In the second of two One Piece reviews for this… probably half of the year knowing the pace I manage to watch the show at, the Sabaody Archipelago arc is a hell of a lot better than what came before it. Full of fun and interesting new characters, some interesting concepts and a classic, proper “air punching” great moment. That being said, the arc’s true highlight is a rather sombre ending… Let’s take a closer look.
Now to say I’m “way behind” on One Piece would be a massive understatement. Even the UK released DVD collections I’m a good few collections behind, and those don’t even cover half the series… that’s still airing weekly! Still, I really enjoy the series when I get to sit down and watch it, though I’ll admit that this arc was a real slog, and because of that I haven’t been keeping up, it was only the realisation that the latest release here in the UK covers the big Luffy-Ace moment that I’ve, sadly, heard all about that’s spurred me on to finish this story and move on to the next. So let’s get the Thriller Bark Arc out of the way and move on to greener pastures… I hope!
One Piece is, if nothing else, epic in length. Whenever I cover the show I’ll be doing it in much bigger chunks of episodes than I normally do, though given this chunk of 30 episodes doesn’t even end what most people consider to be the opening “arc”, it’s not going to make covering the show any less of a daunting task. Anyway, One Piece grabs the bronze in this Jump! 50th Anniversary opening arc list of mine as it does a good job of introducing you to our lead, but a fantastic job of making us care about the rest of the crew. It was really hard deciding between this and the #2 spot! So let’s look at the first half of the East Blue arc, which really contains a bunch of smaller arcs that introduce us to several of the cast members going forward…
Hogan Reviews 