Tag: One Piece Every Day

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ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 6

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.

Today we come to a problem I was pretty sure we’d face eventually.

So; this chapter is really good. The issue is that it’s almost entirely a single action scene. This is something you can do in the serial manga format. If your average chapter is 20 pages, and you’re reasonably confident that you’ll get enough chapters to tell the, you know, story parts of your story, you can stretch your legs a bit. Some chapters are entirely or almost entirely the “blood” part of the ancient “love, blood, and rhetoric” triangle. This is one such chapter. It’s just always a bit of a challenge to write about something so kinetic.

I can give you the actual events of things in a single sentence; Luffy and Zolo fight Axe-Hand Morgan, and Morgan loses. We learn a few more things in here, admittedly. Morgan seems to have some weird sway over his men, as at one point he orders them to shoot themselves for “cowardice” and they almost do it. Mind control? Something Else? Who’s to say? It’s early days. (For me, at least. I’m sure at least some of you have read One Piece before and are smirking right now.)

Although, on the note of supernatural abilities, this chapter does make mention of the “Devil Fruit” first alluded to back in Chapter 1. My guess then is that these devil fruits are the manga’s plot tokens; Luffy became a rubber band man upon eating one. I’m quite sure that other varieties of fruits could grant different powers. (Honestly, now that I type it out, it just seems obvious. Is this what the vending machine coins in Gleipnir were riffing on?)

Sir, I would like to venture that you—a man named “Axe-Hand Morgan” who, in fact, does have a hand that is an axe—are not a good judge of what is ordinary or not ordinary.

The only other things of note that occur are that Zolo and Koby both get little moments of solidarity with Luffy. The former’s is depicted in the column banner, and Luffy replies to it in a very Luffyish way.

And Koby is brave in the face of what may well be death as Morgan’s son takes him hostage. He needn’t be scared, of course, since Luffy rescues him as part of the battle that unfolds here.

Beyond that, I’m honestly at a bit of a loss. I will say that Oda’s panel composition and command of visual storytelling are really spot-on even in this early stage of the manga. You could remove the dialogue and still have a solid idea of what’s happening, and all of this stuff is just a genuine treat to look at. But aside from that, there’s only so many ways to rephrase “this is all really badass.” Still, if we’re truly in for the long haul I suppose I should be okay with repeating myself at times. So let me say; this is all really badass.

My absolute favorite pages in this chapter are actually the last two, where we see Morgan attacking, and then the aftermath of his being struck down by Zolo on the following page, but not the strike itself, a lovely little visual trick that gives you a brief “wait, what happened?” jolt before what exactly occurred dawns on you. It’s a neat way of making Zolo’s attack somehow seem even cooler by not depicting it at all. I imagine some kid reading that on their way home from school in ’97 and thinking it was the raddest thing they’d ever seen, and that just puts a smile on my face.

Now, it’s not clear if Morgan is actually dead. Generally, in work like this, if you don’t see someone literally get a head chopped off or something similarly definitively fatal, their return is always a possibility. (And either way they still have Morgan’s annoying son to deal with.) Is more stylish violence to come? I suppose we’ll see.

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 5

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!

An odd thing about covering anime and manga, at least for me, is that over the years I’ve run into a lot of things that I really love certain parts of but really dislike certain other parts of. It’s way too early to tell if One Piece will eventually enter that particular box, but it’s certainly true of this chapter, which is probably both the best of these first few we’ve read so far and the first one I’ve had any serious qualms with.

Both of these stem from a flashback that takes up the bulk of the chapter. This, basically, is Zolo’s backstory. These kind of one-chapter “here’s this guy’s Whole Deal” narrative shotgun blasts have been common in anime and manga for a long time, but this is a pretty solid one, and I do like what it does for Zolo’s character.

The gist here is simple; Zolo was, as a child, a sword-fighting student at a dojo, and was constantly beaten in training exercises by his rival, Kuina. He gets so frustrated by his constant losses that he challenges said rival to a real duel with real swords, only to lose that too and walk away unscathed only because Kuina spares him any actual harm. The two talk; Kuina and Zolo both have their frustrations, and the two eventually vow that one day, one of the two will become the world’s greatest swordsman. But, not long after they make that solemn oath, Kuina dies in a freak accident. Zolo must now keep the promise himself, and become the world’s greatest swordsman on his own. He even learns how to fight with three swords, solely so he can use Kuina’s as well.

As a piece of stylistic work and economical storytelling, this is great stuff. Stories like this have very old roots, so it’s not exactly innovative, but there’s a lot to be said for technique. The trick of widening the blackspace between manga panels to indicate a flashback is utilized really well here, and it adds a palpable weight to the reminiscence. The drawings within the panels themselves are stylish, too. I’m particularly fond of this one, where Zolo and Kuina clash against a full moon.

But here’s what bothers me, okay? Kuina, Zolo’s late childhood rival, was a girl. A girl who laments that she’s a girl, because AFAB people1 tend to lose muscle mass and get a bit weaker as they get older, and she thinks it’ll stop her from reaching her true potential. To both the character of Zolo’s credit and that of the manga on the whole; this idea is pretty sternly rebuked as unimportant by Zolo himself. In fact, that refutation is what leads to their promise to begin with.

But, of course, Kuina dies. Off-panel, even. By falling down the stairs, even. Now, there’s only so much I can hold all this against One Piece, considering that it was still finding its footing this early on, and that it is hardly the first or last piece of literature to do something like this, but it’s not exactly a terrific sign when the first female character in the whole thing with some actual motive and characterization gets killed off almost immediately, is it?

So, that’s not a storytelling decision I’m fond of, certainly. But the flashback in general is at least a strong foundation on which Zolo’s character can be built. Zolo is one of just a couple One Piece characters I was at all aware of before starting this project (it’s hard to miss a guy with a sword between his teeth), and it’s cool to know the Watsonian explanation for that iconic design element. (I think the Doylistic one probably boils down to Oda asking himself “wouldn’t it be badass if a guy had a sword between his teeth?” Feel free to correct me in the comments if I’m wrong and he’s actually explained this in an interview or something.)

Meanwhile, back in the present, a bunch of navy boys line their guns up to execute Zolo. (In fact, the whole flashback happens because he despairs about how he can’t die yet because he’s still got a promise to fulfill. You know how it goes.) Not to worry, though; our favorite stretchy pirate boy comes to his rescue.

It’s a classic bit of shonen badassery, and Zolo is so impressed—or perhaps just grateful that he can still fulfill his promise—that he pledges to join Luffy’s crew right then and there. And just like that, Straw Hat Luffy gains his first crewman. And hey, a guy with three swords isn’t a bad place to start!

1: Obviously the manga does not put it quite in those terms, being a comic for young boys written in the late 90s, but you get what I mean.

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 3

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.

In today’s chapter, Koby successfully navigates Luffy’s ship to a navy town, a feat that astonishes the young pirate. The fact that Luffy apparently expected to become King of the Pirates by just aimlessly drifting from place to place is pretty great.

More importantly, we meet a couple people here. Chiefly there’s Roronoa Zolo, the tough-as-nails bounty hunter mentioned who was mentioned in the last issue and is currently taking up the banner image for the first but probably not last time. Luffy ponders trying to get him to join his crew, while Koby reveals that he has extremely simplistic views on rehabilitative justice.

Like everyone else we’ve met in One Piece so far, he’s a classic archetype; the bounty hunter with a heart of gold. Everyone in town is terrified of him, to the point that Luffy just mentioning him causes a ruckus at a local tavern. (The same happens when he mentions the “Captain Morgan” who apparently runs the whole place, but we don’t meet him yet here.)

But when we actually meet him a bit later, it becomes obvious that he has a soft center. He has an old school “tough guy / cute little kid” friendship with a local girl, who comes to bring him food and talk to him while he’s serving his sentence of being tied to a post in the prison yard. That friendship arouses the displeasure of one of the local bigshots; the other character we meet in this chapter.

Honestly, “mean, privileged rich guy” is almost cheating when it comes to creating antagonistic characters. Doubly so when their privilege is inherited and they threaten to “tell daddy” when something goes wrong, both of which are true of Helmeppo. Triply so when they’re also such a vile motherfucker that they’re mean to kids, which Helmeppo also is. (Not content with making a guard escort the little girl out of the prison, he smashes her rice balls into the ground! What a dick!)

It very briefly looks like Helmeppo might at least have a sense of fair play; he’s been telling Zolo that if he can survive for a month tied to that post, he’ll be free to go. But, shocker, at the end of the chapter we learn that that’s not actually true, and he’s planning to have the bounty hunter executed in three days. Upon learning this, Luffy delivers on his apparently once-per-chapter obligation to sock a bad guy directly in the face.

Helmeppo’s bloody-mouthed quip about “making an enemy of the navy” is where the chapter ends, setting us up with a thrilling cliffhanger for next time.

I haven’t really been mentioning the after-chapter bonus pages up ’til now, because I’m not terribly clear on if they were part of the original print run or were added at a later date in a rerelease. (Allusion to “Luffy’s Flag”, which hasn’t shown up yet, makes me think the latter.) I’m mentioning this one, though, because it’s a cute little drawing exercise—the sort of thing that really drives home just exactly how young One Piece‘s target audience is, or at least initially was—and I thought y’all might potentially be interested.

I gave it a quick go myself. I admit; I’m not much of a visual artist. But I think for doodling it in Paint.NET with my mouse it certainly could’ve come out worse.

Now available on your local NFT marketplace.

If you deign to partake in this particular game and can doodle a more convincing jolly roger, do feel free to drop a link in the comments or to show me on Twitter. I’d be delighted to see such a thing.

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Announcement & Overview

One Piece, Eiichiro Oda‘s magnum opus, is, by some metrics, the most popular manga ever written. It’s a defining work of the modern shonen landscape, and in a broader sense, massively influential to a whole generation of creative talents both within Japan and abroad. The adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and his crew, the Straw Hat Pirates, have been captivating audiences for 25 years; a quarter of a century as of next month. But, if you know enough about anime and manga to even be aware of this blog, let alone be reading it, you know all of that. So why am I telling you something you already know?

Well, to be frank, despite its massive popularity and a reputation that precedes it by a nautical mile, I’ve never read a single page or watched a single minute of One Piece. For whatever reason, until recently, I’d just never felt compelled to. This is, in its own way, strange for me personally. I’ve been a fan of anime and manga since I was pretty young, and I was a child of the Toonami era of American anime distribution. On top of that, I really like pirate stories! Around that very same time, the Pirates of the Caribbean films were some of my favorites (and I still kind of like them today, despite their poor critical reception and any thoughts I may have about a certain actor who was in them).

But I was a dumb preteen, and then a dumb teen, and when I was that age I had a vague snobbery to my taste in anime. I don’t remember, exactly, but I think, knowing myself at the time, I probably just assumed that anything that was that popular couldn’t possibly be worth my time. In hindsight, this was very stupid for a lot of reasons, but there’s not much sense in dwelling on it. Still, even as I’ve gotten older the time just hasn’t felt right.

It occurred to me a few weeks ago that this was also a very dumb attitude to have. A few things put it in perspective for me; the keen awareness that while I’m not old yet I’m certainly not getting any younger, the recent popularity of tumblr phenomenon Dracula Daily, and my own aforementioned thoughts on a certain actor in a trilogy of pirate movies that I used to like.

And then, about a week ago, I learned—spoiler for a recent One Piece manga chapter, I think, coming literally right after this interjection, you’ve been warned—that there is a trans woman in the series as of a recent chapter of the story. And that scrap of representation was, I think, what the last of my weird, completely irrational, totally pointless defenses against this shonen series needed to fall. “Fuck it” I thought. “What is there to lose?”

Hence; this project. The premise is extremely simple. I will read the One Piece manga. Every single day, you will have a new article to read—usually on the shorter side—about a chapter of said manga. Starting from the beginning. In order. One day at a time.

It will take me, provided I take no breaks, and not accounting for any chapters that have yet to be released, about three years to catch up to where the manga is at the time of this writing, June 6th, 2022. I am setting myself a fundamentally absurd task, to not just read a very long story but to write about it, to write about every single part of it.

I have a lot of reasons for wanting to do this, but the biggest is simply to see if I can. I’m not quite brave enough to leave myself no escape hatches here; if the columns are pulling little interest by the time I’ve finished the first collected volume I’ll probably pull the plug and just continue reading the series by myself. Likewise, if I burn out on the project I will allow myself to take hiatuses. But still, I’m optimistic. The real honest core of this whole project is that I just Want To Do This. It’s a Mt. Everest for a lifelong couch potato.

Also! I want you, yes you, the girl, boy, enby, or whatever else you may be reading this, to read One Piece along with me. A chapter a day is not much; while One Piece on the whole is very long, the individual chapters are only a brisk 20 or so pages each. It will be entirely viable for you, dear reader, to settle in with a chapter of the story and one of my columns at night before you turn in for bed, or in the morning before you go to work. Is assuming that you want to arrogant of me? Maybe, but I think it’ll be fun, and I place a lot of value in fun.

As for how I’m doing this, here are the basics.

I will be reading the chapters myself in chunks, usually a few at a time, because I want to keep a nice buffer for myself so that way there will be—ideally!—a new One Piece Every Day, you know, every day.

I fully intend to give my honest thoughts on each chapter. Those may be very brief or very lengthy, and they may skew positive or negative. (I have already been informed by some well-meaning friends that there are some things in this manga that have Not Aged Well, but I have never shied away from earnestly evaluating art, even if it is problematic at times.)

These columns will have their own archive on the main page, as well as their own “recent posts” section. (They technically already do, that was the reason behind that unexplained change a few days ago, for those of you who noticed.)

And that’s basically it! Conceptually, this is all very simple. It is just a matter of effort. And there’s good news on that front; if you’re reading this, I’ve already read the first week’s worth of chapters, and already have the columns written. So, I’m already getting this ship ready to sail, you just need to decide if you’re on board or not.

I hope to see you tomorrow, for the proper casting off.

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.