APADFTMOM Day 3: One Piece, and The Battle Against Stagnancy

One Piece is a long, long series that is nearing its thousandth chapter after 22 years of consistent weekly chapters being printed with minimal hiatuses and breaks, all penned by its author Eiichiro Oda. The series spans over 90 volumes with almost half a billion copies having been sold worldwide. If there was ever a series to be called a cornerstone of modern manga and a piece of history, it would be One Piece. It would be foolish of me to try and write about manga without touching on One Piece, so today we’re ripping that bandage off and diving into why One Piece is worth your time and how reading it seems like a much more daunting task than it actually is.






The story of One Piece is very broad and simple: Gold Roger, the most notorious pirate in the world, cryptically left a clue to his treasure as he was being executed by mentioning that all of his belongings were left in “one piece.” This sparked a worldwide rush to find Gold Roger’s fortunes and become the king of the pirates by doing so, with the focus on the series being put on a boy named Monkey D. Luffy. Luffy is a tactless idiot with a gargantuan appetite who is quick to trust people and has no issues with putting himself in harm’s way if it’s for a cause he agrees with. Luffy’s body is also made of rubber thanks to him eating the Gum Gum Fruit, which is one of a plethora of magical fruits that cause the eater’s body to change in any number of ways.




One Piece opens in a very humble manner: Luffy is shown to be the main character, an overview of his personality is demonstrated, and Luffy’s friend and hero, Shanks, is introduced. By the end of the establishing arc, Luffy is on the high seas with the absolute bare minimum with the two goals of meeting up with Shanks and becoming the pirate king. There is no forced sense of intrigue in having Luffy awaken a mysterious power of unknown origins or harboring some sort of mysterious demonic entity; Luffy is just a small-town boy on an adventure, and the audience is sailing right with him with the same eagerness as he has to see what’s in store as he attempts to achieve his dream.




Luffy, as a main character of an action series, is designed in a way that allows for a lot of steady growth in terms of his fighting strength. The typical action series protagonist will experience sporadic growth as new powers unlock and they gain new abilities, but Luffy only has the one core ability of stretching his body. Aside from that, very few of Luffy’s abilities are truly unique to him. The vast majority of what Luffy learns has been previously established as something that multiple, if not many, people can do. After learning something new, Luffy will incorporate it into his arsenal in his own unique way where he can get the most out of it. This can be seen as Luffy adapting to his surroundings at that point in the story to show that he deserves to be there.




Although Luffy is constantly growing, that is also where one of the most unique aspects of One Piece starts to shine. The audience is regularly reminded that Luffy is not the strongest person in the series. There is always a bigger threat, a more noteworthy presence, or a stronger foe at any given moment. Luffy is never made out to be the be-all, end-all power in the world because he just plain isn’t. From the very beginning 22 years ago when he was a lone boy setting sail in a dinghy all the way to this moment in 2019, Luffy is just a stubborn idiot out there scratching and clawing his way upwards to making history. Despite having a bookend firmly in place since the very beginning, One Piece has always been more about the journey than the destination.




So how does a series not wear out its welcome in over two decades? There are actually two answers, although one branches off of the other: A meticulously crafted plot structure to help shape the universe as well as the current story, and a once-in-a-lifetime creative genius when it comes to design choices. One Piece has a very clear-cut plot structure that outlines the beginning and ending of each story arc with small intermissions later on to help the audience catch up with other characters will become important soon or will shape important events that will happen soon. Luffy and his crew are constantly on the move as they encounter and resolve conflicts on their way to their goal, but those places that they have visited and side characters do not stop existing purely because the main cast is no longer there. Past events tie into current events as the story continues, helping to grow the vision of this world as a thriving ecosystem as opposed to links on a chain leading from point A to point B.




That is not just to say that callbacks are the only things helping to tie the world together; There is plenty of foreshadowing added as well, although it is less obvious because it may not become relevant until a point when the reader has forgotten about it. One Piece has a somewhat famous list of foreshadowed details with varied numbers of chapters between the foreshadowing and the relevancy, all helping to prove that the series is never flying by the seat of its pants. Ultimately this points to a lot of care going into keeping the series coherent, although it can also be seen as a reward for readers who pay close enough attention.




While the end goal of One Piece is to see Luffy through to becoming the pirate king, there are multiple other smaller goals along the way that help the story give the feeling that it’s progressing at a reasonable pace. Each story arc has its own goal that is met through resolving the conflict of that arc, but there are also slightly larger goals that link together multiple arcs. For example, a larger goal may be that Luffy needs to assemble a crew with the smaller goals being the story arcs during which he meets and befriends each individual crew member. These smaller goals resolve and help keep the story moving, and occasionally one of the bigger goals resolves and helps to bookmark a meaningful moment. With more resolutions, it becomes easier and easier to look back and realize all of the things that Luffy has managed to accomplish on his journey at any given time without limiting that to just counting the number of story arcs.




A carefully crafted plot structure that weaves together an intricate world means nothing if that world is bland. While One Piece is constantly on the move from setting to setting, none of those settings ever feels dull. Each new location feels just as whimsical as the last while not overpoweringly so, and each character Luffy and the crew meet feels unique and leaves a lasting impression. The character designs are especially of note because there is no hesitance to get absurd for the sake of giving a character their own special presence. This extends far beyond just visual design; Speaking tics, personality quirks, and one-of-a-kind laughs help elevate characters from being “that one with the _____” to having their own identities.




Setting design in One Piece is so varied and detailed that half of the fun from reading the series comes from just wanting to see where the crew is headed next. While the settings ramp up in creativity over time, they are also used to help ease the reader into the world. A lot of early areas are simple towns with few redeeming qualities while the reader gets comfortable with the characters, and over time the locations become more and more fantastical as the focus shifts from establishing the primary cast of characters to watching them progress in the world around them. It’s also worth noting that there are not a lot of areas that feel the same. At times there are settings that feel reminiscent of past locations, but this is done intentionally to help the story echo the beats of prior storylines.




While One Piece is a very long series that requires a large time investment to enjoy, I would personally recommend investing that time sooner than later in order to be caught up in time for the ending. Personally, I’ve always got eight hours of vacation time at work reserved for the day One Piece comes to an end because it will truly be the end of an era. One Piece does have an official English release and is most accessible via the Shonen Jump app, which includes their full vault for a miniscule sum of $1.99 a month. That’s less than a McDouble and medium fries.