Tumbling back into One Piece

Since the Netflix One Piece got me back in a One Piece of mind, I let myself get drawn back into reading the manga.

The thought of starting from the start again horrified me so I picked up where I left off. It’s been more than ten years but I was able to figure that out without much trouble. (It also helped that I can get volumes digitally from the library, saving both money AND space. Seriously, I had multiple shelves devoted to One Piece)

And so I have now read the Water Seven Arc.

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I amazed at how easily I found myself back into Oda’s madcap world. I’ve wondered what the best single word to describe Oda as an artist and I think it might be enthusiasm. And that enthusiasm pulls you through the world in a way that makes you amazed at how much you actually ended up reading.

Back when I was regularly reading One Piece (and I honestly read only a tiny fraction of the series), I also read about the series. In a general way, I knew some of what was to come. And a lot of what I knew was to come happened in Water Seven lol

I knew Luffy and Usopp would have a major fight that resulted in Usopp leaving the group, only to come back in a mask. I knew that the Strawhats would declare war on the world government to save Robin. I knew that the Going Merry would sink and be replaced by the Thousand Sunny. I knew the Strawhats would get a shipwright who was a cyborg named Franky.

That all happened in Water Seven.

I will note that, in a series with lots of feels, the death of the Going Merry was the most powerful gut punch Oda has given me.

And I had low expectations for Franky, feeling naming him after Frankenstein was pretty low hanging fruit. When he turned out to be a cross between the Six Million Dollar Man, a fifties greaser and Popeye, I was won over. Truly, he is super.

One Piece is a beautiful, sprawling mess that I thought I was finished with. It was fun being wrong.