Tag: recap

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 13

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!

A theory I’m putting forward to you all; Mohji is the worst character in One Piece so far.

I know! It’s probably controversial, but bear with me here. What kind of heartless motherfucker picks a fight with a dog? Not a big scary threatening dog that is in your way, just a random dog guarding a random building that you have no interest in and your pet lion only kind of does. What kind of person does that? Mohji, apparently. I hate Mohji. Fuck him.

But pick a fight with Chou-Chou is exactly what Mohji does, and as such the first third or so of today’s chapter is a fight sequence where Chou-Chou and Mohji’s lion Richie duke it out. Through sheer moxie, and the loving memory of his owner, Chou-Chou manages to not just survive but to actually hold Richie off for a time. And I know that love for his owner is what’s motivating Chou-Chou here, because of the technique here used where the panels are aligned into strips that seem to “fade in and out” by getting narrower and wider, representative of the memories coursing through Chou-Chou’s mind as he fights.

But even though Chou-Chou is a very good dog, he’s still going to struggle against a lion (much less a jacked anime lion), so at some point, off-panel, Mohji burns the store to the ground.

Worst character in One Piece so far, I rest my case.

Unfortunately, Mohji fails to account for Luffy, who is A) very much still alive and B) very, very upset at Mohji for taking Chou-Chou’s “treasure” from him. In a display of karma so quick it’d give you whiplash, Luffy piledrives Mohji’s lion into the dirt, and doesn’t take much longer to deal with Mohji himself.

You wouldn’t like Luffy when he’s angry.

Mohji joins his pet lion face-down in the dirt soon after.

All of this is small consolation to Chou-Chou, though, who after all, cannot get the building—or his master—back.

Nami, in particular, is not impressed by all this.

But it is worth pointing out her inching toward pirate-acceptance here. Pivoting from the above, and a whole lot of “fight me, bro”-isms flung in Luffy’s direction, to this….

….just a few pages later. Again, I like to call out clever technique like this when I see it. By slipping this bit in here, Oda prevents any “dead pages”—stuffing, essentially. Devoid of meaningful narrative or visual content—just to reach a page count, a thing that many mangaka seem to struggle with.

In general, I think the saga of Chou-Chou the dog—who departs toward the end of the chapter here, possibly toward the refugee shelter Boodle mentioned in the last chapter—is my favorite of the small story arcs we’ve seen so far. I’m sure it will eventually be dethroned, but I’m a sucker for tales of animal loyalty, so it may be a bit before that happens.

Back on his ship, Buggy the Clown learns of Mohji’s demise, and is not pleased.

I DO NOT WANT TO READY THE BUGGY BALLS.

Tomorrow: No more clowning around!

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 anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch SPY X FAMILY Episode 11 – Stella

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

Last week’s dodgeball plan out the window, Anya Forger needs to find a new way to earn Stella stars if Operation Strix has any chance of succeeding in the long term. In this week’s episode of Spy x Family, she finds a way, although not intentionally, and not without a fair bit of harrowing suspense beforehand.

The episode opens simply, with Loid again struggling with Anya as the latter’s grades continue to sink, although with a more understanding approach than we’ve previously seen. (Also, at one point Loid mentally refers to Anya as his daughter with no further clarifiers, which I think is sweet.) Even from the point of view of a mundane parent, Anya’s scores would be a problem; we see at least three F’s, and there may be several more, so clearly, he’s got to do something. Anya’s academic woes aren’t solved in this episode. Even as she has a fun internal monologue about how she can totally just read other peoples’ minds to cheat, and makes an attempt to sound like Loid while she does so, it’s clear that things need to change for Anya to have any hope of getting a Stella.

All of this vexes Twilight. And indeed, Anya’s ESP means that since she can read his mind, his worries become hers in a very real and immediate sense; a literalization of the idea that children tend to inherit their parents’ anxieties.

He does hit upon one possible solution though, a father-daughter “ooting” to a local hospital. There, he hopes that perhaps Anya acquiring a taste for volunteer work might eventually lead to her getting a Stella for being an exceptional community member. If not any time soon, at least eventually.

Loid gets far more than he bargained for. Initially, this is played for comedy. Anya, being a girl of recall, only five or so, is terrible at helping out around the hospital, first breaking a vase and then shirking her task to reorganize the hospital library by reading their comics section. (Presumably, something they keep around to entertain young patients, which Anya definitely falls in that bracket.)

Just when this gets bad enough that the Forgers are practically kicked out, though, something much more serious occurs. A young boy named Ken, attending a physical therapy session in the hospital’s pool room, idles around near the adults’ pool. Not paying much attention (do kids ever?) he falls in, and almost immediately “Stella” takes a turn for the significantly darker.

Ken cannot swim, and being unable to even thrash or make noise, he simply sinks to the bottom of the pool like a rock. The direction of the episode takes a sharp detour into the visually harrowing here, with the underwater shots especially composed like something out of a tragic drama. The boy is saved only by his own thoughts; mental pleas for help that happen to be picked up by our resident psychic.

In a visible panic of her own, Anya rushes off to the pool with a flimsy excuse to help. Thankfully, Loid gives chase, because even though her bravery is admirable and her desire to help equally so, Anya can’t swim either, and it’s only the fact that Loid hurries after Anya into the pool room that saves both her and Ken. A mission well done, if ever there was one.

Her role in Ken’s rescue is enough to earn Anya the titular Stella, her very first. She gets something vaguely akin to a henshin or other kind of visual power-up sequence as it’s put on her uniform, and it puts a sweet cap on what is otherwise a rather harrowing story. Perhaps more important than the Stella is the other thing Anya has earned: some self-confidence. For the first time, she considers that her powers might be able to actually help people. (And, of course, that this might make people like her. Something she’s also still not entirely accustomed to.)

The remainder of the episode focuses on the aftereffects of all this. Anya briefly gets a bit of a big head, in fact.

But unfortunately her hopes that having earned a Stella in a genuinely heroic fashion might endear her to her classmates are quickly dashed. Some nameless girls in class are straight-up mean about it, and even suggest she might’ve faked it somehow. Only for Damian (!) to, roundaboutly at least, stick up for her by telling the gossips that if they think Eden is such a cut-rate school that they’d hand out a Stella by accident, they should transfer. (He leaves out the part where the main reason he cares about Anya’s Stella being authentic is that it hurts his pride that she got one before him. And it would hurt even more if it weren’t genuinely earned.)

Anya’s little friend Becky also suggests, running on pure spoiled-little-princess logic, that since Anya did something good she should ask for a reward. Eventually, she hits on the idea of a dog (because, you see, Damian has a dog. And if Damian has a dog and Anya also has a dog they’ll have something to talk about. And that will lead to world peace. The mind of a first-grader is incredible. The mind of a telepathic first-grader, all the more so). Anya’s able to talk Loid and Yor into it fairly easily—though not without them respectively wondering about a dog’s utility as a house guard and threat level respectively—and the episode ends there, with the promise of Dog Shenanigans next week for the last episode of the first cour.

Except, there’s a little bit more. Somewhere in a mad laboratory-turned-hellish dog pound, a group of canines who’ve had something done to them—it’s not clear what—waste away in tiny, dirty cages. A pair of villains, obvious by their poor treatment of the animals, talk about their client, who they speculate will use the animals as “bomb dogs.” What the broader implications of any of this may be are presently unclear, but the camera focuses on one dog in particular as the episode fades out, and I do suspect we’ll be seeing him again soon.

Like what you’re reading? 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 12

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, we’re introduced to three new characters; a villainous lion-tamer, the mayor of the city Buggy and his lackeys have ransacked, and a dog. Working out which of these three has the most impact to the plot is left as an exercise to the reader. But I’ll give you a hint; it somehow isn’t this guy.

That’s not to say that Mohji isn’t important. Nor to say that Boodle—the mayor—isn’t, either. But the real star of this chapter is that dog, Chou-Chou.

This is a bit of an odd thing that I’ve noticed One Piece likes to do, introduce several characters at once, sometimes dropping their backstory on us like a sack of wrenches, and then resuming the current main plot either in the back half of the chapter’s page count or in the next one entirely. It’s not an approach I dislike, but it’s one I don’t see in much else—if this isn’t abundantly clear by now, I don’t read a ton of other shonen—so I’ve had to get a bit used to it. (And who’s to say if it’ll even still apply, a hundred chapters from now?)

You may remember that yesterday ended with Zolo in pretty bad shape, bleeding out as he hauled Luffy off to flee from Buggy’s crew. Luffy himself is still stuck in the cage he’s been imprisoned in as the chapter starts, and Nami seems a bit exasperated with the both of them.

All’s well that ends well, though, because she stole the key to the cage, so Luffy can break out with no issues. Problem solved, right?

Well, no. Remember that dog?

Munch squad.

Boodle shows up not long after, explaining that Chou-Chou has been fighting off Buggy’s crew all on his own. Why? To protect the pet food store owned by his late master, who passed away a few months before the events of this arc of an unspecified illness. I’m super underselling this here, but it’s actually pretty touching, considering how brief it all is. (Or maybe I’m just a sap.)

One Piece also floats an interesting theme here that I suppose it has actually brought up before, but I just haven’t been paying a ton of attention to. The notion of what “treasure” itself actually is. Luffy’s greatest treasure, after all, is the hat given to him by Red-Hair Shanks. Chou-Chou the dog, Mayor Boodle puts forward, sees his late master’s pet food store as a treasure in that it is all that remains of the man. A memento of sorts.

Perhaps I’m just reading too much into it, but I think this is an interesting idea and it’s one I think we should be on the lookout for as we move forward.

In any case, Mohji does eventually make his way to where Luffy and friends are “hiding.” He brags that he can control any animal—a statement initially backed up by the presence of his riding-lion, Richie—but when he tries to take command of Chou-Chou, this happens.

And Luffy continues his unbroken streak of flipping switches on every new villain he meets.

But Mohji doesn’t have much more success against Luffy than he does against Chou-Chou. He orders Richie to maul him, but all the lion succeeds in doing is breaking Luffy out of his cage.

The lion tosses Luffy into a collapsing building, which is enough for Mohji to declare that ‘no one could survive that.’ (He does not have a good command of what manga he’s in, I think.)

When the lion makes a move on the pet food store (presumably hungry for the shelves upon shelves of Meow Mix that lurk within), Chou-Chou growls fearlessly. The chapter ends on this shot of Luffy, ready to bounce back into action, and I’m quite excited to see how all this shakes out tomorrow.

Tomorrow: The Dog, The Monkey, and the Lion!

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 11

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.

Right.

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 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 10

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 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 9

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.

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 8

One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.

Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!

We open today on a familiar scene; Luffy and a single companion aimlessly adrift at sea. Zolo complains that they really need to get a navigator. He’s got a point, I’d say.

It’s not long before shenanigans ensue; Luffy tries to turn a passing giant bird into dinner. Instead, it ends up carrying him away, separating him from Zolo. Not that the former pirate-hunter has much time to ruminate on loneliness or anything of the sort. As he’s trying to catch up to Luffy, he runs into a trio of pirates adrift at sea. He rescues them. Or maybe it’s more correct to say that he….doesn’t stop them from rescuing themselves?

Of course, the rescued pirates are far from grateful, and we hear for the first time a name that I suspect we’re going to become pretty familiar with.

Of course, Zolo is not one to just roll over because he’s outnumbered.

Subdued, the pirates explain how they got stranded in the middle of the ocean in the first place. Their story, told here through a few flashback pages, introduces us to a new character. This one I know we’ll be seeing a lot of. And if you’re vaguely familiar with One Piece at all, you probably recognize her.

Yes, that’s Nami, one of the handful of other One Piece characters I knew by name before starting this project. I didn’t really know anything about her, though. I certainly didn’t know she was introduced to the comic by swindling a trio of pirates out of their ship with a fake treasure chest.

I think I have a favorite character.

Back in the present, Zolo muses that being able to predict the weather that well would make her one hell of a navigator. I suspect we’ll be circling back around on that notion before too long.

The pirate trio say they work for one Buggy the Clown, who apparently “ate the fruit of the devil” and is the fiercest pirate in the area. (The mention of devil fruit all but confirms my thoughts from a few columns ago. Although, like I said there, it’s kind of obvious when one thinks about it.) They need to get back the map of the Grand Line that Nami stole, or their vicious captain will have their heads. We don’t meet Buggy himself, here, but (small spoiler for the next column, here), the volume that begins with the chapter after this one is named after him. So I’m quite sure we’ll meet him soon.

We do see his ship here, in a bit of very blunt foreshadowing.

Sometimes as a critic you see things that induce a loss for words. “Pirate ship that’s also a circus tent” is one of those things.

Naturally, we link back up with Nami basically immediately.

Her escape from, presumably, more of Buggy’s crew is interrupted when Luffy falls out of the sky, causing a huge commotion.

Nami, in her second defining character moment in the span of 20 pages, immediately takes advantage of the situation by pretending Luffy is her “boss” who’s come to rescue her. (Sidenote: I really love how Oda’s panels tumble in to a jumble of diagonals on this page, it really emphasizes the frantic pace of the scene.)

Fans of 18th century German folk theater may recognize the term “Hanswurst.”

They don’t actually “have” Luffy “right there”, of course. One of them makes the mistake of swatting his hat, and gets laid flat for his troubles.

Nami, perhaps sensing opportunity, introduces herself shortly after, in the chapter’s last page. Although she can’t know it, she may have not picked the best opening line.

Does that make her some kind of meta-pirate? A double pirate? A pirate pirate? A piratesite? A buccane’er-do-well? A thief of the thieves of the sea?

All in all, I really quite like Nami’s first chapter! Roguish characters who live and die by their wits are always great fun in a story like this, and it gives her a nice contrast with Luffy, whose main approach to problem solving is “punch first, ask questions later.” I wonder how long it’ll take before she joins the main crew?

Regardless, this actually marks the end of the first volume! I was a little surprised by that to be honest, since it seems a bit brief to me, but with 8 chapters each, one of them double length, under our belt, we are already over 200 pages into this story. There are many more to go, of course, many of which will also involve Nami. Personally, I can’t wait.

But what about you? I’m particularly interested in asking my other first-timers here. What do you think of Nami’s introduction?

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 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 anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR -ULTRA ROMANTIC- Episode 10

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

This week; festival stuff, beginning with the haunted house that was teased at the end of last week’s episode. Even in just this opening scene, we get a lot of interesting xx. Kaguya and her cousin Maki alike prove to be cowardly within the haunted house proper, and when we flash back to how all the spooky 3D sound (yes, 3D sound) was recorded in the first place—by subjecting Miko to it—and we get maybe the only Love is War! segment that might cause untoward awakenings in certain viewers. Seriously, if you showed some of these stills to someone out of context they would very much get the wrong idea.

Thankfully I’d never do that to my loyal readers.

More to the point, back in the present, Miko catches a couple making out in the haunted house and as a result the attraction gets separated into two lines; one for boys, one for girls. By coincidence, this also ruins Ishigami’s initial plan for getting an ideal opening to confess his feelings to Tsubame, so he has to do something else instead.

On the spur of the moment, while visiting a class cafe, he wins a gigantic heart-shaped cookie for her, with the intent that doing so would just be a nice gesture. Dramatic irony ahoy, he is unaware of the whole “eternal love” urban legend, singled out by the narrator as one of about 10% of students who doesn’t know about it. This leaves Tsubame a blushing, mess, and, flustered, she runs off screaming that she needs time to think about his inadvertent confession.

And friends, let me tell you, I am someone who is pretty sensitive to second-hand embarrassment. Ishigami accidentally(!!) confessing to his massive crush on Tsubame in front of her own class, a good 20 or 30 people, did not just make my skin crawl, it made my spine shuffle around like a deck of cards. I could feel my teeth conspiratorially whispering “get a load of this guy” to each other. My hair stood on end and metamorphed, Bayonetta style, into that one meme of girls at a college party looking awkwardly at the camera. The cringe is real, and it is inside of Ishigami. I have not felt this bad for the guy in quite some time.

Later in the episode, Shirogane and Chika wonder aloud about Ishigami’s chances. Shirogane is hopeful, admittedly because if Ishigami isn’t successful, it might ruin his ability to pull off his own forthcoming confession. Chika, meanwhile, says Ishigami “doesn’t have a prayer.” Comedic rudeness aside, she does think pretty hard on Ishigami’s chances, despite her initial assessment, including grading him on “points” and trying to put herself in Tsubame’s shoes a bit. This facet of Chika has always been pretty interesting to me. What she’s doing here—treating romance between two people as an object of amusement or for study—is fairly representative of someone with a para-romantic personality. If she’s seriously interested in any crush or anything of the sort of her own, we don’t hear about it here, and I’m pretty confident we never will. (This does have the unfortunate effect of sidelining Chika any time the anime starts focusing more heavily on its dramatic side.)

My armchair psychoanalyzing of Chika aside, she indicates that thinking on it more, she actually does think Ishigami has a chance, and it is always nice to see her being genuine.

Elsewhere, we’re reintroduced to Moeha, who you may or may not remember as Chika’s younger sister. She’s also basically Chika But Sadistic, although that angle of her personality is toned back here, since this segment focuses on her newfound crush on Shirogane.

Yes, Shirogane now has another girl who thinks his dead-eyed sleep deprived stare is the sexiest thing in Japan. There’s even a great moment where Kaguya, who is initially very hostile upon finding out about this, has a “could this be one of my people?” sort of reaction as the two gush about that very feature of his.

Before that, it’s Chika who tries to sabotage the relationship, by demonstrating how terrible Shirogane is at various things. She picks a pretty random task—juggling—and sets him to do it, assuming he’ll be as awful at that as he was at singing, rapping, playing volleyball, and however many other things. Naturally, because of the laws of comedy, he’s actually pretty fantastic at juggling. And the three or four other things Chika tries to have him do.

That particular segment ends with this, a casual reminder that Moeha has a particularly warped personality. But hey, at least she’s funny about it.

Post-credits, we find out that someone’s stolen all the heart-shaped balloons at the festival! Truly, an unprecedented crime! The heist of the century! Who could our culprit be?

Like what you’re reading? 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 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.