One Piece might be the greatest story ever told. It might be the Tolkien-tier odyssey of our generation. It might take over your life. These are just a few things that I, a One Piece obsessive, tell people in order to convince them to read my favourite story. Admittedly, I'm not usually an avid reader - I have been told this voids my opinions entirely - but nevertheless, every week that goes by without a One Piece chapter feels like the longest week of my life. All of you need to get in on this suffering with me immediately.
Netflix is producing a live-action adaptation of the One Piece story, and for a tale as goofy and absurdist as this, it could go disastrously wrong. It needs Hollywood CGI to make the world believable, in addition to the silly, stretchy powers of our protagonist, Monkey D. Luffy. It could turn out to be the worst thing ever, or it could be the new Game of Thrones. Either way, you need to start reading One Piece now so you can tell people you liked it before it was cool. There’s never been a better time than now to start devouring a 1,000+ chapter manga adventure - that’s another thing I tell people to make them read it.
The World
The Pirate King was executed 20 years ago. On the execution stand, he told the people of the world to find all of the treasures he'd discovered, which he collectively named the One Piece. The king was inevitably silenced, but not before inspiring a generation to take to the seas. People around the world seeking wealth, fame, power, and freedom all set sail to find the One Piece, which was left at the end of the Grand Line, a sea that only the Pirate King could conquer.
One Piece doesn't take place in a single location, rather it’s set in a vast world. The story begins in the East Blue, the most peaceful of the five seas, and follows Luffy as he attempts to recruit a crew to travel with him to the most perilous place on the planet, the Grand Line.
At first, the story feels incredibly insular. Luffy is the protagonist, he visits an island, meets a kooky cast of characters, solves some problems, and moves on to the next island. It has been compared to a "portal fantasy" story, where each island has its own self-contained world and storyline. That soon changes. After the crew has visited an island, that island does not stop being relevant. Instead of just being written out of the story so things can progress, each location and cast of characters that gets introduced in the various One Piece arcs become permanent landmarks and staples, places and people you recall as if you were telling someone what you did on holiday.
One Piece's mangaka Eiichiro Oda never forgets either. One Piece has been running since 1997, and even in the latest chapters, nearly 24 years on since the story started, we are discovering new things about the cast we have known since the very beginning. Impressively, all of it manages to fit perfectly.
The weekly schedule of manga has led to many famous works feeling rushed or improvised - Dragon Ball Z being one particularly infamous example - but One Piece has somehow managed to feel consistent since the very beginning, leading readers to repeatedly ask exactly how much of the story was planned since the start. This sense of unshakeable continuity makes each faction and group you are introduced to feel like its own gear, functioning independently as part of a much larger mechanism. Characters don't appear exactly when they're needed in dire moments as some kind of deus ex machina. Instead, they appear because their personal motivations have driven them to this point. Who they're allied with, where they're from, what the global political situation is like - all of these aspects factor into the storytelling, and the fact that no character or group ever feels overlooked is a masterstroke in narrative design.
One Piece may start out as a story about Luffy and his silly pirate adventure, but it soon becomes a globe-trotting epic with more than 1,000 named characters - all of whom are great.
The Characters
The primary crew are easy to adore. Zoro (or Zolo, to Viz readers) the stoic samurai, Sanji the playboy chef, Nami the gold-loving navigator, Usopp the liar, and Luffy the captain are the first crew members you meet. Aside from Usopp, they're hard not to love. Each of these characters gets their own moment to shine, something that proves themselves as selfless and loyal, but to wax lyrical about the main cast would not do this story justice.
Each member of the main cast gets an extensive backstory to explain their origins and motivations, and then a present-day story to solidify their place in the adventure, but all the tales that happen around these threads are equally memorable and important. Dorry and Brogy are two giants the crew meet with early in the Grand Line to cement how different and imposing the new area can be. These giants have been fighting on a prehistoric island for 100 years in a battle of pride, trying to prove who is the greatest hunter. They fought for so long that the crew they sailed with left to go home, and they have continued their battle daily ever since. This all happens around chapter 115.
Later on, around chapter 375, the crew invade a navy stronghold seeking their friend and must fight against another two giants, Oimo and Kashii. Once the battle has concluded, the giants confess that the only reason they would work for the government is because they had been led to believe their captains, Dorry and Brogy, had been captured by it, and would only be released in exchange for 50 years of service. The revelation that their service has been for nothing leads the giants to rebel. These story beats happened six years apart from one another, and yet the Giant Pirates get another call back in chapter 706 with the introduction of Hajrudin, a giant who is determined to lead the New Giant Pirates and reclaim glory for their homeland of Elbaf.
Dorry, Brogy, Oimo, Kashii, and even Hajrudin are minor characters in terms of the overarching story. Out of the 1,000+ chapters currently available, Dorry and Brogy are only actually in 15 of them. These are as minor as characters get, but they become a touchstone for the world of One Piece. When they were introduced we got to learn about their race, culture, history, homeland - and that meant Oda had to thread the repercussions of their influence throughout the story. A realistic, highly functional world can't introduce and write off characters when it is convenient - it has to reflect the mark they left, and despite being as minor as characters in this story come, they are still unforgettable 21 years after the chapters that introduced them. And yes, Elbaf itself is finally glimpsed for the first time in chapter 865.
The Feels
One Piece will make you cry over a boat. This is a story about metahuman pirates, after all, so sailing is a key component of the story. But you won't be ready for how much a comic with exaggerated smiles on the cover can make you feel truly sad. Oda stretches the limits of his character's faces, like a caricature in all situations, contorting them until they resemble the most intense emotion possible.
Jaws will drop down by a foot, irises will disappear in a flood of tears, and all that's left is the image of someone truly broken. Oda represents pain in the same way he represents joy - by leaving just enough humanity in each illustration to ensure the characters still feel like living, breathing people. Smiles will literally stretch from ear to ear, and hunger is portrayed in a manner befitting of Kirby crossing over with the Looney Tunes. Every emotion is taken to a cartoonish extreme, and while that certainly leaves a lot of space for comedy and humour, Oda never loses sight of the seriousness of his story.
Luffy wants an adventure, a precious memory he will always have of his journey with his friends, but the world labels adventurers as pirates for a reason. The knowledge and power the Pirate King had is one of the only things that can threaten the World Government, and anyone who seeks it out is a criminal by default. Luffy's heart may be pure, but the forces that protect the balance of power are not. "Dark Justice" is the name of the game, and if that means covert operations and assassinations, the World Government is more than happy to see it done. Luffy and the crew will suffer and celebrate over the course of the journey, and every tear is just as cathartic as the last.
Also, It's Not As Long As You Think
Okay, I get that One Piece sounds really long, I've mentioned several times that it has more than 1,000 chapters, but that really isn't quite as intimidating as it sounds. The first One Piece chapter is chunky, true enough, but pretty much every other chapter is less than 20 pages long, with barely a few sentences per page in most instances. If you're anything like me you'll want to take a moment to appreciate the artwork, but it's still very simple to make your way through a chapter in five minutes at a brisk reading pace.
Assuming you read through at about five minutes per chapter it'll take you around 84 hours to get through the story - hey, that's about the same as Death Stranding, and I can assure you that this will feel like a better investment of your time. But even if you take One Piece at half that rate, you won't regret it. This story is deep and magical, the kind of tale you will feel compelled to return to just to take note of all those seemingly inconsequential details that later turned out to be major revelations. This is a story that rewards readers for attention and dedication, like no other I've read, and the latest chapters might be some of the best the series has ever seen.
People say One Piece takes a while to get good - that's wrong. One Piece is always good, but it takes time to be introduced to a world this vast. As soon as One Piece peaks for the first time, you'll swear it couldn't get any better. Then it does. Multiple times. There's no better time to read One Piece than now.