This manga is an absolute masterpiece. When I fitst saw it, I was in my local library looking for some thing to do because I had just moved, the Internet was not hooked up yet, and my mom had things to do. While I was browsing through the manga, I picked out a random volume of One Piece. I took one look at the cover art and put it back. I thought it was the most rediculous thing I had ever seen. I said to myself that I would never read that manga... Ever. About a year later, I borrowed one of my friend's Shounen Jump magazines. I read through all of the manga it contained and I was completely alien to all of them. I read one called Naruto, it seemed kinda strange with this weird puppet thing that looked like some sort of scorpion. I read it and passed it off as boring. I read this other one about some board game and it bored me to death (I can't remember the name of it and I'm too lazy to search.) I just skipped right over bonobo Bo something like that. I got to One Piece and read it. I had no idea what was going on, but I enjoyed it! There were these weird fish people and some weird guy shooting rubber bands from a hole in a wall. Right in the middle of all the action, some black haired guy who was apparantly stuck underwater shot up screaming "I'M BACK!!!". I was hooked.
About a year after that, I had read no more One Piece other than that chapter. I vaguely remembered enjoying it. I saw that my friend had another magazing and I borrowed it, skipping straight to One Piece. Once again, I had no idea what was going on, but it was all snowy. It looked like the black haired guy wanted a raindeer... Weird. Some funny scnes later, thy are running away from a castle and jumping off a weird mountain. Thier silouette in the moonlight was so comical and so memorable, I swore that I would remember the name and read the manga.
A few months later, I was in eight grade, taking Algebra 1 online in school. I look at my friend's computer and I see she's reading manga. Omg! Manga online! Greatest thing ever! I hopped on the manga train, found a site I liked (mangafox) and started reading... D.N.Angel! Great manga! Then I read Black Cat (which I had read the pilot to in one of my friend's magazines) and then I remembered One Piece and went to it. I never thought I had to scroll so far to get to chapter one...
I read the manga, and loved it! Several years later and several hundred manga later, it it still at the top of my list!!! Sadly enough, for some reason, I can't bring myself to enjoy and One Piece fanfics... Why is that?
Ok, now time for the actual review.
One Piece is rich in plot, charachters, comedy, tragedy, action, everything anyone ever wants. There is no such thing as impossible in this manga. It has everything, EVERYTHING name it, One Piece has it. (even living skeletons with afros... What kind of mind thinks up that kind of stuff? 🙂 ) everyone has read a manga where something is mentioned, but gets forgotten. Maybe has an arc where the charachters just dissappear after and are never mentioned again. In One Piece, that had never happened. Everything is part of the entire (genious) plot. Everything is intertwined, verything is a mystery, everything has you wondering what happens next. Sometime that plot may be a little predictable, but it is always fun! It is true that One Piece has a bit of a formula worked out where everything happens a certain way. However, sometimes that formula is shatterea and it throws ou for a loop and when you expect it to resolve like all the others, it stabs you. This manga makes me cry more than any other; not just because it is a sad moment, but because you have grown attached to whatever happened in the manga. The charachters have so much depth to them, and we feel as if they are real. The main character, Luffy, is strange in this way. When reading the manga, you smile at what he does, and expect him to do certain things, and feel as we really know him. Yet, he is the most enigmatic. Only recently Oda given insight into Luffy's past. It's strange how much we really don't know.
One Piece has a profound amount of depth in everything it has to give. It has taught me many things that I will never forget as well.
Read if you have yet to do so.
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