I will admit that I can never watch One Piece on a weekly basis. I read it weekly like a good little shounen fan, but I can’t ever process it. The hundreds (thousands?) of characters that flit in and out of the manga, and suddenly become important again for an arc years later means that honestly, only the most devoted will remember every little detail on their own. And I can barely remember how arcs started when I get to the finish, even if I binge watch it like I did the Dressrosa Arc.
Quick synopsis, Luffy and (some of) the crew arrive at Dressrosa immediately following the events at Punk Hazard, things go awry, the Straw Hats get involved. Shenanigans, light drama, more shenanigans, extremely tragic backstories are revealed, heavy drama, and then the traditional shounen anime months-long climactic series of battles. So nothing new in the birds-eye view of things, but if that were true at a micro level, One Piece wouldn’t be as successful as it is, would it?
The real strength of the characters in this arc is that Oda-sensei knows exactly which characters to focus on and which only need a light dusting of character archetypes to function. A million billion various pirates and gladiators are introduced in the early parts of the arc, but even the most involved of those, like Cavendish and Bartolomew, get to have their moments in the spotlight, and not really change or evolve unless it’s for a spot of comedy.
Multiversity Manga Club Podcast, Episode 90: One Piece Club
Law and Rebecca however get massive, involved backstories and multi-episode flashbacks that are key not only to their character and behavior, but to the villains and other major players of the arc as a whole. Sabo’s backstory is a little less intertwined with the plot of this arc since it’s shown after the main resolution, but given that it’s such a major reintroduction of a character, there’s no doubt that Sabo will get some heavy focus in later arcs, even if there’s nothing in his current backstory we don’t really know anymore.
We all know Luffy and the Straw Hats, we know what they’re going to do, and in time, they’re given the arena (HA HA) to do it, and when those character moments mentioned earlier mix with the personalities and positivity of the Straw Hats, the resulting climax is really something great to behold. There’s comedy, there’s catharsis, there’s blood-pumping action, or as blood-pumping as it gets with One Piece’s budget, although the action in key moments is still noticeably improving. The usual shounen caveats to that statement still apply though; fights will go on eating up airtime with silence and characters grunting and glaring ateach other, there are panning shots of backdrops with combat sound effects to let us know the camera will get around to focusing on the fight at hand…eventually. It’s all made worth it when
While the 4 trillion new characters, introduced through the early arena parts of the arc, all appear to have some future function by the end of the arc, the opposite could be said of almost half of the existing Straw Hats crew. We’re a few chapters into the following arc right now so I can kind of see what Oda was doing, but that didn’t make Nami, Chopper, Brook, and Sanji being absent for most of (if not all for some of them) the arc any less painful. Brook in particular hasn’t really gotten much focus since he joined the crew, and I’m wondering if there will ever be any moment to cement him as a part of the crew for viewers like Enies Lobby did for Robin.
Dressrosa Hunger Games Begin
But for me, despite the aforementioned flaws, this arc is maybe the most watchable arc of One Piece since Enies Lobby, possibly the best yet. After this arc wrapped up, I’m excited for the next arc to finish so I can watch it, in a way that I didn’t feel after Punk Hazard or Fishman Island. The build-up to the final scenes were some of the best yet, and when Doflamingo activates his Birdcage, the tension gets turned up to 11 as there’s a clear visual indicator throughout the rest of the arc that the good guys are on a brutal timetable.
Anyway, if there’s one endorsement I can give to this arc, it’s that it made me actually excited for the One Piece anime again, which isn’t something I’ve ever really felt before, since in my eyes it can never quite capture the magic and comedy of the manga. But this is the closest the anime has gotten for an entire arc, with the “important” individual moments stacking up quite nicely against the best scenes and sequences of previous arcs throughout it’s 700+ episode run.
Law and Rebecca however get massive, involved backstories and multi-episode flashbacks that are key not only to their character and behavior, but to the villains and other major players of the arc as a whole. Sabo’s backstory is a little less intertwined with the plot of this arc since it’s shown after the main resolution, but given that it’s such a major reintroduction of a character, there’s no doubt that Sabo will get some heavy focus in later arcs, even if there’s nothing in his current backstory we don’t really know anymore.
We all know Luffy and the Straw Hats, we know what they’re going to do, and in time, they’re given the arena (HA HA) to do it, and when those character moments mentioned earlier mix with the personalities and positivity of the Straw Hats, the resulting climax is really something great to behold. There’s comedy, there’s catharsis, there’s blood-pumping action, or as blood-pumping as it gets with One Piece’s budget, although the action in key moments is still noticeably improving. The usual shounen caveats to that statement still apply though; fights will go on eating up airtime with silence and characters grunting and glaring ateach other, there are panning shots of backdrops with combat sound effects to let us know the camera will get around to focusing on the fight at hand…eventually. It’s all made worth it when
While the 4 trillion new characters, introduced through the early arena parts of the arc, all appear to have some future function by the end of the arc, the opposite could be said of almost half of the existing Straw Hats crew. We’re a few chapters into the following arc right now so I can kind of see what Oda was doing, but that didn’t make Nami, Chopper, Brook, and Sanji being absent for most of (if not all for some of them) the arc any less painful. Brook in particular hasn’t really gotten much focus since he joined the crew, and I’m wondering if there will ever be any moment to cement him as a part of the crew for viewers like Enies Lobby did for Robin.
Dressrosa Hunger Games Begin
But for me, despite the aforementioned flaws, this arc is maybe the most watchable arc of One Piece since Enies Lobby, possibly the best yet. After this arc wrapped up, I’m excited for the next arc to finish so I can watch it, in a way that I didn’t feel after Punk Hazard or Fishman Island. The build-up to the final scenes were some of the best yet, and when Doflamingo activates his Birdcage, the tension gets turned up to 11 as there’s a clear visual indicator throughout the rest of the arc that the good guys are on a brutal timetable.
Anyway, if there’s one endorsement I can give to this arc, it’s that it made me actually excited for the One Piece anime again, which isn’t something I’ve ever really felt before, since in my eyes it can never quite capture the magic and comedy of the manga. But this is the closest the anime has gotten for an entire arc, with the “important” individual moments stacking up quite nicely against the best scenes and sequences of previous arcs throughout it’s 700+ episode run.
Law and Rebecca however get massive, involved backstories and multi-episode flashbacks that are key not only to their character and behavior, but to the villains and other major players of the arc as a whole. Sabo’s backstory is a little less intertwined with the plot of this arc since it’s shown after the main resolution, but given that it’s such a major reintroduction of a character, there’s no doubt that Sabo will get some heavy focus in later arcs, even if there’s nothing in his current backstory we don’t really know anymore.
We all know Luffy and the Straw Hats, we know what they’re going to do, and in time, they’re given the arena (HA HA) to do it, and when those character moments mentioned earlier mix with the personalities and positivity of the Straw Hats, the resulting climax is really something great to behold. There’s comedy, there’s catharsis, there’s blood-pumping action, or as blood-pumping as it gets with One Piece’s budget, although the action in key moments is still noticeably improving. The usual shounen caveats to that statement still apply though; fights will go on eating up airtime with silence and characters grunting and glaring ateach other, there are panning shots of backdrops with combat sound effects to let us know the camera will get around to focusing on the fight at hand…eventually. It’s all made worth it when
While the 4 trillion new characters, introduced through the early arena parts of the arc, all appear to have some future function by the end of the arc, the opposite could be said of almost half of the existing Straw Hats crew. We’re a few chapters into the following arc right now so I can kind of see what Oda was doing, but that didn’t make Nami, Chopper, Brook, and Sanji being absent for most of (if not all for some of them) the arc any less painful. Brook in particular hasn’t really gotten much focus since he joined the crew, and I’m wondering if there will ever be any moment to cement him as a part of the crew for viewers like Enies Lobby did for Robin.
Dressrosa Hunger Games Begin
But for me, despite the aforementioned flaws, this arc is maybe the most watchable arc of One Piece since Enies Lobby, possibly the best yet. After this arc wrapped up, I’m excited for the next arc to finish so I can watch it, in a way that I didn’t feel after Punk Hazard or Fishman Island. The build-up to the final scenes were some of the best yet, and when Doflamingo activates his Birdcage, the tension gets turned up to 11 as there’s a clear visual indicator throughout the rest of the arc that the good guys are on a brutal timetable.
Anyway, if there’s one endorsement I can give to this arc, it’s that it made me actually excited for the One Piece anime again, which isn’t something I’ve ever really felt before, since in my eyes it can never quite capture the magic and comedy of the manga. But this is the closest the anime has gotten for an entire arc, with the “important” individual moments stacking up quite nicely against the best scenes and sequences of previous arcs throughout it’s 700+ episode run.
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