One Piece
At the end of the world, there lies an island that contains all of the treasure and history of the world. This place has only ever been found by the King of the Pirates, Gold Roger. But on top of the platform set for his execution, he proclaims, “My wealth and treasures? If you want it, I’ll let you have it… search for it! I left all of it at that place.” With those final words, the world has been set into a Great Pirate era. Thousands of pirates take off to the Grand Line, a marvelous stretch of ocean that wraps around the equator of the earth, in order to find it. That treasure, whoever is said to find will be named the new King of the Pirates. But who will find it? That legendary treasure…
THE ONE PIECE
Where did this choice come from?
One Piece is a Japanese manga and anime series written by mangaka Eiichiro Oda. It has been ongoing for over 25 years with the manga starting in 1997 and the anime just having its 25th anniversary this year. I had always heard of this show called One Piece since I had first started watching anime, but had been putting it off because of it’s size. As of right now, One Piece has 1,133 manga chapters and 1,122 anime episodes, which are split into about 36 arcs. An “arc” is a smaller bits of story comprised of varying a number of chapters. Some arcs are only a few chapters, while some arcs can be over 100 chapters; but all together they all piece together the same over-arching story. Over time I had slowly been hearing recommendation after recommendation from people online to just watch One Piece, and after letting all the good things I have heard about it pile up, I decided to watch finally experience it for myself. Instead of letting its massive size be a factor of intimidation I (at first) decided to take it as a challenge, but very soon after I realized how much of a mistake that was. It really is fairly humorous how from the outside over 1,000 episodes of something seems like a task too big to manage, to once I actually got close to catching up I found that it was nowhere near enough. One Piece has been going on for over 2 and a half decades, and I feel like it could probably go on for double that and it would never feel like it too much.
What about this story brings this interest
When looking at this world that Oda has crafted, it is so clear to see the love and care that he puts to every page. The story that Oda has created is so stupidly detailed that his worldbuilding skills are on par with that of Tolkien with his Lord of the Rings, and in my opinion, One Piece might even be above that. One Piece is filled with an endless amount of characters, places, races, creatures, ideologies, and beliefs. It is a story with themes of adventure, freedom, mystery, honor, hope, love, found family, protecting what you love and more. But it also has themes of piracy, racism, child abuse, terrorism, abuse of power, rebelling against the government, and so much more awful stuff. One Piece is filled with all these things but never once does any of it feel out of place or just put in for some kind of shock factor. One Piece is published weekly in a magazine called Shounen Jump which is primarily aimed at younger boys in their early teens, shounen literally meaning “young boy” in Japanese. One Piece is also categorized as a more specific genre of the magazine called battle shounen, which mainly consists of flashy, hype-inducing fights scenes with basic stories and shallow characters. While there are exceptions to this, I still believe One Piece is a cut above the rest. I love how even when the main focus should be about delivering exciting fights, Oda is a masterful character writer at heart. He believes in creating beautifully written characters and having a colorful fleshed out world first, and then where the characters go and who they fight comes second. There is running joke in the One Piece community, that it doesn’t really matter who is fighting, what matters more is why they are fighting.
Experience with this story
If I had to name a single feeling that I get from One Piece, I don’t think I could do it; so I’ll do a couple. For me One Piece brings feelings of fear, comfort, and wonder. As mentioned before, my experience with One Piece initially started maybe not so intense as fear, but there is definitely some anxiety brought by the thought of watching something as long as 1,000 episodes. But that feeling went away almost immediately and was replaced with a feeling of comfort and content. Knowing that I would be spending a long time getting to know these characters that I had fallen in love with; and knowing that I would be able to watch as these characters grow and become more complex, brought a certain sense of peace. It takes a long time to watch over 1,000 episodes or read over 1,000 chapters of anything, so over the months or years it takes watching these characters grow and progress in their world, the one watching will also grow and progress in their own story. And while this does bring that feeling of comfort that it feels like you’re progressing along with the characters, it also brings a different feeling of fear that I can became more and more aware of as I got closer and closer to reaching that 1,000 marker. The fear that eventually it is going to end and there will be no more adventures to be had.
I’m sure you’ve felt that feeling after finishing something that a lot of time was spent on. Whether it be a some story or some long project, after it’s done you’re hopefully either left with a feeling of content or a feeling of emptiness. If you’ve spent a long time working or watching something, that feeling of emptiness can feeling like there is a hole inside of you, like there is something missing, like what are you supposed to do now that it is over. I think that is how I will feel once One Piece ends. Because there is so much in this story that has now been with me for a long, so many feelings that have constantly been on the forefront of my mind during my experience one of which being a grand sense of wonder. One Piece is a story about pirates trying to find the treasure, One Piece, and whoever finds it gets to be named the King of the Pirates. This is also why I love One Piece so much because we have been searching for this treasure for over 2 decades and we still don’t even know what the One Piece is, whether its just treasure, some weapon, a big secret of the world, we have no idea. I cannot think of any other story that I’ve seen that could shroud it’s ending in complete mystery for as long as One Piece has.
The constant theme of One Piece is the importance of people’s dreams. There are lots of fights that happen throughout the story, but almost none of those fights happen just because two people want to beat each other up. These fights take place because one person’s dreams interfere with another. These fights are not for the greater good of the world; they are because one person’s goal lies past their opponent and the only way to get past them is to beat them and conquer over their dream. No fight in One Piece is lost because a character gets shot, loses an eye, loses an arm or leg or anything like that. The fight is lost the moment your will is broken and you give up on your dreams.
Right before this panel above, it is shown that there is no reason to fight someone who has no dream. Only the people with the strongest of wills can push past any obstacle and see to the end of their dreams. This kind of belief is a main focal point for the story as a whole, but I love that this can even be taken out of the story and applied to our real lives. Living in the real world is not easy, but as long as someone have some goal, a dream that they want to see to it’s end, and the will to push forward no matter what, there is nothing that can make them stop.
Specific things that I like about this story
Backstory
The backstories have become an iconic staple in the One Piece experience. I have heard about this misconception that backstories are supposed to serve as development for the characters and story in general. I can understand why people would believe this, but having seen how One Piece handles backstories, I don’t think I can fully agree. A backstory shouldn’t be used as a means of development (either story or character), rather as a means to give further context to how the world works and why a character acts as they do. Throughout One Piece, we meet characters that carry certain traits with them, but it’s only through their (usually tragic) backstories that we learn why they act this way.
This is a backstory that we have gotten recently so spoilers ahead. The man running above is Kuma. Kuma is part of a special race known as Buccaneers. Buccaneers are known for their massive size and great strength. These two features make them good targets for the elites of the world to turn them into slaves. Unfortunately Kuma was born from already enslaved parents. But before his parents died, they taught him to be strong, not only for himself but also for everyone around him because one day someone would come to save him. During one of the events that the elites used to hunt the slaves, Kuma and a few of his friends were able to escape. He stayed in a village with one of his friends where he served as healer with the ability he gained during the hunting party. His ability allows him to separate the pain away from someone, but it has to be taken by someone or it will eventually be returned back to the person. So every Sunday, Kuma takes the whole villages’ pain upon himself.
But eventually the government does find him so he is forced to leave the village and he joins a revolutionary group focused on taking down the World Government. He joins this group with his friend, now wife, but she gets captured by the government. His wife gets SA’d by one of the “rulers” of the world, and she catches an incurable disease and gets thrown out by the “rulers”. She travels across the sea with her daughter in order to see Kuma, but it’s at the cost of her life. Kuma swears to raise his wife’s daughter who was also born with the same disease as her mom. This disease prohibits her from going out in sunlight and even if she doesn’t see the sun, she’ll die around her tenth birthday. In order to hopefully find a cure to the disease, Kuma goes to the world’s smartest man, who also happens to work for the government. The scientist is able to cure the daughter, so Kuma makes a deal with the scientist and the government ruler who assaulted his wife. The daughter will be cured in exchange for Kuma becoming a living science experiment and prototype for a mass produced weapon, basically becoming a slave of the world government again. Of course Kuma accepts the terms and his experimentation begins. He slowly becomes more and more like a robot having parts of him replaced with mechanical bits. Eventually this progresses to the point where he must lose his memories and personality, fully becoming a living-weapon. Even though Kuma was able to save his daughter’s life, he’s not even able to see her tenth birthday with her.
Now, what was the point of having you read that overly long story? Nothing. There was no point. This backstory has no effect on the progression of the story or anything like that. This whole experience is pretty much for the reader only. That is how almost all of the backstories in One Piece are. They do not progress the plot and no other character in the story even knows about them, save for a few exceptions per backstory. Their purpose is only to give context to character’s actions and worldbuilding. And this is how I think backstories should be. One of the major beliefs the main character has towards people is that their past does not matter at all, what matters is who they are now and what they want to do with their future.
Mystery Box
I mentioned earlier that One Piece has a lot of smaller arcs that make up its whole story. Something I really like about these arcs is how they end. And by that I don’t mean the quality of their conclusions, but the information that is presented at the end. Oda does this thing called a mystery box or layered reveal. That’s basically when the answer to a question leaves the reader with more questions. An example of this kind of ending would be the ending of the Skypiea arc.
Skypiea is this fantastical island on top of the clouds that is home to a legendary city of gold. It is an island that is so rare, that the only way to get there is via a dangerous weather event that might not even work. The last record of someone even reaching this island was centuries ago. But our main cast manages to find this island. Although the locals are saddened that the grand center piece of the city, a giant golden bell, has been missing for 400 years. It has been gone for so long that the stories of it have been reduced to legends. So we go through the arc, hearing of this golden city and the bell, until we come to the end. We reach the very top of the cloud island by climbing a giant beanstalk, and the missing bell is found. But upon further inspection of the bell, there is written in a special writing that only one person in the world is able to read, that the King of the Pirates, Gold Roger was here.
So we get the answer to the question about where the legendary bell that has been missing for centuries is, but we’re left with even more questions. It was thought that no one had been to this island for hundreds of years, yet the King of the Pirates was here around 25 years ago. And he is leaving a message in a writing that no one else in the world is supposed to know how to read. Oda does these kinds of things all the time, and it adds so much to the mystery of the world and adds to the overall worldbuilding.
Exclusive or inclusive experiences
In my opinion, one of the best things about consuming any kind of media is seeing other peoples reactions are. I love seeing if other people had the same reactions or thoughts to something as me, or if they were different I love hearing their thoughts and their reasons for why they think that. One Piece has a lot of moments where they will universally make the readers or watchers emotional. One of the most unexpected emotional moments is when Oda will make the reader feel sad about a boat. I don’t know any other story that has done that. One Piece is a big story that is split up into lots a smaller story arcs, so another thing I love hearing about is the different ratings and rankings of all the arcs. Because even when most of the rankings of the arcs are similar, the reasons are always different from person to person. Some people like some parts more because its about their favorite character, or because they like some moment or themes that are present, or even because they experienced some part during a certain time in their life. There are many other examples like this that show that this story isn’t just self-contained, but that it is really a part of a lot of people’s lives. I love stories like One Piece that don’t just end once the story is over, but stories that I can continue to interact with and it can continue to inspire and influence things in my life, long after it’s done. But having said that, I have yet to have another experience like One Piece which is why I believe One Piece might just be The Greatest Story Ever Told.
