Why You Should Watch/ Read One Piece

if I were to try and explain the appeal of long-running shown and storytelling it would be that these are stories designed to go on for a very long time and so we inevitably spend a much greater amount of time getting to know their worlds and characters over the course of which the kind of relation we form with them inherently changes as rather than being something consumed and then moved on from these are series that sink into our daily routine and often become a constant gentle comforting background noise in the days that make up our lives and this has been true for me for the vast majority of my life there's rarely a time I am it's slowly working my way through one of these long-running series the best of which have become some of my favorite stories I've ever experienced but it's also a style of storytelling that seems inherently detrimental to itself even the very best in the industry have succumb to the pressure of producing a long-running weekly manga the eventual fatigue of which has caused even the most monstrously talented authors to either drastically reduce their release schedule or suffer a long-term drop in quality and yes there is one artist who despite the intense lifestyle of being a weekly mangaka still creates his story with the same energy and vigor as he did two decades ago with a series that still as loved by its fans now as was at the heights of its popularity that artist is a cheerio Oda and that story is one piece the most notable thing I could say about one piece in the modern day is that it's still good and sailing the grand blue with the straw hat is still a blast with many fans attesting that the current arc is one of the best in the series history and I'm inclined to agree but the question is hell how does a series stay interesting and relevant after 20 years and what is it that makes its fans still so loyal to us and if you've never read one piece what could possibly make the massive commitment of it worthwhile well my dear friends the day has finally come for us to answer those questions so let's lower the sails set it towards the horizon and talk about why you should watch slash read one piece the major advantage of having a long-running series is that it allows the author to communicate a much greater degree of information to the reader and while this can often be to a series detriment with many artists forced to prioritize longevity over quality in the right hands it can be used to build worlds of immense breadth and scale ones with stories and characters that would be completely impossible in a shorter context and this is the primary strength of a cheerio Oda as a writer his ability to create and sustain a long-running narrative and one of the primary ways he does this is by grounding his series in a tangible believable world while one piece is at its heart the story of the straw hat pirates and the quest for the treasure one piece it's the detours and locations along the way that make up the primary bulk of one pieces story each new location in the journey of the straw hats has its own unique identity with its own customs cultures economy and inhabitants and a huge part of the appeal of sailing the grand blue with the straw hats is uncovering these locations and discovering the mechanics of how they work Oda has a way of giving even the most visually and blandish locations a tangible feeling of place a structure take for example whole cake island from the most recent arc it's a magical land where every inanimate object is alive and the buildings are constructed from confectionery and at first it seems like a kind of disney-esque paradise until we find out later how the island came like this whole cake island is under the control of big mom a massive hulking woman with the power to steal life directly from people and transfer it into everyday objects a perish Eve used to transform the island into her own distorted Wonderland where no one can leave and people must sacrifice a segment of their lifespan as tax this setup alone is already a pretty fascinating way to handle a location but perhaps even more impressive is the detail that's gone into its creation if you go to the one piece wiki you'll find pages of information about this one island loan with detailed paragraphs on the ten different locations that formas including a floor-by-floor breakdown of whole cake chateau the home of big mom including detailed descriptions of the first floor library the fourth floor room of treasure and the rooftop party hall if you want to know what the weather is like on whole cake islands where and how the residents get their food or why there are scalars of nearly seducing woods all that information is there for you to dig out in other words whole cake island has a tangible sense of geography of elders it feels real because Oda has taken the time to develop this and what's more this is just one of the many examples of the extremely fleshed out developed locations that make up one pieces world though is a massive forest filled with beasts people located on the back of a giant elephants run by a fierce warrior dog during the day and an equally fierce warrior cat during the nice dressrosa is a giant city with a massive gladiatorial arena inhabited by bizarre toy people which are all under the heel of a vicious false King thriller bark is a giant haunted go ship that literally eats other ships and turned their crew into zombies and they've all been fleshed out to a similar degree as whole cake island and it all comes together to create not just the feeling of one singular massive world but the worlds within worlds the forum one pieces landscape and the same ethos applies to the many many characters who populate it no character in one piece is ever constructed in isolation but rather each individual one has their own allegiances political geography history and driving motivators many of whom have relationships and backstories entirely isolated from heroes like hey 100 mosquito and gecko Mario have beef with each other due to the fact that Kaito was the one who killed more his entire crew forcing him to create the undead army be straw hats face off against in trailer bark these slices of character information are often revealed through what seemed like tiny throwaway lines only to become far more relevant to the story later on to the point that I've lost entire afternoons trawling through the one piece wiki gone down rabbit hole after rabbit hole trying to understand how all these characters fit together to create the giant ever evolving worlds that is one piece and the fact that Oda has had hundreds of chapters to develop the world of one piece like this means that he's been able to evolve it into a landscape that begs to be dissected and studied and if you need proof of this just look at the communities that have built up around its analyzation and discussion such as the extremely popular one piece podcast currently on it's four hundred and seventy third episode which discusses in extreme detail each new chapter with episodes that regularly last over two hours meaning that even entirely separate from the central narrative of one pieces story it's still an utterly fascinating landscape to explore that isn't to say however that the story that takes place in one pieces world isn't vital to its success it absolutely is but perhaps just as important as the story Oda tells is the unique way he tells us Oda is a master in what we're going to refer to as short-term and long-term storytelling and to really understand why one piece has endured over the years like it has we need to understand his work from these two distinct perspectives short-term storytelling accounts for the moment-to-moment experience of consuming a piece of narrative how good a job and author has done in laying out their work that makes it pleasurable to consume and while I can think of a few manga authors I would consider technically stronger illustrators than Oda I can't think of any you have the same and naze understanding of how to actually make reading a page of manga enjoyable and even then when I say there are technically stronger illustrators and Oda that's not to take away from odors work as much as it is to highlight what's special about it rather than concentrating on intense rendering or meticulous anatomical correctness odors work has a highly organic expressive quality to it he's a master at caricature and stylization often accentuating the proportions and shapes of his characters to extremes for some of the most hilariously goofy but also strikingly unique designs in the industry and yet he's also adept at the picnic emotion through his drawings namely by pushing the facial expressions of the different characters as far as they'll possibly go joy malice desperation sadness he knows exactly how to depict the human face in order to give the reader the clearest possible conveyance not only of what a character is feeling but just how intensely they are feeling it ensures Oda is adept at conveying information through his images and this carries right through to every aspect of his manga writing including the unique way he lays out pages go to practically any part of one piece and watch it we met with our pages dense with visual information while manga is of course a visual medium many series are content to let the dialogue do the lion's share of the storytelling with the visuals merely serving as an identifier for who is speaking or to highlight character designs but with Oda his pages are dense with visual data with a lot of the world-building communicated through images alone take this page in the city of zou for example at no point does anyone point as that the beast man use the fruit of the giant trees of their homes that's information you only get by taking the time to explore the page for yourself and yeah it's a small detail but that's kind of the point oldest pages are packed with these little visual touches whether it's a small gag taking place in the corner of a crowd scene the appearance of a semi obscure character from a previous chapter or any number of strange often hilarious one-off character designs Oda is an expert at cramming as much visual information into a page as possible and that means reading and rereading through these chapters is often a surprising and rewarding experience this visual density does sometimes run the risk of becoming cluttered especially considering the amount of text that are present at any given time but what really helps keep this in check is ODIs command over the mechanics of how to guide a reader's eye around a page of manga the creation of sequential events from a single image is something we talked about a lot in a genius Dragonball video but oda may be the only author i've ever come across with a solid a grasp of this as Toriyama and in some cases I'd say even exceeds him take this one and a half page spread for example we start off on the right with the minke men getting angry at zero then Zorro in return getting angry back then look be responding to Zorro this dog lady adding two lovers response and then an entirely different conversation taking place on the other side of the room that's five sequential events from a single unbroken panel and this creates the illusion that as our eye travels from right to left here time is actively moving with it which makes it feel like this is an actual event unfolding before us and not just a group of isolated incidents and if you're skeptical of this just look at how less engaging this scene is if we insert some panel breaks but flow is lost and so is that sense that we are observing an actual scene unfolding ode I had used this technique so often and in such minor situations that it merely seems like something he's doing habitually but he also pushes it in ways that I've never really seen before my personal favorite example of this being this depiction of hundred beasts Kaido jumping off sky islands we get this panel of a silhouette standing on a massive precipice before lunging forward to the world below we turn the page or scroll down and we get this beautifully handled piece of visual storytelling starting at the top right of the page we get these three panel breaks which cause our eyes to linger for just a moment creating the very slight sense of anticipation and distance before following the trail of Chi toes fall down through the clouds and slamming into the ground massive eruption it's even bigger than the island he's landed on there is any number of more generic ways that order could have depicted Kairos fall but doing it this way serves two distinct functions for one it's just an incredibly fun page to read really conveying with images alone the sense of velocity and impact of Kairos massive body slamming into the earth and second this also serves as Kairos introduction into the story and the fact that that impact is so well conveyed and that Kairos survive this so effectively establishes his immense physical strength and stamina and thus setting him up as the massive threat he's most likely going to become to the straw hats later on and all this from not even half a page and so whether it's through the drawings themselves or through the actual construction and layout of his manga there's always a sense that Oda is incredibly engaged with the visual storytelling of his work and the result is that one piece is a joy to consume on a page to page basis the simple act of reading one piece feels good but it's only when odors expertise its short term storytelling is coupled with his ability to write and sustain a long-running narrative that the true strength of his manga becomes obvious one piece is a long-running story but I think what separates it from so many other stories of this type is that even from its earliest days it was always designed to be this way Oda has actually been writing different versions of one piece since he was a child after being inspired by the cartoon show Vicki the Viking he would fill his school notebooks with a story he only referred to as pirate manga and this pirate manga would eventually evolve into the short romance dawn which would eventually evolve into one piece so Oda has been thinking of this narrative and world for a very very long time many of even the most recent characters in one piece have existed in Oda's mind for years you can go back through his old interviews and see just how far thinking the story of one piece actually is or even just look back at one pieces early chapters and see the seeds that Oda has planted for example the character Silver's appear they slash back in chapter 19 only to actually appear in the story and become a prominent character later on in Chapter five hundred and Oda constantly does this ceding clues throughout the chapters of one piece for us to discover and theorize over hell I remember reading a blog post from 2015 that correctly predicted everything about Sanji's backstory that was revealed in the current arc purely by virtue that his wanted poster said alive as opposed to dead or alive Oda never feels like he's focused on just the next major arc of plot points but instead on the long-running narrative of one piece as a whole and that's not even taking into account everything we don't know as many of the threads as Oda has tied up during one pieces run there are so many more that are left tantalizingly open how is it that Blackbeard is able to utilize to devil fruit powers at the same time what was the gigantic Zulu esque entity that appeared in the fog in the final panels of thriller bark and my personal favorite why in a nearly 900 chapter story about pirates has not a single character ever worn an eyepatch and of course the biggest of all what exactly is one piece the fact that Oda has so continuously delivered on these long term plans and payoffs means that it's very easy to believe that these are questions with answers meaning that there is always an island on the horizon of one pieces narrative always a breadcrumb trail to lead you to the next major story and discovering where these trails go and how intricately they're worked into the series overall makes reading one piece extremely satisfying on a long-term basis and so one piece is a beautifully entertaining experience in the short term while also being highly rewarding on an entirely different level in the long term and these two aspects together that explain why so much of one pieces fan base has remained so loyal to the series over the years and also a part of why so many people have become so invested in the characters of the straw hat pirates but before we dive into what makes lovey in the crew so raise there's a little misconception I'd like to clear up first and that is the criticism that one piece has we characterizing because it lacks what people are referring to as character developments and I think it's important to draw a line here and define the difference between character developments and character progression character progression can also be referred to as the narrative arc of a character they started a and eventually end up at B and it's a powerful storytelling tool but not one that is required for good story take care boy bebop for example there is little to no progression in any of its three central characters jet spike and fade don't learn any life lessons or become better people and that is kind of the point but that doesn't mean they aren't well-developed character development refers to have fleshed out a character is their history their goals their strengths their weaknesses what their perspective on the world is and how they came to view it that way and while there isn't a great degree of character progression among the straw hats each and every one of them is extremely well developed each one with a highly distinctive personality from the stark indifferent czar Osho's in most situations to Frankie Luffy at choppers inexhaustible enthusiasm for the world around them each straw hat has their own unique charm and each one has their own compelling and often heartbreaking histories to this date Brook story of his final performance for his crew is about the only time I've ever cried while reading a manga and [ __ ] you I'll cry whenever I damn well please and even then there is character progression it just tends to happen very slowly just look at you sobs journey from lying coward to sniper King to actual competent member of the crew as well written as the straw hat pirates are individually however their true appeal only comes through when they're considered as a yunus when considered as these straw hat pirates and to understand why we need to first understand what being a Pires in one-pieces world actually means the choice to become a pirate in one piece means that you've essentially decided to shirk off the constraints of society choosing to live an outside world law and instead forging your own path and creating your own life and forming a pirate crew means that you found a group of people willing to share in these values in other words you found friends willing to accept you for who you are and who will fight for your way of life this is the concept of Nakamura that is so pervasive throughout one piece which translates roughly to friend comrade or crewmates or as the one piece fans have come to consider it someone who is closer than family and this is the bond shared when Luffy and the rest of the straw hats it's obvious that each one in their own way is both proud and delighted to be part of the crew they like spending time with each other and exploring the world together and this is something consistently reinforced by Oda it is many colored illustrations of the straw hats most of which depict them just hanging out and having a good time and I love these pages because they really get across the camaraderie felt by these characters and the friendship they share each member of the straw hats also has their deeper reasons for wanting to be part of the crew as each member has at some point lost someone extremely close to them and that event usually causes them to lose their place within the world a place they eventually only rediscover upon joining the crew and I think this only furthers the appeal of the straw hats they're a group of friends who have found each other in a massive sprawling world and who value that friendship more than anything and over the course of one piece it's hard not to feel drawn into this dynamic yourself like you aren't in some small way part of the crew and I think this is a primary reason why so many people feel such a strong emotional investment in the familial concepts that is the straw hat pirates but it's also this same emotional investment that Oda leverages in order to create the most dramatic moments of tension and conflict within one piece of story while looking in Co fates many dangers throughout their voyage nothing ever feels as high-stakes is when the unity of the straw threatened there's various points in the journey when due to either external or internal factors a member of the crew the site leave their own accord and these inevitably become some of the most emotionally impactful moments of the entire series one such example is early on in the fantastic water seven arc after sustaining repeated damage over the course of the journey Luke Lee decides that it's time to condemn the crews old ship be going marry a decision that Asaf takes umbrage with as up until this point he has been the one maintaining the ship but it's obvious that his actual real worry is that he too will eventually be left behind by the straw hats tempers flare and the situation quickly spirals out of control Azusa declares to the shock of the others that he's decided to leave the straw hats and it culminates in a brutal showdown between luffy and who's up to decide which one will take ownership over the going marry it's one of the best fights of the entire series but what always stays with me betters is the visible effect the encounter has on the rest of the crew each one visibly shaken by the violence clash of their captain and former friend as nothing is more upsetting to these characters can be breakdown of the family they've all grown to be a part of it's a beautifully sad episode and one I really encourage you to go check out it's one of the better produced episodes of the anime and even if you have no interest in consuming the rest of one piece this is a great example of how strong the character writing of the series can actually be the other major example of how well order handles as characters can be seen in how he establishes the many villains of one-pieces worlds in the same way he can utilize a character's backstory to establish an incredible amount of tragedy and sympathy he's equally capable of utilizing this same technique to create a palpable justified sense of fear and danger within a character my personal favorite example of this being be terrifying Don Quixote da flamingos now we spent way too much time in the last video going through a character's backstory and this video is already insanely long so unfortunately we don't really have time to go through it so moving quickly along god [ __ ] damnit okay I can't help myself here we go Don Quixote Don from was born to the most elite class family known only as the world nobles or celestial dragons a class of people of such wealth and power that they can commit atrocities in public without any fear of legal repercussion a young doflamingo's valued this elite status until one day his father declared that the family would be abandoning their life of excess and lordship in exchange for living an honest life as regular people and in doing so disregarded their noble status a decision they've come to regret vanished from the sacred land of Mario's the family began their new life as regular citizens only to return to their home one night to find it set ablaze word had spread to a nearby village about the noble family no longer under government protection and has brought out the seething long-term hatred its people felt for the celestial dragons a hatred that took the form of a series of violent assaults against doflamingo and his family persecuted and driven from their home the family were forced to take refuge in squalor using only garbage to survive there their father desperate and afraid contacted the world Nobles in the hopes of returning his terrified family to Mario's but he was met with only scorn and he and his family were abandoned to the cruel world they had chosen to become a part of the continuing ordeal slowly took its toll on da flamingo's mother who grew more ill with each passing day until eventually her life slipped away and just as it seems like the remaining family had nothing left to lose they were once again attacked by the scornful villagers only this time they were captured tied to their former burning mansion and tortured the experience awakened with indoor flamingos a great rage a rage that manifested itself in the form of his Emperor's haki which he used to subdue the villagers and save his remaining family but at this point doflamingo was so consumed with the hatred for the people who tormented him hatred for the celestial dragons that abandons his family and than hatred for his own father and he blamed for the entire ordeal this would later involved in doflamingo killing his father and averring to one day take everything that the celestial dragons have built up and burned it to the ground his rage manifesting in a twisted grin as he declared war on all of existence and this demand that luffy and the crew must face in the dressrosa this is the kind of writing that makes so many of the villains from one piece so compelling but also gives the eventual conflicts between luffy and these characters such waste and drama to the point that i would say i don't actually find the bigger fights in one piece as well written or choreographed as encounters from other series but it hardly seems to matter due to what an excellent job oda has done in framing these encounters in the emotion of their characters take the monumental showdown between luffy and Rob Lucci for example what really makes this fight work is less so the tactics or actions of the characters but more the clashing of the twos diametrically opposed emotions and ideology Luffy is of course the embodiment of adventuring and free spirit the belief that people should be allowed to pursue their dreams without worry or constraints and Rob Lucci is the crushing wall of reality that stands in the way of all thus the personification of the faceless world government that seeks to regulate and control every aspect of society and this setup lends real narrative way to every blow of the encounter so finally it is of course only fair to mention what I consider some of one pieces weaker points and the biggest by far is the handling of the anime I do actually find it more tolerable than most with some of the action scenes having some genuinely fantastic animation but the production goes drop a lot outside these moments and that coupled with some truly awful pacing means that it's hard to recommend the anime as anything other than a companion piece to the manga while Oda is exceptional at creating a wide variety of characters with all manner of shapes and body types he does draw a lot of his girl characters very very similar and while I like sexy characters in my anime this is one of the few areas of the series that feels phoned in in other words I think Oda has it in him to do better with his fan service the pacing of one piece can be sometimes jarring to the point that it's a little frustrating it's common for the focus to shift from character to character with many fights occurring simultaneously and while this sometimes creates a great sense of spectacle and chaos it can also kill the momentum of a particular encounter cutting away just as things are getting heated and again this is a problem way worse in the anime the biggest barrier to entry however has to be its extreme length anyone new to the series could spend months and even years trying to catch up on it and wait many more for its eventual conclusion but I think in a way this is also the series biggest strength when I think of what I love about one piece and what keeps me coming back it isn't the eventual promise of finding out what one piece is or the conclusion two arcs that I know are most likely dozens of chapters away but rather it's just the opportunity to return to this world and spend more time with these characters to see them fight and struggle and chase their dreams and in turn see her the world's many moving parts react to them this is the kind of story that could only be told over years one carefully builds over hundreds and hundreds of chapters where each corner of its world feels realized and yet where each horizon still brims with potential and if you're new to one piece this is the reason I think it's still a commitment so worth making as it's a story to get lost in once you grow up alongside and one with worlds and characters that will stay with you for years to come and this friends is the best reason I can think of why you should watch slash read one piece friends I want to thank you for joining me today but also I have an announcement and that is that I am leaving my mystical home of Ireland and journeying to Los Angeles for LA Anime Expo and I would be super pumped to meet some of you there and so if you're interested and would like to hang out follow me on twitter at eyepatch wolf for more info also if for some insane reason you want to hear me talk even more about one piece you can do so in my video the appeal of one piece where to start and if you enjoyed these videos considering over to patreon.com/scishow where for a single dollar you can see your name listed with my beautiful knockabout right here or you can confine me on the let's fight a boss video game podcast and also just want to give a shout out to my co-host brian for his help with this video as always take care of yourselves and i'll see you next time

Channel: Super Eyepatch Wolf

Views: 1,824,118

Keywords: One pIece, Eichiro Oda, Straw Hat Pirates, Doflamingo, Luffey vs, Shonen Jump

Id: MYtz2ZhKxFE

Length: 32min 5sec (1925 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 27 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/OPBadshah]

Drake said fuck the rules and wore a reverse eye-patch instead

https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/onepiece/images/5/51/X_Drake_Drags_Caribou_Away.png/revision/latest?cb=20140605114326

[u/JRatt13]

Wait, has there really never been a single character with an eye-patch?

[u/Lime528]

Why was my original post of this video removed? Shouldn't I have gotten a message from the mods if they deleted it?

Regardless, this video was well worth the wait. Eyepatch Wolf just keeps knocking it out of the park.

[u/Youngphycouant]

Eyepatchwolf gives the most in depth videos about anime and manga. Check him out he's a good dude!

[u/[deleted]]

I wouldn't show this to non-fan people, way too long with too many spoilers. But nice video anyway.

[u/AlphaX187X]

Awesome video detailing why one piece is going strong. I wish more people would give it a chance.

I'm trying to give Naruto a chance right now but the more I read it the more I am surprised at what it was able to accomplish given how hard it is to follow his art (especially during fight scenes) and how uninteresting the characters are unless they're doing a big reveal. Apparently I just finished the "best" arc and am about to read the long and painful arc...

[u/nwp09]

worth the watch. i remember eyepatchwolf made a rather controversial videos about the state of shounen jump (iirc), but this vid is on point. i agree with him on the one piece anime, how ppl should treat the anime as a companion of the manga.

[u/jackieisbored]

Echeerio Oda. Raises your good cholesterol!

[u/timmyhawkins3]

Fucking Hisoka in the sexy characters frame, I'm dead