In an effort to do something else with my anime watching than
to view an endless stream of thirteen or so episode long shows and review them
one after another I decided to watch a big block of One Piece. Namely the first
one hundred and thirty episodes or the first two major arcs in terms of plot
progression. I did this over the course of four weekends watching about twenty
six episodes the first two weekends comprising the East blue arc of the story
and thirty nine episodes the second two weeks covering the Baroque Works arc.
The following is my experiences with this experiment.
I noticed that trying to marathon one show to such an extent
created sort of an anime burn out with me watching other shows. Even when I had
the free time to watch other shows I had little desire to do so. Hopefully I
will recover by the time that the season ends and I will have a decent amount
of season end reviews. If not you now understand why.
I watched the episodes in English from the Funimation dub.
Even though I usually watch my anime subtitled I found that it is easier to
marathon a show if I am watching it in English.
I have already read the One Piece Manga to the end of the
Water Seven Arc (which would probably require me to watching another four or
five weeks of One Piece anime at the same pace I had been watching to reach) so
the anime contained almost no plot suprises for me as I have consumed all of
the material before in another format a couple of years ago. However One Piece
is a show that depends on emotional appeal more than intelligent plotting so It
is worth reviewing every so often.
The one plot addition that the anime had over the manga was
the Apis arc which is something just confirms my distaste for anime filler be
they single episodes or entire plot arcs. If you haven't had the misfortune of
watching this particular group of episodes it is about a little girl and her
old dragon friend. The dragon is supposed to be sympathetic but fails to be so
probably because it sits there for the most of the time it's on screen like a
lump on inanimate matter.
Even with it's bad points One Piece is a good show overall. A
couple days after the Apis arc I managed to make it to the Drum island arc and
watch it in one night. The result is that One piece is now of the shows that
has made me cry.
About the Alabasta arc I think it is one of those high points
that every shonen manga aspires to and usually hits maybe once in it's run. It
has a bunch of the shonen tropes including one I think that everyone who at
least tolerates the genre loves, the part where everyone in the main cast pairs
off when a corresponding antagonist and there is a series of fights. The other main
point that I would like to make about this story arc is the amount of
denouement that it had, as it had three episodes between the defeat of the main
villain until the time that the characters left for their next adventure. It is
almost as if One piece is not a single anime of manga but a series of such
shows with a good leaving off point every so often. The end of Alabasta is one
such point so I feel fulfilled in my watching experience even if I decide to
take the show up again at a future point.
