Post — Aaron Ngo

Major Spoilers are included in this manga review. Please read with caution.

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.

On November 1, 2020, I started One Piece’s “Arlong Park Arc”—the fifth story arc in the East Blue Saga—and finished on November 2, 2020. In the aftermath of the “Baratie Arc”—after Nami steals the Going Merry pirate ship from Luffy and the crew—Roronoa Zoro and Usopp give chase, with Luffy, Sanji, Johnny, and Yosaku following as well after they resolved the previous arc’s storyline.

Similar to the previous arc’s character focus on Sanji, this arc gives us greater insight into Nami, her tragic background, and her motives for stealing from Luffy and the other pirates. Going into this arc, I felt uncertain about why she did what she did, but seeing her cry quietly to herself made me think she must’ve had a sympathetic reason. Then we meet the main antagonist—Arlong—the leader of the Arlong Pirates.

Arlong is a horrible Fishman—part human, part fish—who believes his species is superior to humans, which means all humans must bow and serve them. He is the ruler of Nami’s hometown—the entire island—and rules with fear and intimidation.

If the villages didn’t pay their “tributes” or chose to fight against them, Arlong retaliates with mass murder and decimation of said village. Reading the decimation of the Gosa Village was heartbreaking and effective in establishing Arlong as this pure evil villain ready to put those he deems below him “in their place”.

This is the villain Nami has been working for this whole time—eight years of her life—to secretly protect her village from suffering the same fate as her mother and the other villages. She also worked for him in order to buy her village back from Arlong—but to do so, she had to betray her mother Bellmere’s memory.

In the flashback story, Arlong killed Nami’s mother because she didn’t have enough money to pay the hefty “tribute” fee, having used the last of her savings to save her daughters Nami and Nojiko. The fee was 100,000 bells for an adult and 50,000 bells for a child. Bellmere only had 100,000 in her savings, so she used it to save her two daughters—people who didn’t share her blood, but they were her family nonetheless.

Bellmere’s death had a huge impact on Nami, and it affected all her decision-making moving forward—to make up for what Nami said about wanting to be adopted by a richer family. Despite this, Bellmere’s final words proved her parental love for Nami and Nojiko was truly unconditional. It was honestly a very dark moment when Arlong executed her with a headshot.

Then Nami was made into a slave after Arlong learned about her natural ability to draw maps—something he exploits to hunt more villages and to subjugate them under his rule similar to Nami’s hometown. Arlong promised that if Nami could amass 100,000 bells though from her pirate-hunting thievery, he’d let her buy the village back.

This background explained why Nami has a strong opinion about money and hating pirates: she grew up with very little, lost her beloved mother because not enough money, and she must now depend on money to survive and earn her freedom one day. This is a lot to put on a child going into adulthood.

Of course, Arlong lied and had a corrupt Marine Navy team raid Nami’s stash, stealing 93 million from her. Arlong wasn’t going to lose his precious slave, not until she drew all the maps for him, which would take decades—maybe even the rest of her life.

This results in all the villagers gathering and marching to their deaths for Nami sacrificing herself for nothing. Nami begged them to stop—wanting to keep them alive—but a riot was inevitable. After all, rioting is the language of the unheard.

The major theme of oppression resonated strongly with the villagers, giving them great “crowd development”—a term I picked up from Haikyu!! regarding groups of people developing together—throughout this arc on why they didn’t act against Arlong’s oppression out of fear and secretly relying on one person to save them instead of saving themselves.

Reading Nami repeatedly stab her shoulder—where her Arlong Pirates tattoo was—was definitely uncomfortable but necessary to tell the reader, “Nami’s currently at her lowest point.”

“When we reach our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change,” Avatar Aang, The Legend of Korra.

My brain is on The Legend of Korra, and it’s pretty relevant to this particular arc of One Piece and Nami’s character development.

Luffy eventually shows up in this arc, and stops Nami from hurting herself further. After repeatedly telling him and the others to leave the island, Nami breaks—crying in front of him and breaking her vow as a kid that no one would see her cry nor would she ask for help—and tells Luffy, “Help me.”

In response, Luffy gives Nami his straw hat—his most prized treasure—to protect, symbolizing how he has absolute faith in her as a navigator unlike everyone else in her life, albeit for good reason. The epic scene where Luffy walks up to the boys—Zoro, Sanji, and Usopp—was a great hero moment honestly. These moments have a similar emotional vibe to “Fairy Tail” but not overly spammed to the point of annoyance—at least not yet, I’m only 95 chapters into the series after all.

The action sequences were also excellent—my favorite is Zoro for the injuries he had taken during the “Baratie Arc” in his fight against Mihawk and still suffering from in his fight against Hachi—the Octopus Fishman with six swords. I do enjoy “underdog” fights, watching the hero achieve victory despite the clear disadvantage. Those injuries also added to Zoro’s badassery and his tendency to keep it moving regardless of handicaps that would kill the average human.

Sanji had a disadvantage too with his fight moving from land to sea, so he could save Luffy from drowning. This arc also gave him enough space to show the reader what we can expect from him moving forward in terms of fight scenes. I do love his kicking technique, and how strong he actually is without using his cooking hands. He seamlessly established a great dynamic with Zoro, Usopp, and Luffy with ease—and his crush on beautiful women like Nami is pretty Brock-like behavior (Pokemon). So, it’s kind-of gross.

My only dislike with the arc is Usopp and his comedic cowardice. I initially liked him during the “Syrup Village Arc”—his debut arc—but his constant running away was really annoying. I did like how he thought about Nami’s pain, and what would happen if he kept running though, which made him fight and defeat one of Arlong’s pirates.

When Luffy destroyed Nami’s room though—the “prison” where she was constantly drawing maps—it proved how much Nami meant to him as a crewmate and friend. The ending moment with Nami getting a new tattoo—a pinwheel for her father figure Genzo and an orange for her mother Bellmere—was beautiful and symbolic of the parental figures who tried to keep her smile alive.

The “Arlong Park Arc” is the absolute best One Piece story arc I’ve read so far. Eiichiro Oda did a fantastic job with this arc in terms of plot, character, world-building, action, and the major theme of oppression weaved into the narrative. Having recently finished The Legend of Korra’s Book 4 at the time, I was clearly prepared for this type of story arc based on the Avatar Aang quote I used earlier.

I hadn’t talked much about Oda’s artwork—I don’t think I would be fair since this art style is late 1990’s / early 2000’s—but the character design on Nami abruptly changed into an hour glass figure, which matched her sister Nojiko’s body as well. I’m not sure how I feel about it quite yet, but it doesn’t currently feel good that he did that.

Oda did do a great job on making Nami a sympathetic character, but sexualizing her design shouldn’t be the price for that development; its kind-of setting the wrong beauty standard especially with a lack of female characters in the series so far. It’s also abrupt and distracting for those who were used to her old design from the previous arcs.

Hopefully, Oda introduces more significant female characters in the future—since I realized Nami is the only major female character on Luffy’s crew and the series overall—but I wouldn’t be surprised if the same issue arises again since this is a 1990’s manga that was released alongside Dragon Ball Z.

Regardless of those issues though, I still highly recommend y’all getting into One Piece for the world-building and its exceptional emotional moments, but you must be prepared for the long-game. Thanks for reading this manga review, everyone! I’ll see you all on the Grand Line soon enough! I’m getting there—full speed ahead for the precious “One Piece”!

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