I see a lot of clickbait articles and essays on different aspects of One Piece lore whenever I accidentally swipe to the right on my phone and most of the posts about it are terrible. Let alone the AI additions lately where half the information is just plain wrong. The other day I saw someone claim that Oda had planned for Germa to happen all the way back during the Baratie arc which makes very little sense if even Oda originally only planned the story to be about a hundred chapters, but I’m already losing track of what I was going to say. One thing I always like is a good list. It’s a good way to show your opinion and immediately get people’s attention because they likely have a different opinion on the same subject. So I reckon it’s about time that I start making some more of that sort of content myself. At least when I write them I have control over the quality of the post. So with that in mind, let’s have a look at my top 5 islands in the world of One Piece. I am picking these islands purely based on the ecosystem, culture and design of the island, I am not taking into account the story arcs that take place on these islands.
Let’s start with an island that just feels really well thought out, although we haven’t seen a ton of it. And that of course is the island known as pirate island; Hachinosu. Hachinosu is named due to the amount of pirates that will come swarming out whenever something happens, akin to a beehive. In the dub it’s called Fullalead, which makes sense as well although I think they should have stuck with the beehive theme. Central on this island is a large skull-shaped rock that has been carved into a fortress. This is where the current king of the island – Blackbeard – seems to reside. Having the ability on his crew to fully take over the island like a giant mech, and filling the streets with pirates, it’s a very fun and powerful stronghold. It used to be ruled by a former Rocks’ pirates member before Blackbeard took over, and it’s had some pretty famous prisoners like Koby, Moria and now even Garp. With the Blackbeard pirates residing there, I wonder if we get to see Luffy and the crew visit this island before the end of the story, or if the saving of Garp will be left to the navy. Perhaps this causes friction within the navy as part goes to fight Luffy and another part goes to fight Blackbeard. Either way, I just love the concept of a beehive-like island that is filled with loot hungry pirates.
One of my least favorite arcs in the story takes place on one of the more interesting islands in the world. I’m talking of course about Punk Hazard. Once a research facility belonging to Vegapunk and Caesar Clown, it now sits abandoned after a clash between Akainu and Kuzan took place, turning one half of the island into an icy glacier and the other half into a boiling blaze of fiery pain. Hidden within this island that is now considered a wasteland was the research lab of Caesar Clown, who was the first in a long chain that set off the fall of Kaido and Big Mom. But as much as the story itself is interesting, it’s the island’s layout that I like the most. With the very specific heat and cold sides, it allows for different sets of ecosystems to live right next to each other and it’s also a great reminder of how powerful these two (former) admirals were when they clashed.
What if island, but also elephant? I am not the biggest fan of Terry Pratchett’s books yet, but I’ve read the colour of magic and I see the potential. But what drew me to the story in the first place was the unique way the world works. A world on a disc on elephants on a turtle, just moving slowly through space. We don’t have something quite as extravagant as that, but we do have Zunisha, the giant elephant that is home to Zou and the mink tribe that lives in it. With an ancient city on her back as well as a giant tree in the form of a whale where one of the road poneglyphs is being held. It also has a kingdom with two different rulers, one for the day and one for the night. Both of them spent time on Whitebeard’s ship alongside Oden and are vassals of the Kozuki clan. One thing that’s interesting to consider is that Zuneshia isn’t just an exception but is part of a species. There might be more of these giant elephants walking around somewhere or at the very least their bones might still exist in strange places.
We’ve gone through three islands so far and all of them were in the New World, but there were some pretty fun islands in the first half of the Grand Line as well. The last two entries on this list are from before we fought in a giant war and when times were simpler. So simple in fact, that we were just learning about how crazy different the islands were and we stumbled right into the home of two forgotten legends. The two former and then again captains of the Giant Pirates: Dorry and Brogy. Although I didn’t care a ton for this arc in my first watch of the series, it grew on me and the island itself also became more interesting. This island is a jungle where dinosaurs never went extinct, so some of them still roam the island. It is also home to two giant sea beast skeletons which were the result of the Giant Pirates being in the region. The aforementioned Dorry and Brogy each killed a giant fish and then fought for a century about who got the bigger of the two ones. Thus a giant jungle with a volcano that goes off regularly as well as two massive skeletons turned into a strange and scary island for adventurers. Luckily for our adventurers, they were pretty quickly able to win the love of both giants, settle their differences and that’s why we get to see them again in the year 2025.
And finally, let’s take a stop at a more civilized place. Docks with some of the most talented workers in the world fill the place as others race through the city on their bulls to get to where they need to be. We’re on the water baby and there’s 7 waters. I think? I don’t actually know where the name comes from, but I’m sure we can figure it out together. Oh, I figured it out while looking up information, there used to be seven docks with seven shipbuilding companies before Iceburg united them all. And this island is incredibly interesting. It’s the first island where we truly start encountering some of the stranger, more dire weather phenomena in the story. A lot of the later part of One Piece highly focuses on the water rising, islands sinking, and the world basically getting more and more dangerous and flooded. Mariejois is on a giant mountain for a reason after all. But Water 7 has been slowly sinking for a long time, with the Aqua Laguna storm being a yearly problem that has the entire place boarded up. We even see a present day version of the place later during the story where the shores where Franky House once stood are now fully under water. With Galley-La being the only shipbuilder company left on the island due to monopolizing the business – not very left-wing of you, Oda – I’m sure they’ll end up inventing a way to keep the city afloat – literally. I love cities built in and around water, I’ve always been a big fan of that idea. Having one where water is such a big part of daily life in a story like this and it also being an island that we spend enough time on to really appreciate the place was a gift to me, which is why it was also one of my favorite arcs.
There are so many interesting islands in this world and even other interesting structures like the giant bridge that the world government has been building with slave labor and the red line itself. I bet someone could write an incredible geography book about this world and it would sell like hotcakes. But these are some of my favorite islands, please let me know if there are islands that should be on here that I missed and as always, thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 