You all knew this One Piece rampage would inspire some articles eventually, right? Well, here’s the opening salvo, as we explore the journey of my current favorite One Piece character. Usopp’s journey was fascinating to me for several reasons, but the article’s right there, so you might as well click through. I really enjoyed writing this one!
How Usopp the Liar Became a True Hero in One Piece
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’ve once again got an oddball collection of films for you all this week, along with more reflections on my ongoing journey with One Piece. I’ve learned over time that you really have to tune down the amplitude of praise people apply to their favorite properties, as they’re generally speaking from a position of deep emotional attachment, and more expressing that than anything essential to the property itself. Because of that, claims of One Piece being some uniquely spectacular shonen kinda faded into the din of claims that every show is uniquely spectacular – thus, I have been completely blindsided by the fact that One Piece actually is as good as everyone says it is. It’s doing stuff in shonen that I’ve associated with Hunter x Hunter and literally nothing else, and I’ve found myself hooked on it with precisely that same HxH intensity, a need to barrel through episodes like I’m stuffing my face with delicious, narratively nutritious popcorn. But we’ll get to that soon enough – let’s first start off with some films, as we bound through the Week in Review!
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’ve got a bit of an odd selection for you all this week, as a fair amount of my standard movie-watching time was once again consumed by One Piece. I am loving the heck out of One Piece, but I’m also noticing a problem developing here – given my amount of free time, the show is more or less functionally infinite, so I’ll have to find a better way of managing my watch schedule. Still, having a pile of Chimera Ant-scale arcs in my future is a nice feeling; it’s been some time since I felt this much natural incentive to plow through an anime, so I’m cherishing the feeling, and letting it serve as a reminder that plenty of great shows are still hiding out there. I’ll find you, great shows! Just listen to the sound of my voice, or… no, no, I’ll come to you. Just wait right there!
Anyway, the Week in Review.
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We ran through a wild grab bag of films this week, touching on fantasy, action, comedy, and even a Musical Filmic Journey that more or less defies characterization. Along with these various films, I actually have been watching a fair amount of anime in my free time, though I haven’t even started with the spring season yet. Instead, I’ve mostly just been gorging myself on One Piece, powering through Skypiea as I work on Monster Hunter Rise, and having an altogether terrific time with it. Did you folks know One Piece is good? Niche property, I know, but probably deserves a second glance. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll dig into that at more length, so let’s dive right into the Week in Review!
We return to One Piece in the midst of its Alabasta arc, as we’re presumably nearing the climax of the overarching “Baroque Works” era. I haven’t actually read One Piece before, but given this final confrontation will involve squaring off against the actual leader of the Baroque Works pirates, and prompt either the fruition or destruction of the plan he’s been concocting for literally years, I have at least a certain degree of confidence that this arc will resolve the overall Baroque Works saga. So how does the view look from this point, as we near the conclusion of such a crucial conflict?
There are scattered moments within One Piece that seem to embody the romance of the high seas; the mysteries of the ocean, the scale of its vast movements, the ways we can come to understand it so well it feels like an old friend. Nami excels at facilitating these moments, as her navigator’s knowledge and generally contemplative personality tend to make her most attuned to the ocean’s sway. The scene early in chapter eighteen, where Nami muses on the nature of underwater vents, doesn’t impact our ongoing narrative in any way, and would be skipped in a point-to-point summary of this arc’s events. Nonetheless, it’s a beautiful moment that naturally embodies the wonder of the ocean, and highlights how One Piece is far more than a straightforward action tableau. I appreciate that Oda consistently offers these little tonal oases, these beautiful moments that are only their own reward.
As always, Eiichiro Oda opens One Piece’s seventeenth volume with a brief personal anecdote, one of the many ways this manga creates a personal relationship between reader and storyteller. Oda mentions how he and his assistants often visit a raucous family restaurant, full of loud children and their parents. However, if you visit on Sunday at 7:30, the restaurant is quiet. All children are turned to the television, all eyes on Oda’s One Piece. Oda understands the responsibility inherent in that – that he has an opportunity to teach and inspire, and that few possess the platform he does for reaching young people. There are few jobs more noble or significant than inspiring the next generation’s dreams, and Oda’s understanding of that responsibility is clear in his every page.
One Piece’s sixteenth volume opens with the team in crisis. Having sailed to the island of the former Drum Kingdom in search of a doctor, they discovered the only doctor here lived on top of a towering mountain. Strapping the sickly Nami to his back, Luffy set off with Sanji at his side, fighting through snow drifts and giant killer rabbits on the way to the summit. But then, before they could arrive, their movements prompted a mighty avalanche. And so we find our heroes sprinting back down the mountain, time ticking down with the storm at their backs.
The battle with Baroque Works continues in One Piece’s fourteenth volume, within the leafy confines of Little Garden. The initial conceit of Little Garden was “this is an island where the creatures are huge, but still dwarfed by the resident giants.” Those giants actually get more or less pushed aside in a narrative sense here, which I frankly didn’t mind at all. Their single-minded emphasis on “honorable battle” doesn’t really do anything for me, and though Usopp’s adoration of their focus is pretty adorable, I couldn’t really buy into their feelings purely for his sake. Instead, this volume quickly resolves the giants’ battle, and moves on to something much more exciting – the next showdown with the agents of Baroque Works.
The very cover of One Piece’s thirteenth volume filled me with skepticism. Emphasizing a balloon-shaped Luffy and the Baroque Works baddies, it seemed to promise a volume filled with meaningless battles, where Luffy’s buddies fight inconsequential enemies while Luffy sleeps off his meal. “Luffy is incapacitated” has already become something of a warning sign in this manga – though Oda’s art is strong, the tactical interplay of One Piece’s fights can’t really aspire to the heights of something like Hunter x Hunter, meaning its battle scenes are less likely to be rewarding for their own sake. And after a volume dedicated largely to One Piece’s actual specialties (discovery! adventure!), a volume of empty fighting seemed like a bit of a letdown.