One Piece is Good Again, Hallelujah

Being a fan of something for over 12 years can have a lot of drawbacks. The worst one being when the story goes bad, I can’t drop it because I’ve invested so much time and want to know what happens. But I also can’t skip it because I’m sure I’ll miss some very important story points in the long run. This has been my quarrel with One Piece for the past 5 years.

In 2011 One Piece did a 2-year time skip in the story and though conceptually it was a good idea, the stories for some reason have not being good because of it with no clear reason why. They don’t suck because of the time skip; they just happen to suck after the time skip happened. In those 5 years we have had 4 arcs, the first one ‘Fishman Island’ is the only one that I can say suffered because of the time skip, the characters became too powerful that the antagonists weren’t threatening and there was so much time spent developing the Fishman Island and culture when really why should we care about a temporary setting? The second arc ‘Punk Hazard’ suffers from a similar issue of a bad villain, but also the fact it turned out to be one giant set up arc for the next arc. ‘Dressrosa’ which might be the worst arc in One Piece history, with half the main characters missing, too much time spent with characters we don’t care about, awful pacing even by One Piece standards and for taking 2 fucking years to finish. Really at that point, nothing else matters, no story would be interesting if it lasted for 2 years.

Then most recently there was the ‘Zou Arc’ which the anime is currently going through and I hesitate to even call this an arc because of how short it was and was just set-up for the next (and current) arc in the manga. But I consider that a good thing, the Zou Arc only lasted for 20 chapters in the manga, while Punk Hazard? 45! So already a considerable achievement.

This brings us to the current arc in the story, ‘Totto Land’ which over 20 chapters in and I am loving it. So what makes this arc work better than the others? The biggest reason is simply it revolves around the crew! Not the whole crew mind you, but the crew. The story follows Sanji being forced to leave the crew to fulfil a duty to his family, who turn out to be royal elitists with serious Nazi parallels…so you can see why Sanji chose to keep this a secret. They’ve even gone as far to say is Sanji doesn’t marry a woman they’ve picked out from another royal family they’ll blow off his hands and kill someone he loves.

Like I said, all of the other arcs didn’t really revolve around the crew, but rather they go to an island, things happen there and they get roped into it somehow, and we don’t care about this random countries politics! We don’t care about this temporary character’s tragic backstory! Yes those are all nice developments to flesh out the story but at its core the story should revolve around the Straw Hat Crew! They are our main characters! If they’re only involved on behalf of someone else then why should anything that happens matter?

This is where this arc shines, Sanji has always been one of the best and most well rounded characters in One Piece, so seeing the origin of a lot of his beliefs and mannerisms is interesting to watch. Though really wasn’t his backstory of nearly starving to death tragic enough? Did you have to throw in an abusive family? I mean it works and is so far the best thing about the story, I’m just saying. Sanji’s relationship with his family is so well defined at this point that I want to see where it’s going, every week I’m excited for new developments. And even though we’re only 20 chapters in, it feels like we’ve covered a lot of ground, I’d guess we’re 1/3 if not 1/2 through the story by now.

Then there are just the bonuses of Oda throwing in references to other famous works, such as Alice in Wonderland, The Man in the Iron Mask and like I already said, Nazism. Not only does it give the story more of a visual flare but the fact that we can connect it actually fleshes out the story better than exposition would. I could spend an entire blog post explaining why the Vinsmoke family is evil and how their system works, or I could just say: They’re like Nazis. Boom, in those 3 words you understand everything you need to about how the Vinsmoke family works, what their goals are and how they function.

So, to go over why this story works so much better than all the other post-time skip stories: Story revolves around a main character, better paced and is a nice pastiche to other works and real life events.

So where can they go from here? The build-up has been great, what can they do for the payoff? In my opinion one of three things (If not all three) need to happen to get the emotional resolution we could want as well as for more character development. It’s established Sanji hates and quite possibly fears his family and they in return thing he is pathetic and useless. So what I would like to see if Sanji’s brothers insult and torment him and he’s too afraid or injured to fight back, then one of the Straw Hat crewmembers comes in and saves him, but who would it be? I feel it has to be either Nami or Zoro who comes to defend him. Yes, Zoro isn’t on the island but I would completely buy that he got so lost on his way to Wano he ended up in a different country. But the reason why I feel it has to be one of these two is because they are yet to show their full care for Sanji. If Luffy shows up and defends him then of course he’ll do that, he’s always been open about how much he loves Sanji like he loves all of his crew.

Nami & Zoro have never expressed any sympathy or concern for Sanji, even though we know they do care and would defend him at the cost of their lives, how great would it be to see them stick up for him? To assure him that he is strong and useful? So see them kick the shit out of the Vinsmoke family because they hurt their Nakama. It would be a new development for their characters and would strengthen the relationship between them. Then Sanji could go kick the shit out of his dad because…that would be awesome to see.

But still, I do hope this story ends as great as it started off and it is so…so freaking great to say One Piece is good again. It’s been so long since I’ve felt this way that it makes me so happy that a franchise I have this much love for I can actually enjoy once more.

-Danny