One Piece Review – East Blue
Jumping right into the story we find ourselves in the first major saga of one piece. A lot of this saga is spent growing the crew. We first meet Luffy and learn a bit of his backstory before he sets off and meets Koby, who will later become one of my favorite characters, but now is underwhelming. Though we aren’t left with underwhelming new characters for long, meeting Roronoa Zoro, or Zolo if you’re feeling like making a select group of people very mad. The overall story of this arc is fine, its nothing crazy, though the introduction to not only Koby, but Helmeppo who will become recurring characters lays the work for some surprises later on. Even if the story isn’t nearly as crazy as later arcs, it does serve an important purpose of introducing the audience to the concept of the Navy being corrupt to help endear us to the pirates, many of which are pretty bad people otherwise.
We leave Romance Dawn with Zoro onto Orange Town, where we meet and recruit Nami. They fight Buggy, we leave. Other than the new crew member, the biggest part of this part is the introduction of more devil-fruit users. Something that still has its novelty this early on in the story, but, unfortunately, will lose its luster in the future, but, fortunately, the future doesn’t bring the present down. We also first hear the term “Grand line” here, but its not important until later so lets move onto Syrup village.
To be completely honest, I am not Usopp’s biggest fan, especially early on. I appreciate the “Boy who cried wolf” story, and gaining the Going Merry is very important, its basically the mascot of the series. However, lets move on to Baratie and meet my least favorite Straw Hat, Sanji.
God I hate Sanji. He’s better pre-time skip, but I just hate the pervert-simp archetype in anime/manga, and Sanji has 3 modes, pervert, fighter, cook, and pervert seeps into the other two. Its also tragic because I really like his backstory and his traits beyond perversion, like his almost rabid aversion to wasting food, but for every moment like that we get, we get 10 of him with heart eyes annoying every woman he sees. Luckily, we also get some moments for other Straw Hats in this arc, Zoro gets humbled by the immensely powerful Mihawk, introducing the depth of power already present on the seas. This is something I actually really like, the world feels lived in and more “real” for lack of a better term when things are already super strong and present, all the new powerful threats aren’t being revealed or coming from far away lands, they are already sailing the same waters as our main characters. Mayhaps this positive’s reverse will show up if I ever do a Naruto review, mayhaps. This part of the story ends with Nami taking the Going Merry and we get into the best bit of this arc, and easily the most memorable, Arlong Park.
Arlong park gives us some of early One Piece’s best stuff, particularly Luffy seeing and going out of his way to destory the room of maps Nami had made. I love characters that seem simple or even dumb, but are actually pretty perceptive of people and how they feel/what they can do beyond their insecurities, a trait that connects Luffy and Goku. We also get the iconic scene of Luffy giving his hat to the crying Nami in this arc. This arc is pretty much the gate to the rest of the series, if you don’t like Arlong park, you won’t like One Piece, its really that simple. Great character moments, a good, lengthy, varied fight, and the introduction of major recurring themes like the wanted posters really give you a good idea of what One Piece is going to be like. Of course, One Piece isn’t for everyone, and not everyone is going to vibe with the particular formula that makes this series, but I think everyone should give it a shot to this point.
Loguetown I honestly didn’t consider when I was first laying this review structure out, Arlong seems like the final boss, and he is in a way, with this arc acting as more the falling action out of East Blue and into the next saga. Were introduced to Smoker, and with him Logia devil fruits, and his subordinate Tashigi. These are concepts that will return later, and luckily Devil fruits haven’t ran their course just yet. Zoro gets some new swords, like upgrading your gear in a video game before moving to the next area. Overall other than introducing recurring characters, not much is very memorable about this part of the story and so the Straw Hats move on.
Overall East Blue is a very good start to this series, It has its problems, One of which being the early repetition that bored me from reading on during my first attempt years ago. Most of the other issues I have come from characters I don’t care for or outright don’t like, Sanji in particular. Its lucky these issues are surrounded by a sea of One Piece, a genuinely good series with a lot of heart, which takes a series far. Readers can very easily tell when a series doesn’t have a genuine soul, but you never get that feeling with One Piece which can make you forgive a lot while reading, I genuinely hate whenever Sanji gets his heart eyes, but then something cool or funny happens and I all but forget about it and read on. East Blue is the heart of One Piece, if reading this saga doesn’t make you want to read on, then the series frankly isn’t for you.
