Ask John: Why Is One Piece So Good?

Question:
I started watching One Piece a few months ago. I wasn’t really looking to get into a new anime, but I have become completely addicted to the show. It is like a lot of other anime, yet so different from anything I’ve ever seen. Why is this show so darn good? Has it been successful in Japan?

Answer:
I began watching One Piece as an experiment back in 1999. At the time I was hesitant to try out a show about pirates, as my initial instinct was to assume that any show about pirates had to be fairly dumb and cliché. I was also somewhat put off by the odd character design; however I originally found the character designs for Initial D distasteful as well before I discover how amazingly addictive that show was. As it’s done to many viewers, I found myself attracted, and quickly hooked on One Piece almost instantly, even though I was watching it in untranslated Japanese and could barely understand any of it. Since 1999 I’ve gone on to watch nearly 130 episodes of One Piece, and three movies, in untranslated Japanese (with a sprinkling of fansubs here and there).

Viz has called One Piece, “Sergio Aragones meets Akira Toriyama meets Yellow Submarine meets…we can’t even begin to explain it” which sort of sums up the appeal of the show and its original manga. One Piece simply has a little bit of something for everyone. Oddly, although creator Eiichiro Oda worked as an assistant to Rurouni Kenshin creator Nobuhiro Watsuki, none of Watsuki’s brush stroke style line-art influence appears in Oda’s manga. One Piece shows a marked resemblance to Dragonball, created by Oda’s favorite manga artist, Akira Toriyama. Setting aside the baggage the name Dragonball carries in the minds of anime fans, Dragonball is a wonderful and accessible fantasy story about a kind, loyal, and simple-minded country boy who is mentally and physically strong enough to dream of grand goals and actually pursue them with single-minded determination. One Piece is exactly the same kind of story. Lufy D. Monkey is trusting, loyal, absolutely devoted to his friends, and absolutely pure of heart. He is Herman Melville’s Billy Bud turned hero instead of sacrifice. Lufy is surrounded by a cast that any viewer would feel comfortable with. Zorro is the stern yet soft-hearted guardian; Nami is the sexy voice of reason; Usop is the comic relief and character who is satisfied to make everyone else feel better about themselves in comparison; Sanji is the provider and forgiving authority figure; and Tony Tony Chopper (who joins the cast around 80 episodes into the series) is the younger sibling/mascot figure. The cast of One Piece is essentially the viewer’s foster family- eccentric but loveable. Each of the characters is distinctly appealing in a particular, subtle way. Likewise, the villains of One Piece are primal in their effectiveness as well. Alvida literally represents excess and ugliness. Buggy can split into multiple parts: he represents the instinctive human fear of things small and literally creepy, like spiders and cockroaches. Arlong is literally a shark-man. He’s very appearance touches the primal fear of monsters and being eaten alive. Crocodile is a villain made of sand. He symbolizes the fear of what’s unknown and amorphous. In effect, the characters of One Piece are all immediately accessible and appealing because they’re unconsciously familiar to us already.

Furthermore, for being a show about pirates, there’s very little actual pirating going on. One Piece is a grand adventure, even that foretold by the fact that the characters are all searching for and exploring the “Grand Line,” a fabled ocean navigation path. One Piece is actually very similar to the original Dragonball television series, but that series ended in Japan nearly 15 years ago, and since then there’s been nothing quite like One Piece. Like Dragonball, One Piece moves slowly, and the epic battles and fights, when they occur, frequently last for weeks worth of episodes. One Piece also has the exaggerated facial expressions and character reactions and humor that was present in Dragonball buy largely removed from Dragonball Z.

For viewers willing to give the show a chance, the adventure and comedy of One Piece are a relaxing and entertaining fantasy that’s almost insidiously easy to become addicted to. Japanese fans seem to agree. The One Piece manga is one of Japan’s best selling titles. In fact, the latest volume of collected One Piece manga, volume 24, broke all Japanese publishing records by having an initial print run of 2.52 million copies, due to immense market demand. The One Piece weekly TV series is consistently one of the very highest rated and most watched anime on Japanese television. And a fourth theatrical movie has recently been announced in Japan. The manga and TV animation both succeed because they’re accessible and appealing to all viewers, regardless of sex, age or ethnicity. It’s not so steeped in customary anime extremes that its targeted only at die-hard anime fans, yet its bright colors, keen sense of timing and story development all appeal to what anime fans look for. If you think of One Piece as Dragonball with an emphasis on story instead of fighting, it’s easier to understand why One Piece is so popular.