My experience with the saga of One Piece, a picture book turned cartoon turned live action epic about a stretchy pirate and his silly friends on a boat, has been… weirdly involved? It starts when I was 12, around 2006/2007, my elementary school library had a bunch of manga for some reason - nothing insane I don’ think, there was some One Piece, there was Prince of Tennis, I think that there was a much bigger book that i forgot the name of for a decade and learned later it was Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (which, from my memory, is super based). Being 12, and having been raised on Dragonball Z and (to a much lesser extent) Inuyasha, I Was familiar with japanese art and stuff, so I said, hey, i’ll read some of this… and I Dug it! Prince of Tennis bangs (I think I read one volume, which was some amount of chapters, but there was only that one volume so i was very sad), Nausicaa ruled, my favorite was Beet The Vandel Buster, which is so Forrest-core (see: filled with details that tickle the autistic over-explaining parts of my brain) that it hurts, but One Piece was also part of that. I probably read the first volume of One Piece, and I liked it, pirates were cool and it was some grand adventure, maybe I could be into One Piece! Around this time, I saw that One Piece had an anime (It was the 4Kids version, which One Piece fans shit and cum their brains out in anger over - relax), and I decided i’d try and watch, and I Don’t know if it’s a weird memory hole, but I swear it was one of hte first episodes; I vividly remember Axe Hand Morgan and Shanks being present, and the thing that always sticks with me is that Shanks had an accent, and because i’d only read it, it completely threw me and i didn’t really watch any more. That was my experience with One Piece; i knew it existed, but I wasn’t really able to access it, and I didn’t really want to - Beet The Vandel Buster had more chapters available around me, and by the time I got older and could access the manga online, I wasn’t terribly interested. Usually, that would be the end of it… and then I got to know a One Piece fan.
One Piece fans are one part adorable and two parts dweebs. They mostly read as 13 year olds who got picked on for liking One Piece outside of Japan in a time before anime and manga were more socially acceptable by normies who thought cartoons were gay and tough guy chads with thick chesthair who hasn’t seen his penis in years because it’s always in a person who watched Dragonball Z and that’s it, so they’re really insecure and have to scream to anybody who will listen how important One Piece is and how it’s the greatest story ever told. It’s an interesting phenomenon that i think exists much less prominently in 2023 because everybody has been radicalized by internet access and stan culture so now all fans on the internet are just like this - people who feel ostracized for their niche interest being less accepted than they think it should be, and they get a real complex about it as they find likeminded individuals. My One Piece fan interactions were with a 13 year old little bastard in a chatroom named Kiddiot - Kiddiot was a jerk who was really confrontational and argumentative (and i thought this at the time, when I Was at my most confrontational and argumentative), and him and I would argue for hours in this chatroom about whatever. Lucid dreams, Football, Podcast hosting, his interpretation of stories i’d tell, but one we would always come back to was One Piece. Keep in mind, I don’t have an actual opinion on One Piece at the time; it was a thing I knew about as a kid but didn’t follow - I don’t remember HOW it started, but essentially, my point to Kiddiot was this: No show, no matter what the genre or story, needs 1000 episodes to tell their story (It was always circulated around “shows” and not “chapters” because things are kind of different between them). There are shows with semi-contiguous storylines that go on for 1000’s of episodes, and that’s great for them, none of them NEED that runtime to tell a story, and while I maintain this take, ultimately this is a utilitarian take that perceives concept and stories being told as having some kind of end goal in mind - my example at the time was Avatar The Last Airbender, which communicates a full, rich world of differing cultures, backgrounds and personal journeys that are fully fleshed out and realized in 61 episodes, and while this is a good example, well done by me 10 years ago, all stories are different. Some things, like Criminal Minds for example, exist without an overall “story” they are telling, it’s a procedural show about people in a job, so as long as there are crimes, this unit will exist and this story will be told, and the cohesion comes from the different seasonal storylines and character development. In theory, a show like One Piece exists in both of these worlds - there’s an overall mission of “find the one piece”, but the adventures along the way that shape the characters is what the content is, and I think that’s fine, and i’d like to think that it would be fine then as well… Kiddiot didn’t agree. Kiddiot insisted on his life that One Piece NEEDED every episode and detail to tell the story, that it all matters and is all important (I have since come to understand what he means, but on the surface, this is still insane). We fought about this for YEARS; I demanded that Kiddiot draw me a map if the world is so cohesive and vivid, Kiddiot would reply with infographics about how popular One Piece was, i’d call him names, he’d call me names, nobody got anywhere, but I did lay a pact down - it does not matter what happens, I Don’t care what the circumstance is, I Will never watch or read One Piece, because if I do, then Kiddiot wins. It doesn’t even matter if I watched it and hated it, just the mere fact of budging on even consuming it would be a loss to me. Over time, we’d continue arguments, and i’d see more and more kiddiots out there in the world, talking about how iconic one piece is and trying desperately to convince people that luffy’s gum gum pistol is actually just as popular and known worldwide as the kamehameha from DBZ, and my stance got even stronger. I will not consume One Piece - I Will die first. I actually considered a while ago doing a bit where I secretly read all of One Piece and just never tell Kiddiot, robbing him of the experience of talking to me while I read and giving him thoughts, so that when it ends, I just show up giving insight and he is flabbergasted. I thought that would have been funny, but it’s too long and i’d crack, so i’d have just read 600 chapters of a picture book for no payoff - my watch continued. I would not crack, I would not pursue the one piece.
2023 was a big year for the stretchy pirate gang. The manga and anime has continued strong, writer Eiichiro Oda has announced a remake of the anime to introduce a more consistent and higher quality than could have been offered in the early 2000’s, but the biggest and most monumental achievement of Stretchy Pirate Piece is that Netflix released the live action adaptation that has been in production the last few years. Live Action Adaptations of Digital properties are pretty notorious for being terrible; even outside of the realm of Anime, video games have always struggled to be converted to live action, more accessible pieces of media like Avatar The Last Airbender was notoriously adapted into one of the worst movies ever made, and Manga/Anime have a long history of very bad adaptations. It’s pretty easy to see why this is - for video games, half of the fun are in execution of mechanics and player choice rather than just the viewing of the story and anime/manga are written and drawn in a way that is inherently only able to fully be expressed with drawings; the inherent stylized decisions that makes anime and manga such a polarizing genre are integral to its appeal, and adapting something as simple as the character of Goku to live action just doesn’t work - nobody’s hair sits like that, nobody is that tall and that muscular, nobody who looks like that can pass off the same kind of boyish charm in any medium besides one that is hand drawn and voice acted… and this is before you even introduce the idea of fighting! The most base level thing, the characters, cannot be adapted 1 to 1, and most times, compromising the inherent unreality of characters will make it not worth it, so when One Piece was announced to be adapted, I think people were kind of dreading it. There were some who were cautiously optimistic because of a few details - Oda was pretty heavily involved in its creation, giving input on production decisions to bring his story to life as well as casting to bring characters to life, the showrunners and actors chosen were all very vocal in how big of fans they were of the source material. There is one video that is especially adorable, where lead actor Inaki Godoy goes to meet Eiichiro Oda and talks to him about the show, and Oda tells him that when he saw Inaki’s audition tape, he laughed and commented how Inaki was literally the live action version of Luffy, and how he couldn’t imagine anyone else playing the character, and it’s so clear that Inaki is beyond touched by it and is holding back tears. For me, I was vaguely interested in the show just because I heard a lot about it, but I wasn’t, like, interested interested; I knew it was coming out, but i woke up one day and learned it had dropped. I clicked the trend on twitter to see people’s reactions, and they were all positive; people were dancing in the street because the response from both fans and reviewers was near universally positive. This intrigued me - 10 episodes, good reviews, plus I get to judge One Piece entirely on this adaptation, so if it’s even mid, I Can shit talk it AND still claim i didn’t read the picture book or watch the cartoon. This was win/win/win/win/win - it’s dub season for ol Gil. So, I watched it, I watched the live action One Piece show, and… it’s great. It’s so good.
I don’t really know how to describe why the One Piece show is so good and make it interesting. I think where it starts is that it LOOKS good - One Piece is kind of interesting in that, for as expansive and broad as it is, in hindsight, it’s one of the easier things to adapt relative to other popular manga/anime because it’s mostly people talking and and the fights are mostly people punching and kicking (there are obviously additions to this as it goes, but it’s hardly as complex or difficult to make look good as a Dragonball Z). It requires attention and care and a lot of money, but you CAN make it look good, and everything in the show looks incredible. Where it really starts is that the show never treats the viewer as a baby little bear who won’t be able to understand what’s happening in this universe - there’s a character, Garp, who shows up with a stylized ship with a dog as the masthead wearing a floppy Dog hat, and they never allude to it being silly, or at all, it just is what it is. You never get an explanation about where a devil fruit comes from or why they exist, you never get people commenting on why Zoro’s hair is green or why Nami’s hair is orange - there is ONE wink at the tropes of anime in the first episode, when Luffy does his Gum Gum Whip attack, Zoro asks what that was, and Luffy said “all great warriors name their moves”, to which Zoro says “no they don’t”, and even that is not really a “ha ha isn’t anime silly” joke, it’s a “Zoro is serious, Luffy is whimsical” one that is paid off perfectly near the end, when Sanji and Zoro are fighting and Sanji calls out an attack name, says basically the same thing Luffy did, and Zoro says “you’re going to fit in just fine”. It’s fun, the action is great, the stories are emotional, the actors fucking kill it, it’s an awesome tv show - PEAK FICTION some might say! After it was over, I, a One Piece agnostic, was supercharged on that One-Piece-Is-Real juice, to the point where I pondered… maybe I give up the good fight and watch the cartoon (No shot I was reading hte picture book, I have a job and a wife can’t be reading pop up pirate all damn day)... and, I did! In my post one piece high, I decided hey i’ll give the cartoon a shot, thus losing the good fight to Kiddiot. What’s worse, the cartoon is unwatchable (to me) because the aspect ratio on the first, like, 200 episodes was fucked so it’s super zoomed in until the episodes were made in 16:9, so I lost the good fight on some real bullshit, but, I lost. My watch ended in disgrace, I lost the battle against Kiddiot, but, in time, I gained a friend in Ty.
Ty doesn’t like to be called Kiddiot, so I usually don’t call him that, but for as much of a little spastic one piece fan as he is, he’s also been a good friend of mine over the years, and I learned how much he wanted me to experience One Piece along with him when, a week after i told him I watched it, he checked facebook and saw the message and just flat out didn’t believe me. He was so hype, it was kind of adorable - deadass, I don’t even say it to be condescending, it was like seeing a kid you raised learn that you are also interested in a thing they are, and they just can’t compute it. We talk for a little bit, I lose the same fire and revert back to cool ass chad forrest who thinks one piece is for pussies - i don’t watch cartoons or read picture books, i watch real tv shows with real actors brother bear; the one piece live action has a higher viewer score than the cartoon, so the live action will hereafter be referred to as “One Piece”, the cartoon as “One Piece Animated” and the picture book in the GARBAGE where it BELONGS… but oh boy, does that Pirate Fever start surfacing again, and let me tell you, shit done changed when my car broke and I suddenly took a bus to work. My life only had to get 10% worse for me to collapse and begin reading the picture book on my phone during my commute, something that was unfeasible before became infinitely more feasible, so I said, hey, you know what, me and you ty for a thousand years, i’ll read the gosh darn picture book, let’s do it! Gum Gum Smooch!
It’s pretty good. That’s it. There won’t ever be a world where I become a weird fan of something, I usually try and keep that shit to myself, but yeah, One Piece is good. I’m a little over 300 chapters in, finishing the 3rd major arc of the story, and it’s mostly good and sporadically excellent. I don’t think it’s for everybody, and the more I read, the more I kind of clue into the limitations of the medium - Writing a weekly chapter limits how much you can spend on things like deep and complex bonds between the characters, so at least early, you have most people just kind of being basic archetypes and types of things, and you only get further with mind numbing volume. Oda is an interesting blend of Japanese and Autistic that leaves him a little vibe deaf on how to have characters communicate feelings without feeling like it’s too awkward, so often times it will be interrupted by a joke, but he also is an artist and wants to tell rich and dense and emotional stories, and sometimes these different halves of the brain clash, so you’ll have a super involved and tragic backstory intercut with Luffy trying to eat the Reindeer man (There is a thematic core to why he is trying to eat the reindeer man, i’m not a fucking idiot, it’s just the most obvious example and also that thematic core wasn’t done well). But, at the same time, I have come to understand what it is that connects with the people it connects with, and why it has the reputation that it does - Oda’s writing style and characters and the themes that interest him aren’t particularly novel, but they are based in intense emotion and the bonds between people, so combined with the unending length and the fact that this is going to be most people’s first real exposure to concepts like war, sacrifice and bad people doing good things, it really can stick with people in an intense way. For me, I don’t think it can ever supersede the emotional connection I have to Dragonball Z (Childhood) and Attack on Titan (genuinely the most moving piece of media i’ve ever seen), but I have been moved to tears, or near tears, several times through the 300 chapters i’ve read (the end of arcs have been really moving - the origin of Genzo’s Pinwheel, The Message to Vivi, The image of Luffy in the sky, all are very near and dear to me).
I don’t really have an ending in mind here. I’m not going to tell you to read One Piece, it’s not for everybody and it PROBABLY won’t change your life, which it might need to considering the time investment it asks for is pretty high, but I’m glad that I started.
Thanks for reading.
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