Reviews Manga / One Piece

What Shonen Should Be

Good Bits: One Piece knows what it is and revels in it. While other shonen may got bogged down by Wangst and whining, One Piece keeps up its energetic and fun atmosphere. With a likable main cast that range the gamut of idiot to genius this series has a character that fits what you think a protagonist should be. Want a fun loving idiot kid? Got it. Want a serious and badass sword master? Got it. Want a classy yet perverted break dancer? Got it. This show excels at the shonen classics, namely humor and jaw dropping badass fights. The fight scenes are always long and incredibly detailed affairs that showcase the heroes power and determination against the enemies deviousness and might. Also, this show has some of the most original and cool powers that I've ever seen. And Oda uses these powers in such clever ways that you could watch the show for those things alone. And while the characters of One Piece are not exactly human, they're all so much larger and grander then a mere human could ever be. You can relate to their dreams and their pain. Oh, and the art style? It fits One Piece perfectly, with a sugary and bright shell masking a decent morality tail, with one of the best portrayals of Order Versus Chaos I've seen.

Bad Bits: This is a really long show, running 430+ episodes at the time of this writing and showing no signs of stopping soon. While this provides many opportunities for character development and the aforementioned badass fight scenes. The show has long gaps of somewhat boring bits to set up the climatic finishes. For example the most dramatic arc, Enies Lobby, happened 100 episodes ago, and since then a massive battle is set to happen, but still, a hundred episodes is a long time to top itself. Again I'll bring up the issue of cast. While the nine Straw Hats fit together really well, there are nine of them. Each one an individual, and crew is supposed to be ten people! Not to mention the hordes of antagonists that fill the series. While such a huge cast is awesome, you can't see all that you want of them. Also the heroes got stopped halfway through their quest to engage in a side plot!, this is looking to be the Long Runner.

I love this show, and if you like superheroes, pirates, cool fights, fun characters and TTGL you're missing out if you don't watch it.