One Piece

[Daikun]

Totally Not Mark is doing a blind read of One Piece.

This should be fun.

[Daikun]

One.
Thousand.
Chapters.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Man, on Sunday OP is gonna be the first manga published in english to reach the 1000 chapter milestone, considering Viz is still 20+ volumes behind on Case Closed.

I can't believe I've been reading OP weekly for over 10 years, and almost half the series at this point. Time's really flown by...

[Markness]

I bought the first One Piece manga box set to replace the volumes I used to have in a more economical way. It also comes with a poster and an English translation of Romance Dawn which to my knowledge has never been published in the language officially before. I plan on getting the next two box sets so there is no more gap in my One Piece collection.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I meant to comment on the 1,000 chapter milestone back at the beginning of the year, but was behind by a bit so waited to play catch-up. I took a break at the end of Wano Act 2 and was initially going to wait for the entire rest of the arc to finish but just said screw it and caught up.

Firstly, all due props to Oda for managing to carry through for over 1,000 chapters. No matter what you think of the series, that's an achievement by any stretch. Secondly, it's incredible how good he is at keeping this series continuously engaging. I've read manga that haven't even gone on for half as long which wear out their welcome well before reaching their conclusions. While he does rely on a familiar formula and you can (for the most part) see the conclusion to major story arcs coming a mile away, it's everything in-between that makes the series so enjoyable, from the humor and antics to the insanely well-interwoven plot-lines and excellent world building. For that very reason I've really been enjoying this final act of Wano thanks to just how insanely well built up it has been since even before the time-skip; and that was over a decade ago at this point, which is a real "HOLY SHIT!" revelation for me.

The series has plenty of faults and weaker areas, but damn if it hasn't been a fun ride getting this far.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

We've heard on several occasions over the past few years that Oda is working his way into the series' endgame with various progress reports of roughly what percentage is done. However, the consensus between him and his editors, while still to be taken with a grain of salt, that the series will wrap up in the next five years is more believable to me than most. I still have my doubts of course, even considering how Oda has somewhat sped up the pacing of his story-telling, given his track record with this kind of stuff. Yet, I can't deny that all of the pieces are in place and it's pretty clear where the series is headed. Essentially, while there are a bunch of smaller plot threads to wrap up, only three major arcs really need to be explored to get to the end, by my estimation: Elbaf, Laugh Tale, and The Final War, and Oda has done such a great job of interweaving a bunch of older story threads together and resolving them naturally and in a satisfying way for over a decade, now, that I have no doubt in his ability to conclude the story properly.

I'm guessing that the level of conversation and hype that this and the current Wano arc have generated have created a new spike in readership. This previously happened with the Marineford War around 2009 right before the time skip where the hype levels inspired a bunch of new readers to jump on board. Perhaps the reputation of this series to maintain and even improve it's quality even after 1,000 chapters, combined with the fact that a conclusion is finally within sight, even if still somewhat distant at this point, has generated a new wave of interest in it.

For me at least, the mysteries that are still waiting to be uncovered are just so enticing, and Oda has yet to let his readers down in any major way given how good his pay-offs have been for the last two-decades of his story. This basically has the opportunity to succeed where a series like Game of Thrones utterly failed.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I recently re-read the entirety of the pre-time-skip era of One Piece, and it's always such a satisfying experience going back through the earlier material not simply because of it's nostalgic value, but because of how much more you get out of it on a re-read. There are so many seeds planted for later developments so early in the series that it can actually cause certain scenes and moments to be completely re-interpreted, or at least given far more weight than on a first read. This is one of the few series that I can think of that is actively improved in every single aspect on a re-read.

I'm thinking of doing a ranking for all of the pre-time-skip arcs, but I may wait until I go through the post-time-skip arcs as well all the way back up to Wano. Though, I'm not re-reading those parts. I'm actually watching One Pace since I never bothered to watch the anime again after dropping it mid-way through Fishman Island until I finally picked it back up with the beginning of the Wano arc. I'm going with the unofficial fan-edit since I couldn't deal with the pacing of the original broadcast version when I tried to watch a few episodes on Crunchyroll.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Nice! I'm tempted to give the series a re-read when Wano ends, and I have been thinking about trying to watch Wano in the anime from the beginning. I feel like I've kept up with the anime every other arc post-timeskip; I missed most of Fishman Island, Dressrosa, and Zou, but watched all of Punk Hazard, Whole Cake Island, and the Reverie. I can definitely tell you that Whole Cake Island has a lot of highlights in the anime, whereas Punk Hazard is a little more inconsistent, and the Reverie is seriously bogged down in flashback filler despite being so short and would definitely benefit from watching a fan-edit that cuts out all the fat. I kept up with Wano at the start but fell off after a few months and have only tuned in intermittently for standout episodes I hear buzz about. But with how good the show is consistently now I think it's worth giving all of Wano a watch. The fact the arc is gonna last over 100 episodes is kinda daunting though. 

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I believe One Pace has already made an edit of Wano Act 1, and I think part of Act 2, but I have to go back and check. I used that to re-watch all of Fishman Island and am currently half-way through Punk Hazard and it is a MUCH more engaging experience. Obviously it can't fix weak bits of animation or poor directing, but as an edit everything flows seamlessly even down to the music beats being matched up to the re-edited footage. It's worth it if you ever feel like watching the post-time-skip era of the anime.

While I usually prefer reading, I opted for this since it was an alternative way to refresh myself on this material. I don't know about you, but I tend to forget a lot and my knowledge gets super rusty when I haven't revisited these arcs in several years (nearly a decade in some cases).

[LumRanmaYasha]

I think I'll stick with Wano as-is, but yeah, I'd probably One Pace the other post-timeskip arcs. I watched some Punk Hazard episodes through a cut that simply removed all the recaps and padding at the beginning of the episodes and that alone made a world of difference when some of the padding can take up a third of the runtime of those episodes sometimes.

[Daikun]

The fact the arc is gonna last over 100 episodes is kinda daunting though. 

I usually just watch about 10 episodes of One Piece a day. It makes binging easy for me.
When I had my VRV account in 2019, I thought I'd catch up with the anime after a long break using this method. I started at Punk Hazard and made it all the way to the Reverie in a month. That's 310 episodes--you can catch up crazy fast.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Yeah, when you can watch a lot a day you can get caught up fairly quickly. It's more of a motivation thing for me - I don't know if I can handle that watching that many episodes of a tv show in one sitting these days. 

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, when you can watch a lot a day you can get caught up fairly quickly. It's more of a motivation thing for me - I don't know if I can handle that watching that many episodes of a tv show in one sitting these days. 

Same. I know it makes me sound old, but I just don't have the energy to binge anymore. The last time I really did that was when I read through all of Invincible last year, and even that wasn't every single day.

Also, my limited spare time has spread between so many different things, including exercise (mostly jogging outside since I still haven't gone back to the gym yet), manga/comics/novels (Spy X Family, Master Keaton, Asadora!, Zdarsky's Daredevil, Hickman's X-Men, Tomasi's Superman, Carey's Lucifer, Ice Cream Man, The Gentlemen Bastards, Wheel of Time; and that's just to name a few), movies (been on a Michael Mann and Stanley Kubrick kick lately), TV (OK, mostly only Disney+ at the current moment, though I want to get back into Star Trek and The Sopranos; and I do get around to some anime as well), and video games (marathoning the 2D Metroid games in preparation for Dread, currently). I love all of those things and make very little progress in any of them on a daily basis because of my widespread passions.

One Pace works well for me, and I can usually manage about an episode or two a night, which is equivalent to a few manga chapters.

[Daikun]

One Piece is finally coming to an end.

Wano will wrap up in 2 chapters, then the manga will take a month-long break. When it comes back, it will enter the final saga.

[Avaitor]

How long will that take to finish, 3 years?