As a little kid I spent a lot of time by myself
watching VHS tapes. Probably at around age four or five I would
watch and rewatch my family’s copy of My Neighbor Totoro. Then as I got older I became completely obsessed
with Pokemon and eventually learned what anime and manga were and dove in headfirst. I watched Toonami and Adult Swim and would
get really excited about the new Yu Yu Hakusho DVDs my parents paid for for me, which I got
as they came out. I’ve mentioned before how we would go to
Blockbuster once a week and rent a new movie as a family. In late 2003, when I was 12 or 13 years old,
I noticed a thick magazine on the wire rack there that I had never seen before. It was an issue of the American version of
Shonen Jump, a manga anthology that came out once a month and showcased shonen manga, basically
manga meant for teenage boys, usually centered around sports or fighting, often with superhuman
characters fighting evil muscular dudes in tournaments, saving the world, stuff like
that. I recognized the main character of Yu-Gi-Oh
on the cover and the fact that Yu-Gi-Oh and Yu Yu Hakusho were a couple of the comics
inside. I remember my parents being annoyed at me
for reading it at the dinner table, and I remember being introduced to this comic called
One Piece, a story about a guy who ate a cursed fruit that turned him into a rubber-man. After about a year of reading monthly releases
and buying the volumes, I found some bootleg One Piece DVDs made in Hong Kong and ordered
them off of eBay. It was the first 120 episodes of the show. I- somehow- finished the entire set in 10
days on top of school and homework and eating and what little sleeping I did. The subtitles were in broken English so I
wasn’t sure about character names or exactly what was going on, but that didn’t matter. The story was straightforward and strong enough
for me to still understand most of what was happening and even if it hadn’t been I would
have been completely enamored either way. Looots of shonen manga are about a boy or
young man who is stupid but headstrong and pure of heart who wants to be the best in
the world at something who on his adventures collects a ragtag team of underdog weirdos
and together they triumph over adversity and learn the true meaning of friendship. This describes One Piece as well as it describes
loads of other media I consumed as a kid and as a teenager. But even from the first moment I was exposed
to it, I could tell that there was something different about One Piece. What is maybe the most brilliant about One
Piece, especially in a piece of media that is accessible to and targeted towards kids
and teenagers, is the story’s ability to sustain rapid shifts in tone and juxtapositions
of tone without breaking apart- how it can be simultaneously sweet and goofy and darkly
funny or violent. It’s first and foremost an adventure story
so the main, enduring emotional components are going to be excitement and wonder, but
it has a wide emotional bandwidth that includes the heartbreaking and the heartwarming in
equal measures. Most characters have a tragic backstory to
explain their motivations and their personality quirks, some of which are legitimately shocking
and upsetting but still manifest present-day in the story in ways that are bizarre and
comical. In an interview, Simpsons writer Ron Hauge
described “the comedy of yes”, as how “in any unusual or difficult situation,
somebody acting surprisingly positive can be as fun as making them snarky”. Unrelenting positivity and excitement in the
face of bizarre and difficult circumstances is one of the things that makes Luffy so endearing
and what makes the series so funny and charming as a whole. The art style itself is also pretty immediately
striking. Oda’s art has improved and changed significantly
as he’s developed it over the years (in some ways that are, uh, distracting and disappointing)
but even going back to when he was 17 years old it certainly stood out. I’ve heard people call it off-putting and
ugly but I always considered it gorgeous. There’s so much humor and life and loving
detail put into every panel. There’s an unabashed vibrancy to his color
pages and his use of warped perspective and his hallucinogenic, storybook-style designs
provide a great contrast with the darker thematic elements of the series. One Piece isn’t really meta but Oda plays
a lot with archetypes and expectations, often by undercutting them constantly. The dour and serious swordsman archetype could
be applied to Roronoa Zoro, one of the main characters. He’s a former bounty hunter known for his
ruthlessness and his killing instinct and he’s pretty easily the most intimidating
member of Luffy’s crew. He carries the weight and memory of his dead friend and
his end goal, no matter how difficult it is or how mutilated his body gets along the way,
is to be the strongest swordsman in the world. He also loves to drink and has a terrible
sense of direction. When he meets a mid-level marine who looks
sort of like his dead friend, he becomes comically awkward around her. He has a decidedly undignified rivalry with the ship's cook. who himself often undercuts
his own moments of victory by being a massive idiot who fawns over women. One of my favorite minor scenes in the series
is one where Zoro is trapped so he very vocally decides to cut his own legs off because having
no feet but being alive is better than being dead. He stops halfway because he thinks he’s
going to be saved then realizes he’s probably going to die
anyway so THEN his solution is to strike a cool pose. Using desperate self-mutilation to escape
dying while trapped on a giant wax cake and then having the desire to have a cool-looking
corpse are both emblematic of Oda’s love of darkly funny juxtapositions. It’s not uncommon for a character
who may be intimidating or a straight man in one situation to be endearingly goofy in another. One character, nicknamed “The Surgeon of
Death” who has a really disturbing devil fruit ability hates bread. Also Zoro got stuck in a chimney once and
it was really funny. Zoro’s fighting style uses three swords
and his signature attack early on in the series is called “oni giri” - basically meaning
oni slash or demon slash or demon cutter or so on- but also meaning “rice ball”. Character names and attack names and names
of locations are often puns and double-entendres pulled from a variety of languages, folklore,
and other cultural touchstones from all over the world. Zoro is named after the real-life pirate François
l'Olonnais and probably Zorro and possibly Zoroastrianism. Usopp is another main character. “Uso” means “lie” in Japanese and
his name is a portmanteau of “uso” and “Aesop” and his long nose is an obvious
reference to both Pinocchio and tengu. Usopp’s outward personality and early fighting
style are, as you may have guessed, based on lies and exaggeration and he uses them
to mask his fear and physical weakness compared to other characters. As a chef, the character Sanji refuses to
use his hands to fight and instead uses his legs and most of his attack names are food puns. He detests waste of food because when he and
his mentor were starving to death, his mentor cut off his own leg and ate it so Sanji could
survive. Also his look is based on Steve Buscemi in
Reservoir Dogs. Luffy, carefree as he is, got his scar because
when he was a kid he stabbed himself in the face to try to prove that he was tough enough
to be a pirate. I have never in my life seen the kind of creativity
and spread of influences Oda took in in his character designs replicated anywhere else. Each member of Luffy’s crew has a distinct
color palette, a distinct range of cultural influences and languages they pull from, a
distinct emotional bandwidth that varies from person to person, a distinct relationship
with every other member of the crew, and a distinct fighting style. Lots of the characters ate devil fruits and
gained weird powers, but not everyone has one (Sanji, Usopp, and Zoro don’t) because
Oda’s characters doesn’t need weird powers to be interesting and entertaining. Rather than “a bunch of strong dudes”
you get the captain, the first mate, the navigator, the sniper, and the cook, and others I don’t
want to spoil, each with their own personalities and ways of viewing and interacting with the
world and each of them still integral to Luffy’s life’s mission despite their differences,
which are seen as assets rather than hindrances. The series is about doing anything to attain
your ambition, regardless of cost, but also about how others are assets rather than obstacles. Luffy is a formidable pirate but because of
the fruit he ate he can’t swim and has to rely on physically weaker but just as valuable
crewmates to save him when he goes overboard. He gives a speech fairly early on that left
a huge impression on me as a kid about how he relies on others because he can’t be
good at everything, and how that doesn’t make him a lesser person or captain- about
how individualism will always leave you at a loss, and how it’s okay to admit that
you need people. You might be put off by the length of One
Piece but it’s a quick, easy, and fun read. There’s no way the depth of the mythos and
the breathtaking sense of scale it has could have been developed over a shorter time so the
length should be seen as an asset rather than something daunting or a pain. The only real caveat I have is that Oda’s
treatment of women and queer people and trans people oscillates between well-rounded characters
with drive and agency to sort of caricature but still beloved fan favorites to so awful
I’m not even going to show you. In a world where ANYTHING can happen, where
the sky isn’t even the limit, I mean we’re way past the sky now in terms of bizarre,
unrestrained creativity and meticulous, deep, expansive world building, feminine weakness
is still a thing for some reason, to an extent that is sometimes embarrassing, and despite
the diversity in male designs women are usually either “super hot” or “old and/or ugly”,
with little in between, and trans people
are portrayed as scary gross men in dresses. There’s a difference between women expressing
their frustration with being oppressed or considered inferior, or about how they’re
just as valuable as powerhouse men in spite of their physical setbacks, which while problematic
and needlessly gender essentialist in an unlimited fantastic universe, can still be engaging
and even relatable, with whatever the hell this is There are still a lot of interesting ideas
at work, though. The entire main cast is full of antiheroes
who value their dreams and freedom and those of others above all else- it’s a world where
the survival of your will and your dream are more important than the survival of your intact
body - and the series explores darkness without descending into cynicism. Despite having a bizarre and morbid sense
of humor, One Piece is probably the least cynical thing you’ll ever read. The whole point of a later arc is you can’t
help the circumstances you’re born into, that everyone has the right to exist and that
if you keep surviving, you’ll find people who will love and accept you. This leads to one of the most moving moments
and my personal favorite moment in the entire series. The
whole series is staunchly anti-authority and some arcs have really overt anti-colonial,
anti-fascist, and anti-racist messages, with the whole thing having a very “eat the rich”
feel to it. The crew cares way more about dreams and
adventure than wealth or power over others, often being outright disinterested in those things
in a way that surprises the people around them. The main characters spend a lot of their time
interrogating lies put forth by the world government or performing good deeds the government
then lies about and takes credit for, and some of my favorite characters are marines
who are decent people who struggle ideologically when faced with pirates who are more capable
of doing good in the world than they are. The big villains in the series are all, of
course, in ideological opposition to Luffy and his crew and coming to blows over what’s right happens
much more often than tests of strength or whatever, including a great segment where
Luffy and Zoro are trying to avoid confrontation and let a blowhard jackass beat them up, cause
who cares, until he hurts their new friend and then immediately gets wrecked. It really sucks that Oda others women and queer people
so brutally, but in spite of that the series as a whole is about being accepting of difference,
about trying to learn about and accommodate other cultures, about never taking anything
at face value and always being suspect of those in power, Sincerity and ambition are first and foremost
over dignity or seriousness or self-preservation- characters ugly cry, fights and many scenes
outside of fights are bloody and brutal, and suffering and death are unforgettable constants
in this universe but another constant is the possibility of
overcoming them or at least fear of them together. It’s far from perfect- there are occasional
mixed messages and since it’s been going for 20 years it does have some arcs that are
a little bit repetitive- but I can’t think of anything that was better-suited for me
as a weird kid. Oda’s art style pretty heavily influenced
how I draw and his approach towards worldbuilding and somehow sustaining a sense of mystery
and adventure over so many years is, as far as I am concerned, unparalleled. I remember, probably over ten years ago, reading
a review of One Piece that said you’d enjoy it as long as your inner child hadn’t been
surgically removed and I always thought that was an apt description. Oda wanted to make the kind of
story he would have wanted to read as a boy and because of that it’s never lacking in
humor and mystique and will draw in anyone who is willing to channel that childlike wonder. I’ve been doing a lot of research on parasocial
relationships and a lot of the appeal to One Piece is definitely the feeling that you’re
along for the adventure with Luffy’s crew. Even at such a young age, One Piece taught
me the value of sincerity and unrestrained creativity. I picked it up at a time where I was particularly
alienated and became completely obsessed with it. One Piece is about learning that you can go
through anything and still retain your humanity and sense of humor, and that if you do have
to die one day you might as well live a full, authentic life without regret or fear-
and for a lonely grieving kid who often felt out of place it was a gift. I’m still friends with people I met online
when I was fourteen years old thanks to One Piece and I’ve hung out with a lot of them
in person, so on top of a huge creative influence I have it to thank for some of my most enduring
friendships as well. I was lagging behind in new releases for a
couple of years and was worried I would permanently lose interest. Recently, though, I caught up literally overnight because
once I started reading again I couldn’t put it down. To still get the same enjoyment out of a piece
of media I started reading fourteen years ago is wonderful and something I honestly didn’t expect. When I revisited it I also thought about my
current friends (online and off) warmly. To have friends who accept you completely
for who you are and who are there for you, to go through life milestones together, to
work with them towards accomplishing shared goals and reaching heights you KNOW you couldn’t
have reached alone- that’s something that, as a lonely kid, I didn’t really think I
would have. Despite being a film person, I never really
used movies for escapism but I certainly used One Piece for it for a long time and while
it’s still a really fun read and something I’m definitely going to keep up with, I’m so glad and so fortunate that I don’t
NEED it because I’m finally at the point where I’m living the life it told me to
hold out for. Thanks for watching! If you want to learn more about film culture
and history, check out my So You Wanna Be a Film Nerd webseries. This is the second essay in my series about
media that changed my life, so if you wanna see more of that check out my video about Hot
Fuzz. I also have in-depth video essays on the show
Hannibal and on video games as a medium along with short comedy and horror films on my channel. If you enjoyed this please consider donating
to my Patreon so I can keep making essays like this one. Thanks! [Binks' Sake is playing] How do you know Hannibal? One could argue intimately. Nakama? It's a Japanese word for "very close friend" Yes. We were nakama.
