After 25 years, One Piece could look like an enormous ocean for potential new followers, however moving into the myriad adventures of the Straw Hats isn’t the epic enterprise you would possibly assume.
For a very long time, I used to be somebody who wrote off One Piece as a result of sheer quantity of it. After I first heard of Luffy and his crew, the anime present and manga have been already a whole lot of episodes and chapters deep.
Catching up appeared like a number of work. So, as an alternative, I watched the occasional anime film and caught bits and items, having fun with Eiichiro Oda’s esoteric worldbuilding from a distance. That modified with the Egghead Arc.
Fairly than attempting to observe all of the 1,000-odd episodes earlier than it, I jumped proper in at Episode 1,086 to see if the TV present was actually all that interminable. And y’know what? I picked it up fairly fast.
One Piece isn’t sophisticated
CrunchyrollThe Straw Hats have arrived at a futuristic island, the place an previous scientist referred to as Dr. Vegapunk lives. He’s received a worth on his head, and he has some data concerning the world that the final inhabitants ought to know.
Luffy, Zoro, Nami, and their friends become involved, hilarity ensues. There’s not likely all that a lot to grasp: the Straw Hats are maverick heroes who are likely to grow to be embroiled in no matter calamitous occasions are occurring anyplace they dock.
It helps that I perceive Shonen collection fairly properly from rising up obsessive about Dragon Ball and Pokémon, and so they are likely to observe related beats arc to arc. However even then, it’s simply not that deep – or a minimum of, it doesn’t have to be.
Shonen arcs are leaping on factors
You possibly can take particular person One Piece arcs as their very own storylines, selecting up bits and items of backstory as nuggets are dropped. Oh, Dr. Vegapunk is researching the Void Century, what’s that? 100-year interval into which analysis is forbidden. Ah, gotcha!
If I’d been an ardent viewer, I’d know mentions of Void Century stretch again to halcyon days of the primary 300 episodes. However you don’t want that data to get what’s taking place on Egghead, it simply creates extra connective tissue.
By pushing towards my very own inherent want to return to the primary installment on something I’m interested by, I used to be reminded that that is how we used to get pleasure from tv. You’d catch one thing in passing, a curiosity whereas flipping channels or when your recurrently scheduled programme wasn’t on.
Don’t fear about what you’ve missed
Then you definately’d see sufficient to need one other episode, then all of the sudden you’re enthralled and it’s appointment viewing. I hopped on the Pokémon bandwagon by catching the second half of the second episode; I’m unsure I’ve ever really bothered to observe the very first.
CrunchyrollThe identical is true for a lot of televisual obsessions of my childhood: Dragon Ball Z, Buffy, Mates, Digimon, Energy Rangers, the record goes on. Discovering out what you’d missed wasn’t actually a priority as a result of that wasn’t a direct choice within the ’90s or early 2000s.
You waited for a rerun (an inevitability if the factor was standard sufficient), rented previous episodes on VHS (a waste of our restricted rental price range), otherwise you knew somebody who in some way had entry to them already. Minus these choices, you figured it out as you went and loved the collection regardless.
Discovering one thing you get pleasure from, then instantly leaping into the pilot and first season, is a up to date impulse, born from streaming and an abundance of entry. It’s a welcome change, to make sure, however I believe it’s dulled our capacity to hop into one thing partway and fill within the blanks ourselves.
Canon can simply get in the best way
CrunchyrollYou don’t have to be canon-conscious always. Many long-running franchises aren’t. Most Lupin III installments could be taken as singular capers akin to James Bond, and Gundam and Sailor Moon are fairly straightforward on newcomers for his or her majority (latter greater than the previous, the place you could possibly stumble onto some dense future-politics).
Lingering questions could be a highly effective motivator for sticking with one thing, and you’ll all the time Google the reply if it’s actually bothering you. I used to be too cognizant of the episode counter on Crunchyroll or Netflix. I let the scale of the waves dictate if it’d be a pleasing journey or not.
One Piece jogged my memory to simply unfurl my sails and see the place the waters take me. Whether or not that’s again by means of historical past or all the time ahead is as much as me, and that’s one thing we may all do with remembering now and again.
In case you’d like extra piracy (of the great type), take a look at our guides to The One Piece and Netflix’s live-action One Piece Season 2.