The best-selling manga of all time isn’t half-bad, I suppose
Ever since I bought my copy of Batman: Year One after watching Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie and its sequels as a young teenager, I’ve been obsessed with comic books. From Batman I jumped to Marvel Comics, with a healthy dose of independent Image comics to keep me grounded in between. Something I always avoided, though, was manga. There was just something about the same-y art style across the medium that didn’t gel with me, and the idea of reading from right to left seemed crazy.
Even after a few of my friends took an interest in the medium, I still wasn’t bothered. Then last year, I saw a sales figure that shocked me. One Piece (whatever the hell that was) was the highest-selling manga of all time and had sold 100 million copies. Hold on, what? After a little digging, it turned out that this was the number of copies it has sold way back in 2012. Now, the number is over half a billion copies sold.
I decided then and there to give the series a shot. I had never read manga before (if you don’t know, manga is essentially what we call comic books from Japan—a lot of which have been translated and are immensely popular ever overseas), but these sales figures were staggering. As a fiction writer myself, I figured that it would at least be worth my while to see what all the fuss was about…
So here I am, thirty-seven volumes into a series that just released its one-hundred-and-fourth volume and has been on the go since 1997. It’s safe to say that I’m enjoying it, but I’m a long way from catching up and have a lot of thoughts about the series that I just can’t hold in any longer. So, here’s everything I’m loving so far about One Piece by Eiichiro Oda.
The Sense of Progression
What’s One Piece about, anyway? Well, it’s set in a fictional world during a time known as the Great Pirate Era, when hundreds of pirate ships sail the world’s oceans in search for the ‘One Piece,’ the ultimate treasure. Whoever holds the ‘One Piece’ becomes ‘King of the Pirates’, and this is the goal of the main character, Monkey D. Luffy.
Luffy sets sail from his home village without a single crew member or even a clue where to go, but he doesn’t let that diminish his spirit. He decides that he should probably aim to pick up around ten crew mates if he’s ever going to find the One Piece. After thirty-seven volumes (which is around eight years of weekly issues) Luffy still hasn’t managed to find ten crew members, and yet I’m hooked.
One Piece takes it’s time filling out it’s cast, with each new crew member being given just as much backstory, motivation, and character arc as Luffy. Even when the crew is diverted by some wacky side adventure, there’s always the sense that Luffy and the gang could stumble across their next lifelong friend at any moment. Watching Luffy’s ship fill out with such a wonderful cast of characters is immensely satisfying.
And I haven’t even mentioned the progression of settings. The One Piece is rumoured to be somewhere along the ‘Grand Line’—a perilous stretch of ocean that circles the globe across the equator. The Grand Line is broken up by islands, and the sense of excitement I get when the crew approaches the next island is immense. Logically, I know they probably wont find the One Piece here, but there are clues to it’s whereabouts scattered along the Grand Line, and watching them gather these clues and face off against the forces also trying to find the One Piece makes for a story that’s hard to put down.
It Wears its Heart on its Sleeve
Subtle, One Piece isn’t. Yes, it has some slow-burning mysteries spread across dozens of volumes, but this is one of the most open-hearted, joyful series I have ever read. Oda holds no emotion back. Rarely are you ever unsure about what kind of emotion a character is feeling. There’s very little in the way of interpretation.
Some of you might think that this is a bad thing. After all, isn’t there tremendous pleasure to be found in the morally grey area of stories? Isn’t it fun to speculate about what a character was really thinking when they took some drastic action? Ordinarily I’d say you’re right, but with One Piece, it’s different. The series is visually loud, with emotions often being drawn with such exaggerated style that it makes me smile.
And ultimately, I feel like that’s what Oda wants. He wants the reader to have fun—to laugh at the book as much as to laugh with it. He’s not trying to be cool or clever or smart. He’s trying to get you to laugh and share in the unbridled joy and comradery of its main characters. It’s goofy, good-humoured, and not afraid to show even some of the more gruff characters breaking down in tears during the more emotional moments
Flawed Main Characters
I touched briefly on this already, but the character development given to each of the main characters is masterful. Multiple issues are often dedicated to fleshing out what is commonly referred to by fiction writers as a character’s ‘ghost’ (sometimes known as the ‘wound’ or ‘the lie’). This is an event you’re probably familiar with if you’re a reader of fiction, even if you've never put a name to it. It’s the traumatic backstory; the fatal flaw.
There is nobody on board Luffy’s crew with a fully realised sense of self. All of them have goals they hope will satisfy some hole in themselves—be it some deep-burning desire to be the master of a craft, or a long-held hope of visiting a fabled land. These goals are always extremely personal to the character, often spurred on by the death of a friend or family member.
While this is all great writing, what truly makes One Piece stand out is the time and effort Oda spends on making us care about these characters while holding back the catharsis that having them achieve their goals would give us. Joining Luffy’s crew is always a pivotal decision in these characters lives, but this is never the fulfilment of their goal. Rather, it’s a decision that symbolises their willingness to finally pursue their goal; a decision often incited by Luffy’s free-spirited and adventurous personality. And let me tell you, there are few moments in fiction as relatable as watching a character overcome the mental roadblock that was keeping them stagnant and finally chasing their dreams, despite the risks entailed.
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It's safe to say that I'm pretty committed to One Piece, now. I'm hoping that I'll be able to catch up fully with the series sometime before, oh, 2026...
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Thanks for reading my review. If you liked it, consider buying me a cup of coffee at https://ko-fi.com/kieranobrien
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