One Piece, Volume 1: Romance Dawn

This is the beginning of one of my favorite adventures. From here to the end of Ennies Lobby (so far in the future) it's a story of friends-turned-family, battle adrenaline, outdoor exploration, a dazzle of helping the less fortunate, the supposed bad guys--pirates--are often the good guys and the supposed good guys--the marines--are often the bad guys, and accomplishing great goals as a team. Oda made this story unique by tossing in elements that are ordinary in real life but random in fiction simply because we assume a grossly oversimplified telling. This makes One Piece long, but in so many ways paced to feel more real. Characters have plenty of time to show the reader who they are under different circumstances and interact show more frequently like a real life band of friends and family. Plots are thick and character relations run deep. The villains tend to have exaggerated traits perhaps for humorous effect, but the true humor lies with thorough development of the main characters and Luffy, who tosses our and his crew's expectations off the ship every time. show less

(Opinion on volumes 1-5)

Why I read it: I've a fondness for optimistic adventure stories, it's horrendously popular (at least in Japan), and while the art style made it look childish I'd read it was actually much more popular with adults, suggesting it might have some surprise depth/maturity in there somewhere.

Pros: Almost entirely melodrama/angst-free. Simplistic in character development and plot (so far), but shamelessly so. Doesn't put on airs and try to seem more deep and profound than it is, just tries to be fun.

Cons: Practically invincible characters ruin the tension action could have. Problem situations are invariably solved by plowing through with reckless abandon. Heavy-handed and repetitive in its message that people have their show more own personal treasures they want to protect. Characters frequently seem cartoonish in the simplicity of their personality/motives. And (my #1 pet peeve of shounen manga) seems to use “dramatic pasts/flashbacks” as the primary method of character development. (Even the freaking one-arc-side-character DOG has a dramatic past explaining why his actions are sympathetic? Are you kidding me?)

Conclusion: Series with care free nothing can stop me attitudes can have great appeal, but my suspension of disbelief breaks a little when the world is portrayed as so simple that that attitude really can allow you to plow through life without issue. This seems more like a child's daydream than a story with hidden depth or maturity, and I can't figure why it appeals so to the adults of Japan. Maybe that IS why it appeals so to them (But other series have that to some extent too, so why THIS?). Still, the attitude of angst-free shameless fun makes it go down easier than a lot of my less favorite shounen manga, so I may continue to obtain volumes from my library for a while to see if it changes or grows on me. show less

Delightful in its simplicity, this manga has the broad silly humour of the British comic Beano and its stable. There is no subtlety here but the directness is part of its charm.

Do you like pirates? Do you think the ‘Caribbean flicks were a bit… disappointing? Then look this way: One Piece by writer/artist Eiichiro Oda will shiver your timbers…
Monkey D. Luffy is determined to be the greatest pirate the world has ever seen. Another person might see having no ship, no crew, and no discernible talent for seamanship as fairly serious obstacles to that ambition, but for indomitable optimist Luffy they’re just details: he’s going to sail the famously fatal Grand Line and capture the fabled treasure the “One Piece” – and nothing and no one will stop him.
Apart from a rowboat, a cool straw hat and his own near-suicidal enthusiasm Luffy’s got one more thing going for him: after eating the fruit of the show more Gum-Gum tree, his body has some unusual powers…
It would take a flinty-hearted reader indeed to fail to be charmed by One Piece: it’s very silly, sure, but it’s also warm, funny, imaginative and stuffed to the gunwales with wild action and brilliant characters. Take Roanoa Zolo and his astonishing three sword technique - or Nami, the wonderfully amoral thief: she’s as likely to rob Luffy as help him. Best of all, take Luffy himself. He got my full support in Volume 1 as soon as I saw him /punch a sea-monster/ – but now, five vols in as I am, I’m starting to think he’s one of the most charismatic protagonists I’ve ever come across. As if all that wasn’t enough, the volumes I’ve read included awesome bonus features like sketches, interviews, colouring-in pages and models to cut out or copy.
Is One Piece this much fun over the whole of its sixty-two (so far) volumes? I aim to find out. Meantime I’d recommend One Piece to anyone. A big thank you to Omid at The Big Green Bookshop for doing so for me. :D show less

I've never been a huge anime fan, mostly sticking to the classics like Dragon Ball Z when I do watch. That goes double for manga - I've never liked comics or graphic novels; and never even really gave manga a try besides a year or two subscription to Shonen Jump back in middle school. Recently I was feeling a little nostalgic for those days, so I decided to read a bit of One Piece, maybe the most popular series I've had zero exposure to.I read the colored edition, which looked really nice. The colors are really well done. The story is a bit juvenile, it is a shonen after all, but it's interesting enough to keep me invested, and these chapters are a quick enough read that you can knock out the entire volume in an hour or two.There's show more something to be said for some light fun reading that can be a breath of fresh air between more dense novels. I'm going to keep reading, but I don't see myself blasting through this series. A volume or two between regular books seems like a good pace that'll keep me from burning out on the style. show less

One Piece by Eiichiro Oda is an extremely popular series in both Japan and the United States. It is also a long running series. Publication of the collected volumes began in 1997 in Japan; the manga is currently up to sixty volumes and it's still going. The English translation by Viz Media first began in 2003 and the fifty-fifth volume was released in October 2010. Despite the manga's popularity, I'm actually not very familiar with it at all, although I have seen bits and pieces of a few of the anime episodes. I was surprised to discover that my local library currently only has the first volume of the series, Romance Dawn, although there are plans to purchase more of the books. I was happy when One Piece was selected for the Manga show more Moveable Feast because it gave me an excuse to finally get around to reading a well-loved series that I've heard so much about.

Ever since he was small, Monkey D. Luffy has been determined to become King of the Pirates. This is a rather ambitious and daunting proposition since just about every other pirate out there is after the same thing. Starting out with nothing more than a rowboat, Luffy heads off to assemble his pirate crew. But he does have one advantage. After eating a gum-gum fruit his body gained rubber-like properties, making him difficult to injure and virtually impervious to bullets. Luffy is also a bit odd and shows absolutely no fear; understandably, some people think he's not quite right in the head. Undeterred, he throws himself wholeheartedly into his quest and the first person he targets to recruit is none other than the dreaded pirate hunter Roronoa Zolo. He might take some convincing though--who ever heard of a bounty hunter teaming up with a pirate?

Oda's artwork in One Piece is energetic and bombastic, nicely pairing with the absurdity of the manga's story. Character designs are cartoonish with exaggerated facial features and expressions. I absolutely adore Luffy's ecstatic grins, for one. So far, the more over-the-top and extreme designs are reserved for the series' villains. Sound effects play a pretty substantial role in Oda's work and are often quite prominent. There is plenty of silliness in both the story and the art (frequently, I was reminded of Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball) and even the more serious parts have a fair bit of levity. Even considering the joyful ridiculousness of the manga, I can't quite get over the fact that Luffy, having eaten the fruit of the gum-gum tree, will never be able to swim. Though, seeing as the fruit basically turns his body into rubber (which Oda uses to great effect), I'm assuming that he can at least float.

Romance Dawn was fun, but it didn't make much of a lasting impression on me. I enjoyed the manga, but I wasn't really grabbed by it. Not that I would turn away subsequent volumes, I just don't see myself investing in such a lengthy series based on the first volume alone. However, as with most series, some story arcs are just going to be better than others. Romance Dawn provides the backstory for two of the main protagonists in the series, Luffy and Zolo, which I quite enjoyed. However, I was less engaged by the story that connected the two. A third protagonist, Nami, also makes a brief appearance in this volume, but little is actually known about her yet other than she is quite capable and cunning. I do like the characters and so far the manga is entertaining. While I might not feel compelled right now to go out and read every single volume of One Piece, I do think it would be worth pursuing some of the later books to see if it can capture my interest.

Experiments in Manga show less

I saw a couple of episodes of the anime years ago when I was a kid or teenager, and I didn't care for it. I don't even remember what it was about at this point. Then a couple of years back, the live action version came out on Nerflix and I liked it. I've since then been watching the anime.

This is the one that started off the whole shebang. On it's own, it's all right. Like so many pilot episodes (or volumes, in this case) the story and artwork could be rough as you know, it's a fairly new one. Overall a fun/decent start to a quite influential series.