‘When I visited my family recently, my parents expressed an opinion about One Piece for the first time. “That story about the deer was really good.” DEER?’
– Oda in 2002
The latest few chapters in One Piece have been absolutely crazy. I feel like every Sunday I’m having to brace myself for what is coming next. But looking back at some of these older chapters I’m starting to realize that Oda has always had some crazy chapters in between big arcs. To kind of prove my point, we get Hina’s power revealed. Anything that passes through her body gets tied up and Django and Fullbody are both big fans. Oda knew what he was doing. We then get the news – and I hate this plot twist – that Pell is still alive. What was the point of him flying the massive bomb away from the town if you can just survive a hit at point blank? I really don’t know what Oda was thinking here, and I think this is one of the worst written twists in the entire story. It would have been perfectly fine to never mention Pell again after he died in the sky, but he had to be alive. I wonder if this was an editor input or not. It feels very kid-friendly to not have a good guy die by a big bomb. But maybe I’m looking far too deep into it.
On the Going Merry we get the reveal that Nico Robin wants to join the crew. She snuck on board the ship after she got out of the underground mess that the fight with Crocodile left behind. She took a nice shower on the ship and switched into some of Nami’s clothes before getting bored of reading and showing herself to the crew. This is the weirdest new crew member so far but I can’t say I’m opposed.
Here we get the first mention of a sky island. Robin has given us a little bit of her backstory and won over the crew pretty quickly. To be fair, none of what she’s saying sounds suspicious at first glance and she did hide the super dangerous weapon’s location from Crocodile so she can’t be all bad. It is funny that she had given up and Luffy just refused to let her. That’s so on brand for Luffy. We’re quickly changing pace as ships come falling from the sky with no real indication where they came from. The log pose pointing up means there’s at the very least some sort of magnetic field up there that it can latch on to. Whether this is a sky island as the crew says or something different we have yet to find out.
Seeing as the crew finds a map of Skypiea and this saga has the same name, I think we all know where this story is headed soon. I wasn’t a big fan of the Skypiea arc the first time I watched it. Compared to the arc after it it fell a bit flat. Now that I’m much more aware of the later arcs and the political messages in One Piece, I’m curious how much I’ll like it this time around. I hope it’ll pleasantly surprise me like most volumes have done so far. So Usopp makes some diving gear out of some barrels and the boys are sent down to look at the shipwreck. In the meantime a group of salvagers show up and they seem like simple folk so Nami asks them if they can just watch them work, which they obviously agree to, since they’re nice folk.
The ship gets hauled up by the salvagers and the crew barely escapes from a giant turtle trying to eat them. Things don’t get much better from there on out since giant shadowy monsters appear. Luckily the crew manages to escape. In this part of the story it really feels like the gang is a D&D party with Robin being the only person who put any points into intelligence. Nami is probably the smartest out of the group but even she’s not that bright when she’s panicking. Chopper is just booksmart and doesn’t have many real world skills at this point. Same with Usopp, he’s good with making things, like the pulley system and the diving suits (barrels), but he’s not particularly quick on his feet. The crew sets sail to Jaya.
Three things of importance happen in Jaya in this volume. And I’m not talking about Nico Robin getting a new outfit, but that is important as well I suppose. The first thing is the introduction of Blackbeard’s crew. I believe he only has three members besides himself at this point. They have such an interesting introduction and they’re all so weird. But Blackbeard is still a very fun character to me. His panel in which he talks about dreams is iconic as well. I’ve heard way more talented people than me talk about how good Oda’s panels are when he wants to, and there’s definitely more throughout the years that I’ll point out. But the way the page just goes empty with nothing but the characters highlighted shows off how not important everyone else in the village is.
The second thing that happens and is important is the parallel between Luffy and Zoro’s response to Bellamy’s taunts and Shanks’ response to the mountain bandits early on. I’m still not certain after all these years if I like the sentiment of what they do, but the parallel is definitely well executed. Nami’s rage afterwards is also understandable.
The third thing that happens that is important is that Robin shows the crew a map of Jaya. There’s someone else on the island and Robin is already aware of this person’s existence before they reach the island. I think it’s interesting to add her to the crew at this point because everyone else is so oblivious to the world at large. She has a ton of knowledge as she’s been an archeologist for twenty years. She’s had to join big organizations and live with them to learn quickly about how the world works. She’s probably the biggest asset to the crew they could have gotten at this point. So next volume we’ll go visit this Mont Blanc guy and see what’s really going on in the region. Hope to see you all there and thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 