Picture Credits: Wikipedia
“Ore wa kaizoku ou ni naru otoko da!”
(I’m the man who’ll become the Pirate King!)
There’s hardly anyone who hasn’t been spoiled before starting One Piece, I also started watching One Piece when I received a huge spoiler. The internet is crawling with spoilers about One Piece. But the thing about One Piece spoilers is that they make you wanna watch it even more. As much as I want to talk about my favorite arcs and scenes, this review will be completely free of spoilers.
Introduction
TV Series Name - One Piece
Creator - Eiichiro Oda
No. of Episodes - 978 (Ongoing)
Genre - Adventure Fiction, Fantasy, Animation
Original Language - Japanese
The Great Era of Pirates
The anime premiered in Japan in October 1999 and is based on manga of the same name. The manga currently has 1000+ chapters with 99 volumes and is still ongoing. The anime will also soon reach 1000 episodes.
One Piece is set in a fictional universe of pirates, not Pirates of the Caribbean but something like it because it does contain many references to real-life pirates and stories, so it's not completely fictional.
One Piece is the ultimate treasure that Gol D. Roger found and because of it, people called him the Pirate King. The Great Era of Pirates began when Gol D. Roger, before being executed, announced that he had left One Piece somewhere on the seas and told everyone watching his execution to go find it if they wanted it.
Source: Pinterest
After this, many who desired the treasure set out on the seas in search of it. Our protagonist Monkey D. Luffy, a 17-year old boy, completely mesmerized by the awesomeness of the Pirate King, who was smiling even as he was about to die, decides to become the next Pirate King. So he also began his journey to find One Piece with his crew named Straw Hat Pirates.
Devil Fruits
Devil Fruits in One Piece are like the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate. They gained wisdom and knowledge but were exiled from Eden. Similarly, when a person eats a Devil Fruit, they gain superhuman powers but in exchange, they are exiled from the sea i.e. they become unable to swim in the seas and would simply drown. On top of that, they taste disgusting.
Source: Altervista
A Devil Fruit is only one of its kind, so each fruit and its power is very unique. The eater is granted the abilities of the fruit eaten. For example, Luffy has eaten the Gomu Gomu fruit (Domu means rubber) so he is a rubber-man and can stretch like rubber and has other abilities of a rubber. But a person can eat only one fruit in their lifetime.
There are three categories of Devil Fruits:
Paramecia, Zoan and Logia. Paramecia grants physical abilities like Luffy's rubber physiology. Zoan fruits allow the user to transform into an animal or pre-historic or even mythical creatures. Logia fruits give control over and allow the user “to change their living body structure into the powers of nature”. Logia is considered the strongest of the three.
Series Review
One-piece isn’t a series to be binge-watched. It's like alcohol, it has to be savored and not chugged down. If you binge-watch the series, it may feel boring at times and feel like it's being dragged out and stalled too much because, in the beginning, it follows a repeated pattern- an enemy appears, they defeat the enemy, a few episodes of peace or filler episodes and the cycle continues.
The art style of One Piece wasn’t something I really liked in the beginning but it kinda grows on you and you end up loving it. You might think that pirates are evil but here they are the good guys and the government in turn seems like the bad guys; no matter how imaginative and unrealistic One Piece is, this one thing is probably the most relatable.
The worldbuilding of One Piece is very intricately done. Nothing is meaningless or random, everything somehow connects to something at the end. Each character has well-thought-out designs and these character traits are maintained with precision and consistency. The best thing is that the plot is moving towards a determined destination i.e Luffy becoming the Pirate King.
Each conflict or enemy has some part to play in reaching this destination. This is the reason that this massive work of art has survived 2 decades because Oda, the creator, makes all these tiny parts of the bigger journey truly memorable and always gives the readers something new. So despite being long, it never feels boring once you get into it.
Source: CBR
It’s not your typical shonen. Even the backstories of the villains will make you cry and sympathize. One Piece places emphasis on freedom and it is a huge theme here. Each character is striving for freedom in their own way. For Luffy too, he wants to be the Pirate King because he feels that the Pirate King is the person that has the greatest freedom, not because he has the greatest treasures.
The Bottom Line
I recommend watching the series or reading the manga at your own pace because if you try to catch up to it as fast as possible, you might just miss out on the true experience. When you watch the characters grow through this epic journey, it feels like you’re growing with them. So slowing down and pausing to take in everything is the best way to enjoy One Piece.
One Piece isn’t for everyone, for one person it might be really awesome and worth it but for another, it might be too much. So if you’re really determined, watching other anime or catching up on other shows in between the series is a good idea because either way it’ll take a couple months to catch up and it's still going to go on for a long time so there’s no rush.
IMDb ratings - 8.8 on 10
Written By - Sanjana Chaudhary
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