EAST BLUE (1-100; 100 CHAPTERS)
I thought East Blue was generally pretty good, but it’s also nothing outstanding or totally remarkable in its own right. It’s the definition of humble beginnings and I want to take a moment to really defend that before I say anything else.
The thing is, if you’ll never see a series quite like One Piece ever again, the reason for that is because it was simply allowed to take its time. East Blue isn’t actually the “real start” for One Piece, it’s essentially just a prologue for everything else that comes after.
We’re essentially just wandering around the East Blue with no real overarching plot, fighting villains of the week. We don’t know for certain anything about any sort of broader conflict or direction of the story, other than we need to go to the Grand Line and search for treasure.
Think about how absurdly slow of a start that would be for a modern series. A series going this lackadaisical of a pace wouldn’t last a full year today, but if One Piece eventually became an epic, it's because it takes its time to build – and build – and build. You can only get to grand and complex if you have the freedom to take your time without raising the stakes too quickly right off the bat.
Half of the core cast are introduced in these first few chapters and every time someone new joins Luffy’s crew, the process gets its own dedicated arc. Romance Dawn leaves a strong first impression, but the rest generally gets better the deeper into it you get. I think it’s better than both Orange Town and Syrup Village, but then Baratie is better than all three of them, and Arlong Park is even better than that.
Now, Syrup Village tends to be pretty divisive, but I gotta say, I don’t agree with that at all. I thought the side characters were generally pretty charming and they did a great job giving Usopp a lot of depth right from the start, allowing Usopp to being maturing into a great warrior of the sea.
Another aspect that goes over some people’s heads is Zoro’s backstory and the mundanity of Kuina’s death. I felt that I could appreciate it because it’s simple and to the point, perhaps like Zoro himself, and it contrasts with the way death is typically handled in shonen, presented with something more real and relatable.
All of these arcs use the same general narrative structure, but some just do it better. Arlong Park works so well because it’s focused, at no point does the plot deviate to something that isn’t pertinent to the current story. It takes the same template and adds in a really cool plot twist, in addition to plenty of great character moments.
To speak of the characters, the villains are probably one of the weaker aspects of East Blue. Alvida is okay, Buggy and Arlong are both great, but Higuma, Morgan, Captain Kuro, and especially Don Krieg, aren’t very good.
Where East Blue really excels though is with the protagonists, which is much more important. All of them are likeable and compelling, and the process of watching Luffy convince each of them to open up their hearts and eventually join his crew is fantastic, every single time.
Now, East Blue didn’t blow my mind or anything, nothing here really indicates that this is going to become the next “modern odyssey” that it gets sold as by fans online, but the main characters really pick up the slack and are the main reason why I wanted to continue reading.
Not to forget Lougetown, it could’ve just been a nice break between arcs, but it ended up exceeding my expectations a little by being fun enough in its own right. It was able to establish a lot of forward momentum for the story, and introduces some really cool characters and plot threads.
In short, East Blue has a solid beginning, but the rest runs the gambit from being really engaging to, honestly pretty boring and unremarkable, to really picking back up again in its back half. The big saving graces here are all of the main characters, particularly Nami, whose emotional climax acts as the crux for this entire saga.
BAROQUE WORKS (101-217; 117 CHAPTERS)
It’s here where we encounter some growing pains because while Baroque Works is about as long as East Blue, it’s also way more all over the place in terms of pacing and quality. The thing is, a major issue One Piece as an entire series has, is that frequently its pacing will just completely fall off a fucking cliff, so it’s perhaps here where we start encountering the downsides of the story taking its time.
See, if Naruto peaked early and wasn’t able to pick itself back up again, and Bleach... was bad, then One Piece is a series of ups and downs. Eiichiro Oda, when he wants to be, is really good at establishing a sense of momentum and convincing me his series is really going somewhere, but for whatever reason, sometimes he’ll just choose to throw it all in the trash and bring everything to a screeching halt.
The thing is, once you prove to your audience that you have the capabilities to do better, they may hate it even more upon retrospect. Not everyone can make something good, but when you have the capabilities to make something good, but you’re just choosing not to, then you’re far worse than anybody who just couldn’t hack it.
This portion of One Piece establishes fairly early that it’s building to an ultimate climax, but it feels like it’s taking forever to get there. Interesting stuff happens throughout, sure, but it seems like there always has to be dead time before it starts picking back up again.
The biggest example of this was probably Little Garden. There were these two giants who live there and I thought they were the best thing ever, it made me feel like a kid again and I was really interested in everything that had to do with them, but right after they get introduced, there is just this boring, terrible, really needlessly long fight that happens that takes up the remainder of the arc.
To speak of the villains, I’m still not a fan of most of them. I don’t really like anyone in Baroque Works aside from Miss All Sunday and Mister Zero. Mister Two surprised me, I actually like him quite a bit, but everyone else you could just delete them and I probably wouldn't miss them.
Once the Straw Hats actually make it to Alabasta things do get to be a lot more interesting... except not? When I ended up ranking all of the arcs it actually ended up pretty high, so I’m not kidding when I say that when it’s good, it’s really good, but when it’s boring, it is very boring.
I was initially very critical of the fact that it places too much focus on side and background characters whom I ultimately did not end up caring about at all, but the reason I’m more forgiving of it now is because this gets way worse much later down the line. The same could be said of how it’s not always super intuitive to read, another thing which we’ll also talk about way later.
Still, once again, when it’s good, it’s really good. Alabasta has some incredible fights, interesting world building, and compelling character moments, so I don't think it's bad at all, it just comes with the caveat that this is still “classic One Piece”.
In short, while Baroque Works isn’t horrible, it had the same number of problems that East Blue had, except without most of the indicators that we as readers are making progress. In East Blue we were constantly getting introduced to main characters and concepts, but that doesn’t happen nearly as often in Baroque Works.
Was it the worst part about the pre-timeskip? No, but it was the most difficult for me to finish. Whisky Peak and Drum Island were great, and Alabasta was even better than those two arcs, but less so Reverse Mountain and Little Garden, and this saga overall was definitely a lot messier than I was expecting.
SKYPIEA (218-302; 85 CHAPTERS)
One of the things about One Piece up until this point is that it’s been thematically and structurally very simple, and the way those themes were tackled are typically extremely blunt and straight forward, but it’s here where things start to get a little more complex.
This is one of the big things I appreciate about Manga versus American comics, once you get cool concepts that bolster actual characters, and themes, and a story with an actual point and endgame in mind, then I don’t know how you can manage to go back.
Now, there are times where One Piece isn’t implementing and exploring themes in a way that I’d prefer it did, but they’re not bad themes all on their own, they can just get a little clumsy in their execution at certain points. In Skypiea’s case, it’s the long term effects of colonialism.
Skypeia is the next big controversial arc in One Piece, the first being Syrup Village. Now, I was curious about this one because most of the arcs seemed to have more of a defined consensus, but here I get the feeling that a lot of people used to think that this was one of the worst arcs, but it definitely has more of a fanbase these days, and honestly, I think I’d include myself in it.
The first thing is that we’re locked the fuck in as far as settings are concerned. East Blue wasn’t in the Grand Line, so what we got was fairly normal, Baroque Works is where it started getting more creative, but Skypeia is where it fully embraces how wild this world can get.
Remember how I made a big stink last time because I felt Baroque Works lacked any real sense of progress? Well, I’d say Skypeia had a particularly good momentum compared to some of what came before, so I thought it was a good time. I think a part of it, is that it deviates fairly significantly from the typical One Piece formula that it used for most of the arcs before it, so Skypeia was the first that pretty much completely broke off and tried to do something else.
It has a similar problem Drum Island had, perhaps, where it almost feels too disconnected from everything else around it, less like a part of the “main story” and more like a side quest. But much like Drum Island, I thought the location was really interesting, so much so that I think there was enough I wanted to find out about Skypeia itself to keep me from having a problem with it.
Enel is another of the few great villains that we’ve seen thus far, I probably wouldn’t say he’s better than Sir Crocodile from the last arc, but he’s really cool. He may come across as a bit distracting, but I think a sense of humour is allowed in certain cases and having a guy that resembles Eminem in your colonialism story is funny and in a good way.
A part of what makes Enel so funny is that he feels so overwhelmingly powerful, even compared to all the antagonists that came before him. And when I realized how this guy’s powers should interact with Luffy’s powers, it just put a big smile on my face.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend Skypeia is perfect, I barely even remember a lot of the characters names, but the reason I’m setting that aside for now is because those aren’t complaints I wouldn’t level at most of the other major arcs in One Piece.
In short, Alabasta probably had higher high’s, but I still felt Skypeia was way more consistent, as if it's like One Piece had been getting a lot cleaner by this point.