#TheAgenda: One Piece
If you’ve had any interaction with me over the past year or so, you probably could tell that I was going to write about One Piece at some point. Of course, the hardest thing about writing on stuff you love, is that you fear that you won’t convey just how great it is. This is 100% how I feel about One Piece, if you remember from the Attack on Titan post, anything that I include in #TheAgenda is something that I stand behind. My journey with One Piece is one that’s lasted for most of my life, and one that I wouldn’t trade for anything. Well, since the first 200 episodes of One Piece is dropping on Netflix today, I don’t think there will ever be a better time for me to try to explain why this adventure story about a pirate that can’t swim is something you need to take part in.
One Piece is an anime series that follows a pirate named Monkey D. Luffy whose aspiration is to be the King of the Pirates. The previous King, Gol D. Roger was a pirate revered and feared by the entire world. Before his capture, he’d amassed a massive fortune and hidden it all in the Grand Line, a largely undiscovered part of the world. At his execution, he teased the world, "my treasure is yours for the taking, but you'll have to find it first. I left everything I own... In One Piece." The Navy’s decision to publicly execute him quickly backfired, as these few words sparked what became known as “The Great Pirate Era.”
Our story begins with Luffy finally becoming the captain of his own ship with just a slight problem; he has no crew. On the surface, Luffy fits the mold of the typical Shounen protagonist. He’s a goofy, mild-tempered, happy-go-lucky idiot who turns out to also be strong as hell. He also happens to be the most creative Shounen protagonist in my opinion. In the world of One Piece, special powers are obtained by eating Devil Fruit; a fruit that naturally occurs in the world but are extremely rare to come by. Once someone eats a fruit, they inherit the powers of that fruit and lose the ability to swim. Luffy ate the Gomu Gomu (Rubber Rubber) Fruit and became a rubber man, which means his body has all of the properties of rubber, which allows him to stretch and expand his body at will.
When looked at from the outside, One Piece seems like a whimsical pirate adventure story about making friends and finding new frontiers. And while One Piece is definitely 100% that, it’s also got layers upon layers of character design and world building. Every member of Luffy’s crew has a tragic backstory that Luffy helps them reconcile their past and learn how to be a member of his ever growing crew. A pirate hunting bounty hunter, a thief that’s also an expert navigator, a marksman that’s an incurable coward, a chef who only fights with his feet because his hands are reserved for cooking, and so on and so forth.
One Piece has that surface layer, but it also has stories and legends built into it that pull you in and keep you invested when you learn more about them. For example, at some point it’s learned that there’s a void century, an entire 100 year span that nobody remembers and the World Government made it that way for a reason.
Now let’s talk about the obvious first argument anyone makes against One Piece, it is long. Eiichiro Oda’s magnum opus began its manga run on July 27th, 1997 and the show began on October 20th, 1999. Both the show and the manga are ongoing at this point with both being in their penultimate arc, according to Oda. So yeah, if something has lasted for 23 years, it tends to be a bit long. Every reason I’ve heard for people not wanting to start One Piece is length, and never the actual content. There’s a pretty obvious reason for this, it’s because One Piece is great.
Throughout this time, One Piece was and still is the highest selling manga of all time (except for that two week span Demon Slayer overtook it). Now, I’m a huge proponent of sales not meaning everything but I do believe sales still matter.
I honestly could ramble on and on about One Piece but I’ll just tell a bit of a personal story. In 2018, I went through some things that really left me in a pretty low place. My friends suggested that I should go and read One Piece from the beginning since I’d been inconsistently watching it since I was sneaking to watch it after school. Reading One Piece in color and watching Luffy’s adventure going from being his selfish desire to be the Pirate King manifest in wanting to also build the strongest crew possible. What surprised me the most about how Luffy decides to build his crew is that he doesn’t go for the strongest person around, he goes for the person he likes the most and helps them become what his crew needs. For some reason, this really resonated with me when it came to how I build my friendships with other people. I think that when people are only trying to make “friendships” for networking purposes, they tip their hand early. People that only want to associate with other people that’re “up” at the moment have a hard time with staying afloat themselves for whatever reason. But when you and yours build each other from the ground up, I don’t think there’s ever a crew that’s more tight knit.
Give One Piece a chance. It’s on Netflix as of today.
(Even though I still think reading One Piece in color is better)
Oh, and here’s the R&B Playlist:
Apple: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/innastellar-radio/pl.u-XkD0GM0uDZjJRV
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/06tPEEo6ujRFf4JYsrfw4I?si=BcPFAmK6QpOPvXOad-ousQ
-E.