Tag: Zeff

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ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 58

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: It seems like Buggy’s former crew are still slugging things out. I’m still rooting for the acrobat.

In middle and high school English classes, they sometimes teach you to try to search for the “main idea” of a story. Usually, they use purpose-built short stories for this, or a carefully-curated selection of classics that you can more or less fit into that mold if you squint. But this practice neglects the multitudes that even very brief bits of fiction can contain. Chapter 58 of One Piece is, of course, just one tiny part of a much larger whole. But on its own, it’s also a riveting 18 pages of oceanic desperation. Sure, this is Sanji and Zeff’s backstory, but it’s also just a damn compelling piece of life-at-its-limits storytelling. In this chapter we learn how Sanji and Zeff survived for 80 days—nearly three whole months—with nothing but a single sack of food on a deserted sea stack.

Initially, Sanji is optimistic about their situation, dividing his rations into 20 portions so he can stretch out nearly a month’s worth of food, even if he’s only getting the bare minimum. That initial optimism turns to grim, do-anything-to-survive desperation as the weeks wear on. We get to see it happen, mostly within the span of a single page, in what is probably One Piece‘s greatest feat of storytelling economy up ’til this point.

Eventually, he gets desperate enough to try attacking Zeff, to steal his food. Only to learn that the old pirate doesn’t actually have any food with him; he’s been sitting there, slowly starving, for months. The only bag he had was filled with gold and jewels, not a morsel of actual food. When he cut his leg off last issue? That was because it was hurt, sure, but he was also preparing to eat it. All that to keep Sanji alive.

That all leads up to this page, a genuinely poetic lament from the very much dying Zeff, as he confides in Sanji that he too seeks the All Blue, and also shares with him his new dream; to open an ocean-going restaurant.

Thankfully, for both Zeff and for us, a ship comes by not many days later, and the starving pirate and equally-starving Sanji are saved.

We then, of course, cut back to present.

Tomorrow: Sanji vs. Pearl.

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 56

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 context-free but pleasant scene of Sanji and Luffy wrangling some buffaloes. One of whom is smoking!

This is quite an information-dense issue, but we can basically break down what happens into three main parts.

One: Gin threatens to kill Zeff, offering to spare his life if and only if Sanji and the rest of the cooks get off the ship ASAP. Sanji refuses, cryptically stating that he’s already taken so much from Zeff that he can’t allow him to lose anything else.

(In general, this is a rather intense chapter, and the art is more dynamic and impressive than normal, which is saying something, because One Piece already looks pretty good most of the time.)

Two: Uh-oh, Pearl is not actually dead. He kicks the shit out of Sanji, threatening his life by clapping the cook’s head between two of his shields. He also lights the ship on fire again (or maybe it just never went out from last issue), threatening the lives of everyone on board, including his own. Again.

Three: Sanji’s being knocked out is used as a transitional into a flashback, where we meet him at the young age of just 9, when he was an apprentice aboard a ship called the Orbit. He learns—and for the first time, we learn—about the legend of the ocean “All Blue”, a place where all the world’s oceans meet. It’s of keen interest to the other cooks aboard the Orbit, since anywhere where all the seas meet would have all of the world’s fish in it as well—at least, that’s their logic—and thus be a veritable seafood buffet. Of course, they don’t really believe in the thing, unlike Sanji, who very much does.

But that’s interrupted by the Orbit’s peaceful voyage being disrupted by a pirate raid, led by a very familiar captain.

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

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.