Animation Spotlight: One Piece

To be perfectly honest, I haven’t been doing much gaming lately… instead I’ve been having a HUGE (HUEG LIEK XBOX!) anime marathon, I decided to re-watch one of my favourite anime straight from its first episode all the way to the latest episode that’s been released in Japan… episode 397. I have been doing this for a few weeks now and all I can really say is FUCK YEAH!! ONE PIECE!!

Okay, maybe I can say a little more than just that lol. How about I share with some of you who haven’t really bothered to look into One Piece or haven’t realised its awesomeness just why it’s such a great anime and why it’s one of my absolute favourites…

The man who created the manga known as One Piece is Eiichiro Oda, a man inspired by Vikings and various pirates throughout history. After many years of developing a story called “Romance Dawn” he finally released the first chapter of One Piece in the Weekly Shounen Jump magazine on the 4th of August, 1997. Over 500 chapters have been released since then and the manga is still on-going. It is currently rated as the third most popular manga in Japan. Not only that but volume 27 of the manga holds the record of most copies sold in Japan with 2,630,000 units sold in its first printing alone and is also the fastest selling manga to reach 1,000,000 units sold. So with all those numbers and facts flying around in this paragraph, you can probably tell by now that it’s pretty damn popular in Japan… and has quite a following outside of Japan too. (Though you should probably note that those facts are probably a little out of date at the moment lol)

The great popularity the One Piece manga gained in its first year spurred on a direct to video feature in 1998 and then on the 20th of October, 1999, the anime TV series of One Piece aired its first episode. It’s almost 10 years from that day and the TV series is heading into its 400th episode in May.

So now that we have all that out of the way, I can go on to how I came across One Piece, what drew me in and made it one of my most favourite anime ever.

I actually stumbled upon One Piece quite a few years ago by accident while looking for images of a totally different anime on the net. The first thing that struck me was its unique art style, which to me, was totally crazy and fun compared to the cookie cutter anime art styles I had been seeing at the time. It was something new, something fresh… something I couldn’t take my eyes off of. I ended up searching for more One Piece art and the more I found, the more excited I got! Each image was crazier and more fun than the last! I had to find out exactly what all this was about! What the hell is One Piece?

I finally managed to download a few episodes of it from the net a couple of months later after collecting a tonne of art. What I discovered was an anime that seemed to completely know what I wanted out of an anime: Humour, adventure, hot chicks and lots of surprises and truly epic moments. With each episode of the anime I watched I knew that what I was watching would become a favourite, however it never truly hit me until I reached the Arlong arc… those of you who have watched One Piece will know what I mean, for those of you who haven’t… The best way to describe that group of episodes is that it’s the first time the Straw Hat Pirate crew truly comes together to save one of their own. It’s also one of the many times in the series where you will be hit with a very tragic back story on a specific character that highlights their motivations and allows you to understand them on a deeper level.

The world in which One Piece is set doesn’t fail to impress either, and the story is set in such a way that with each new chapter of the journey you and the Straw Hat Pirates will discover something totally new and different from their last adventure. Each member of the crew has their own dream they want to follow and together they’ve been through some pretty amazing things.

Now that I’ve caught up with the latest episodes of the anime, I’m running around in circles waiting for each new episode to be released each week. I want to see Luffy become the Pirate King, Zoro becoming the strongest swordsman in the world, Nami drawing a map of the entire world, Usopp becoming a brave warrior of the sea, Sanji finding All Blue, Chopper becoming a great Doctor who can cure any disease, Robin finding the Rio Poneglyph, Franky building his dream ship and Brook finally keeping his promise to Laboon.

I’ve come to love each member of the Straw Hat crew and while this series has been going on for well over 10 years now, there will be an ending… I can’t wait to see it when it comes and to discover who things turn out… but at this point, there are still many adventures left to be had.

And with that, I think I’m all typed out for today… but I would still like to keep on discussing it with people in the community. I know that there’s a One Piece thread in the general forum but how about we make this the official One Piece fan hangout for Twilight Lynk?… not that you guys have a choice lol.