Welcome to the first entry in my One Piece Blog. I have been interested in this show for a while, and I have occasionally watched a few episodes at random just to understand the vibe better, but really have very little overall knowledge about the show besides what I have seen in some TikToks. I also own some of the TCG cards but have never actually played. This blog will be written and produced by me & sometimes by my wife, and maybe our children in a few years. The goal is 1 episode per day.
Due to recent current events, such as multiple international revolutions & protests, we have hung a Straw Hat Jolly Roger on our front porch to show solidarity with freedom fighters around the globe. This symbol has become a recognizable and powerful symbol of hope beyond the anime, which is very inspiring, and a recent poll found that One Piece has had a deeper influence on young people’s personal politics than most other shows.
So let’s get into it: at the beginning of the first episode, we are given a narrative that the pirates are the “bad guys” raiding a party boat or cruiseliner of some sort. The captain of these pirates is shown as mean and ugly and their crew is just as rude and brutish. This sort of contradicts the understanding that I previously held of the pirates actually being heroes of the resistance opposing a tyrannical government, but I guess that changes as the plot progresses. Something that was striking to me was that the first spoken line of the entire series is the captain of this ship demonstrating hubris that his boat is much too mighty to be attacked by pirates, yet the crew immediately acts terrified as soon as they see the first pirate flag on a boat much smaller than their own.
What’s really surprising to me is how absolutely happy & positive Monkey D. Luffy is right from the get-go. Idk why I was expecting some sort of character development there, or that he would eat the devil fruit later in the series or something, but his entire vibe is such a refreshing experience. He is also so trusting of Koby, and supportive of his dream to be a Marine, even though Luffy is a fugitive from the Marines. However, it still made me laugh how direct and rude Luffy was to Koby, just being brutally honest about him being a coward while still trying to befriend him.
Ultimately, I think the most politically relevant aspect of this first episode is that Luffy is intentionally seeking a very diverse crew for his future pirate ship. I suppose he did have his own boat by the end of the episode, so maybe that will serve as his initial vessel, but in any event, he at no point asks any of the traditional pirates on the other ship to join him, even after defeating their captain, because he is not looking for a traditional crew. He takes Koby with him, presumably because he recognizes the morality and integrity that he holds, or maybe he thinks he will be an obedient crew member or something, yet he sets his sights on recruiting Zoro, a bounty hunter who chases pirates to stop them, simply because he sounds like a valuable ally.
Without having ever met him, or heard about him before this day, Luffy is again so trusting that this character would be an asset to his crew. Luffy has his sights set on becoming “king of the pirates” and finding the most valuable treasure and I think what will set him apart is assembling a crew of unique individuals who each offer valuable skills or traits to the team. Luffy is able to recognize that simply hiring basic mercenaries or regular pirates is not a suitable route to his goal, and is willing to put in the difficult work to create a harmonic and balanced crew before even attempting to navigate the Grand Line. While this certainly shows insight & perspective, I think the biggest takeaway from this first episode is, again, his commitment to diversity by trying to recruit a pirate hunter, someone with certain skills that no other pirate crew has likely ever had, because it takes a variety of types of people to do interesting & difficult things.
After this first episode, I am really excited to see how things progress. This show has been produced across 4 different decades (so far) and I think part of the magic will be the evolving art styles and content direction as the creators grow and evolve as artists and humans. I just checked the wiki and I am amazed that the very first episode originally aired on my own 10th birthday. I am literally crying as I type these words because this feels like such a serendipitous beginning of a wonderful adventure through this tale.
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