My Return to One Piece

Here's a little fun story of my journey with One Piece. The artstyle always put me off so even though I was always a shonen fanboy, I was actively avoiding this goofy ahh looking show. That was until around 2017 when I finally gave it a shot... and dropped it after 12 episodes. Dude that Captain Kuro/Usopp arc was unbearable to sit through. 2 years pass and I hear news of One Piece Stampede coming out in cinemas. I thought you know what? Lemme give this another shot cuz I really wanna watch the movie. I went up to the late 20s where Mihawk wrecks everyone and then went to watch the film, which blew me away.

Honestly, looking back on it I kinda did myself a disservice by watching it without knowing any of the characters cuz Stampede was just one massive fan service film filled with all kinds of callbacks and cameos, which I couldn't fully appreciate at the time. On the other hand, I don't regret watching it in cinemas as that film was what really ignited my passion for the series as a whole. After that, I was hooked. I remember taking slight brakes after a few of the longer arc ended, but I always came back to it. This was also during the peak of the pandemic so I pretty much had nothing better to do than sit at home and binge One Piece. I remember going to the beach in early June and watching the Enies Lobby arc with that awful recap where they show the same train scene for what felt like 20 episodes in a row. I kid you not, I timed the longest recap and in one Enies Lobby episode, it took them 8 and a half minutes to get past the recap and op until the new content actually started.

Some of the pacing is straight up trash lol. I'd honestly much rather have dedicated filler arcs than turning the canon material into filler by unnecessarily bloating its runtime with useless shots. That being said, when the show is good, it's absolutely marvelous. I've always heard One Piece being praised for its incredible world building and I wasn't totally buying it... until the end of Thriller Bark. When Brook mentioned Laboon's name I remember holding the back of my hand to my forehead and just going "BROOOOOOOOOO". This scene is what sold me on it. There is an argument to be made that if a story reaches such a ridiculously long length, world building is a given as you introduce more and more characters, locations and concepts. Although that argument falls flat for episodic shows/extremely long manga like Sazae-san, KochiKame and Doraemon, there is some truth to that statement, which is commonly seen in long running shonen specifically. However, even among shonen, Oda outskills every other mangaka in the way he makes an interconnected story, which makes the narrative feel truly grandiose. Nothing but respect for that.

Another obvious sign of One Piece's quality is its ability to evoke extremely strong emotions. To this day, I haven't met anyone who has watched or read the series and hasn't cried at least once. Now, I don't wanna sound like a bitch, but I've cried a total of 4 times while watching anime, which is not a bad record considering I've seen over 500 so far. The reason I mention this is because 2 of those 4 times were from One Piece. It was almost 3, cuz I teared up during the burning of the Going Merry, but I managed to keep the waterworks from flowing lol.

Here are the 2 moments that did get me though. The first one was fairly early on, at the end of the Baratie arc. This was the moment when Sanji is about to leave, but just before he does, he kneels down and starts thanking Zeff. This is such an underrated moment that not many people talk about in retrospect. Seeing Zeff cut off his own leg and damn near die of starvation to save this random kid only because it has the same dream as him resonated a lot with me. Seeing Sanji express his raw, unfiltered gratitude, which made even a tough nut like Zeff cry was a sight to behold. This is when I knew I'd be watching One Piece until the end.

The other scene that really got me good was what I'd probably consider the saddest moment in all of fiction. Brook's backstory at the end of Thriller Bark absolutely broke me. It's the scene I can go to any time and it would probably start pouring again. Seeing his old crew slowly die out with members falling one by one just to record their final song, juxtaposed by his new crew where everyone is jolly and celebrating was incredible. Bink's sake was used in a masterful way to illustrate the passage of time and capture the feeling of people going in and out of one's life. The song you can sing in misery and in joy. For the new friends and for the old friends! This right here is where One Piece "gets good" and by good I mean absolutely stellar. Episode 380-ish.

It was a long journey to get to that point, but the major arcs that came after it were phenomenal. Sabaody gave us a rough idea of the actual scale of this world, Impel Down was the first arc that really made good use of the length of the story by bringing back numerous great characters and of course Marineford was the war arc among war arcs. By this point, I felt so immersed in the story, I was an official member of the crew. I actually timed me reaching episode 516, which is the last episode of the "pre-timeskip" era to be on the same date as my birthday - 28th of August. This made it an easy date to remember and I decided to do exactly what the crew did. Go away and train for 2 years before meeting everyone again.

Yeye, I know, I'm a corny ahh, goofy ahh mf. That being said, I've come back stronger than ever to keep up with all the badasses in the gang and officially started watching the "post-timeskip" era on my birthday 2 days ago. I left when the show had over 900 episodes and now that I returned, we're at over 1000 which is insane. I'm beyond excited to set sail with the Strawhats and finally find out what One Piece! We're entering the final stretch. See you mfs in Laugh Tale!

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My Return to One Piece

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