One Piece #1-21

One Piece #1-21

Originally released in 1997

Written by Eiichiro Oda

Art by Eiichiro Oda

I can't keep up the Ape-ril theme all month, so I'm going to finish it off (intentionally, anyways - other comics that I read this month could contain apes, gorillas, etc., but that would be a coincidence) with one of my favourite manga (possibly my favourite manga overall), One Piece.  The series stars Monkey D. Luffy, a young man who sets out to find One Piece, a mysterious treasure left behind by legendary pirate Gold Roger, in order to become the King of the Pirates.

Luffy may be good at fighting (especially with the help of the Gum Gum Fruit, a mystical Devil Fruit that turned his body into rubber when he ate it), but he's awful at everything else related to piracy, which is why his first goal is to recruit a top-notch crew.  The series has been running in Weekly Shonen Jump for a long time (it most recently hit chapter 1111, as of this writing), so it's more than a little surreal to go back to the start of the series and see how Luffy progressed from sailing on his own in a dinghy to the point that he's at now. (things have escalated quite a bit, especially in the ongoing arc)

In the first few arcs, he recruits a makeshift crew of himself, Roronoa Zoro (a three sword-wielding bounty hunter who became an outlaw after making an enemy of a Marine with delusions of grandeur), and Nami (a thief who hates pirates, but is teaming up with Luffy for now to earn enough money to buy her home village).  Of the three of them, Nami's the only one who's competent at sailing, as she's a skilled navigator and cartographer. (Luffy and Zoro are excellent fighters, but neither one could sail in a straight line if their lives depended on it)

Even this early on in the series, you can see some of the elements that made it one of the mainstays of Shonen Jump.  The tragic flashbacks aren't as detailed as what we'll get later (with most of the flashbacks lasting less than a chapter - by comparison to flashbacks like Nami's that we get later, it feels like it's on fast forward, with less time to get to know the characters), but they do a good job with filling us in on what drives the characters in question.

Meanwhile, the present day storyline has an excellent blend of action and comedy with plenty of heart behind it. (it does a good job at making you look forward to the point where Luffy will punch someone in the face)  Something as simple as a dog trying to protect his deceased owner's pet shop is used to establish a big theme of the series: that treasure is what's important to someone, rather than being exclusively defined as gold and jewels.

Luffy and company encounter various foes in these first few chapters, but the most memorable one is Buggy the Clown.  Devil Fruits like the one that Luffy has are extremely rare outside of the Grand Line (in the sea that Luffy's in, you can count the number of Devil Fruit users on one hand), and Buggy is another Devil Fruit user.  In addition, his personality can switch from goofy to menacing at a moment, and he has a history with "Red Haired" Shanks, the man who inspired Luffy to become a pirate.

These early chapters have a charming feel to them.  I read through over 20 chapters in no time at all, and while the series takes a bit to reach the high quality that the series is known for, the early arcs still hold up really well.