Post — Aaron Ngo

Major Spoilers are included in this thought piece. Please read with caution.

October 28, 2020 to November 2, 2020

6 Days

6 Story Arcs

100 Chapters

(Chapters 1 through 100)

Hello everyone,

After finishing my “warm-up” with Tower of God at the beginning of October 2020 and using the majority of the month to “rest”, I finally dove into Big Daddy One Piece and found myself loving it more than I ever anticipated.

I had just finished the first 100 chapters of One Piece for the very first time—having never read or seen this series during my childhood—and I wanted to share my general thoughts on the “East Blue Saga”, the first major Saga with six story arcs. I will have individual arc reviews for y’all at some point during 2021, but I wanted to really discuss my general feelings—non-spoiler to the best of my ability—for those uncertain about hitting this massive ongoing manga.

One sentence summary: Written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda, the series follows Monkey D. Luffy traveling to the Grand Line—with his pirate crew—in search of the world’s ultimate treasure called “One Piece” in order to become the King of Pirates.

The story sounds basic, but there’s more to One Piece than meets the eye. First off, the world-building is incredible and built upon with locations and characters on par with Pokemon like whenever Ash and friends visit a new town. The story is also intricate and diverse with many ongoing subplots and characters, while not on par with Tower of God, but they’re very similar in nature, thus why Tower of God is sometimes considered the “One Piece of Webtoons”. The main stigma with a series like this is the ongoing length and whether it’s worth pursuing—I don’t have an easy answer for that one.

Like I mentioned at the start of this thought piece, I had reached 100 chapters—finishing out the “East Blue Saga” on November 2—and all I have to say is, “I invested enough in the characters to make this journey with them.” If you don’t feel enough for at least 3 out of 5 characters by chapter 100, I would strongly suggest not going further.

There are also many characters running around in One Piece already due to the many locations Luffy and friends have already visited, so keeping track of them all might feel taxing and somewhat exhausting due to how involved they are in specific storylines. They also come and go—aside from the main five characters, including Luffy, who are recruited one by one—but some of them have already made their comebacks or are being foreshadowed to come back at some point in the series.

The emotional content for all the characters has reached me on some level—enough to keep me invested in their journeys. Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, and Sanji have distinct personalities, backgrounds, and epic dreams of their own worth pursuing. Luffy wants to be King of the Pirates, Zoro wants to be “World’s Strongest Swordsman”, etc. It’s simple but difficult—yet not impossible—to achieve these goals.

I also cried a good amount while reading this manga series, and noticed how much Kohei Horikoshi—the author of My Hero Academia—heavily drew inspiration from One Piece. I can see how Izuku Midoriya and Luffy are similar in terms of how they protect the ones they love and their dreams even if it gets in the way of their own. Also, Kohei Horikoshi is an open and proud One Piece fan, and he has officially declared he wants My Hero Academia to surpass One Piece someday. So, that’s pretty awesome! I hope Horikoshi does surpass Eiichiro Oda someday. It motivates me as a writer to surpass Brandon Sanderson—author of the Mistborn Trilogy series and the Writer-God of the Cosmere Universe—someday.

Overall, my first week reading Big Daddy One Piece was a great epic journey into the real story—the Alabasta Saga. I also have no passionate interest in pirates, so reading One Piece is giving me great insights into what it means to be a pirate too—like arr matey hasn’t happened yet, so maybe that’s a stereotype, ya know?

Thanks for reading this thought piece on my One Piece reading journey! I won’t be pushy like Luffy was with his crewmates, but let me know if we’re on the same boat or if you’re interested in joining the reading experience. I’m not sure I’ll keep doing these One Piece thought pieces every single week, but I might consider doing these for every Saga I finish. I’ll let you all know soon enough. Until we meet again, I’m off to sail the “Alabasta Saga”!

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