By Eiichiro Oda. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

There’s always a risk that Oda runs because he puts everything into his manga. This is not a title like Bleach, where a 5-minute fight can take three months of real time. There’s always at least ten different things going on. The difficulty is in trying to keep all that happening and not confuse or alienate the audience with too much information all at once. And in this volume, I’m afraid a lot of the time Oda doesn’t quite manage it. He’s simply trying to do too much too fast here, using too many characters that we haven’t grown to care about yet.

This is basically a volume in two halves. The first continues the melee battle on Fishman Island, as the Straw Hats get in between a civil war/coup started by Hody Jones and his brand of outlaw scum. Of course, they’re powerful outlaw scum, so King Neptune and his good guys are getting pounded. Meanwhile, Luffy has succeeded in getting Princess Shiratori outside, but this quickly leads to even more chaos. And then there’s Jimbei, who is down by the grave of the princess’ mother, feeling guilt and sadness. There are some nifty fights (Zoro is, as usual, badass) and the odd goofy comedic moment (Sanji seems to finally get better here, after briefly turning to stone (which I’m sure isn’t meant to be metaphorical at ALL.) But mostly the chaos is what’s driving everything, and this does make things incoherent at times.

Some things to note: Nami’s subplot is actually quite interesting. She’s recognized, sort of, as being an ex-member of Arlong’s crew, and certainly Jimbei’s guilt is directed quite a bit in her direction. But we don’t really see her reacting much beyond faraway looks and the occasional sweatdrop. I like to think that it’s Oda showing that Nami is finally starting to move on from her past (we get a nice page-long flashback from Nami for those readers who may have forgotten it), but also we see that she can also see things from the other side now, and is more aware of the prejudice and persecution that fish-people have suffered. Not that she’s forgiving Arlong anytime soon.

Which leads us into the big flashback. This is an unusual flashback in that it doesn’t seemingly stem from a crewmember’s past and end with them joining Luffy – unless that’s meant to be Jimbei. Instead, we meet Fisher Tiger and Queen Otohime, two characters whose dreams and ideals for their people are contrasted against each other. Fisher Tiger knows what’s right and tries to follow that, but the constant abuse of humanity against his people has ground him down. As for Queen Otohime, her naivete is contrasted with her nobility and pure stubbornness, and we learn that even if fishmen and humanity can try to move closer together, it only seems to take one person with different ideas to screw everything up. As you might guess, prejudice is not an easy fix, especially when it involves slavery.

The aftermath of the queen’s death will have to wait for the next volume, as she dies on the last page (Oda even notes there’s no room for extras this time). But it’s not going to be pretty. Oda is showing us that the world is a complex, contrasting, and sometimes horrible place. Even if he’s trying to jam it into a narrative already overstuffed with political battles and revolutions. Next volume should have a lot of fights, which will actually come as a relief after all this buildup, I think.

(Also, Oda’s response to the reader asking who the father of Makino’s child is is classic Odatroll. He clearly knows all about the Shanks/Makino shippers, and is baiting them mercilessly.)

By Eiichiro Oda. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

Now that the gang is back together, we are off to Fishman Island. No, really! Really and truly, they do finally arrive at Fishman Island this time. Which sort of ends up being a mixed blessing, I will admit. I’m afraid that Fishman Island’s arc is similar to Skypeia and Thriller Bark – you like it more on a re-read, but at the time, it just annoyed you. Still, being annoyed by One Piece is still superior to being entertained by other, lesser shonen series.

Of course, first we have to get to the island, which is not as easy as it sounds. This is the better half of this volume, with each of the crew showing off why they’re awesome – everyone gets to fight (except Nami, whose navigation skills are what’s awesome here), we get another dumb goofy villain who actually seems to have more staying power than we expect, and Luffy tames a kraken. Of course he does.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Fishman Island is not quite as welcoming as you would have expected given our adventures with Cammie and Hachi. It turns out that the island was under protection by Whitebeard, and with him gone, power balances are quickly shifting. Another of the Four Emperors – Big Mom – is supposedly protecting them now, but this seems more like mafia protection than anything else. What’s more, the issues of prejudice – on both sides – that we’ve seen before in the Arlong and Sabaody arcs are still around, and there’s some particular nastiness when it becomes very hard to find a blood donor for Sanji, who is dying due to idiocy.

No, I won’t ever stop complaining about this. I will give Oda credit – when he decided to overuse a dumb idea, he really goes all out – but I still hate Sanji’s complete incompetence around women, even if you do acknowledge that he was on the okama island for two years. We see everyone else’s flaws here as well – including Nami’s lust for money, which hadn’t come up in a while – but it’s just harder to take with Sanji nosebleeding all over the place. Even if he is surrounded by gorgeous mermaids.

Having arrived at Fishman Island, our heroes are escorted to King Neptune and his beautiful daughter, but there’s already a conspiracy against them, as the local fortune teller has said Luffy will bring ruin to Fishman Island. Sounds like one of those self-fulfilling prophecies to me, honestly. A bigger problem is that we’re simply introduced to too many characters too fast here – there’s at least 20 new characters, each with boxes giving names and what time of Fishman they are – and there’s simply no way to know at this point who we have to be paying attention to. Well, except for Hody Jones, who appears to be the villain of the arc so far.

On a side note, the last cover page shows Makino with a baby?!?! Oh Oda, why you gotta destroy the Shanks/Makino shipper dreams? :)

There’s lots of cool action here, and some fun goofy humor. I also like that Oda is not forgetting about Nami’s past – there’s a great shot of her shuddering when she sees one pirate has an Arlong tattoo. But the arc is a bit too new to see where the plot is going, and thus this whole volume ends up being a bit more confusing than I think it really deserved to be. Hopefully next time we’ll see Jimbei and things will begin to get knit together.

By Eiichiro Oda. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

There was a joke going around fandom when Chapter 597 first came out in Japan that on the last page it would say “One Piece – end of Prologue.’ It’s not quite that ridiculous, but the timeskip we see does give us a lot to talk about – and finally, FINALLY reunites Luffy with his crew and his ship. It is appropriate that the cover of this volume is a mirror to Volume 1’s cover.

Before the timeskip comes some nice stuff, though. Having seen the crew bolt from their rescuers in order to reunite with their captain and console him after Ace’s death, it’s somewhat odd to see them immediately turn around and go back. It’s handled beautifully, though, with each crew member getting a flashback that shows just how much Luffy impacted their lives. They really would do anything for their captain, and it shows. Luffy, meanwhile, gets to train with Rayleigh on the island of amazingly dangerous animals, and we learn a little bit more about haki – though really, it still amounts to ‘magic charisma’ when you get right down to it.

(I was vaguely irritated that, in the shot of the Supernovas all encountering danger in the new world, Bonney is the one that’s captured and subdued (twice!). Oda is miles ahead of other Jump authors when it comes to his female characters, but they still tend to get into peril when the situation calls for it. Still, I suppose Akainu and Blackbeard menacing, say, Apoo wouldn’t have had quite the same feel.)

Then, as noted, we jump forward two years, and see what our crew is up to as they reunite on Sabaody. This leads us, inevitably, to the Fakehats. It’s not particularly surprising that someone would be trying to imitate Luffy and friends given their amazing reputation – in fact, it’s a wonder we hadn’t seen it before now. But I wasn’t expecting it to be as funny as this is. The Fakehats are gloriously awful, amounting to not even a bad parody of the people they’re trying to imitate. (Naturally, Luffy, Usopp and Chopper are taken in right away – just because there’s a timeskip doesn’t mean that the characters are THAT different. Everyone keeps their comedic flaws.)

As for the actual crew, so far they seem mostly the same. Which is reassuring. Franky has modified his body to look even more ridiculous. Zoro is missing an eye. Luffy has a scar on his chest. Nami has long hair. Usopp is more muscular. Robin has a new hairstyle. And then there’s Sanji. Who now has his hair… covering his other eye! Oda is delightfully deadpan about this in comments, but it’s also a good sign that he’s still enjoying One Piece more than anybody else.

As the Straw Hat Pirates prepare to go to Fishman Island at last, the Marines are coming out in force to stop them. But hey – allies of the pirates (many of whom are former enemies) come out to help, as we get some more great cameos. Hancock was a given (and is still a glorious parody of shippers – Luffy’s constant “I’m not marrying you” is a stitch), but it was a surprise to see Perona show up to lead Zoro to his crew. And hey, she is all grown up! (I totally ship Zoro/Perona, in a ridiculous way.) Luffy and company are ready to pave the way for a new age of pirates – and everyone wants to see them to it. It’s very heartwarming, especially when compared with Rayleigh’s flashbacks of Gold Roger.

And so – at last – we’re headed for Fishman Island and a new arc. Will it top Impel Down and Marineford? Probably not. But that doesn’t really matter. Just having the crew back together again is enough. We’ve seen how Luffy survives without his crew. Now we’re ready to see them work as a unit again. Bring on the next 60 volumes.