MMF: One Piece

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

This essay will have spoilers through the current tankobon released by Viz (Volume 55), but I will try to avoid spoiling beyond that.

I’d like to talk to you about an epic tale. Well, a series of epic tales, really, but bound together by a bunch of pirates (and a few Marines), some big battles, a few horrid villains, and an incredible love of adventure. Lessons are learned, people make friends of their enemies, and we see things we’d never expected to see. I refer, of course, to the ‘title page’ stories that take place, one panel a week, within the confines of Oda’s larger work, One Piece.

Title pages, of course, are ubiquitous in all manga, be it shonen or otherwise. Most of the time they’re the hero or heroine striking a pose, or a shot of them being casual. Perhaps they’re dramatically staring if it’s a serious chapter. And indeed Oda has these in the series as well, as in between each story arc in the title page sequences we have shots of the Straw Hat Pirates interacting with various fantastic animals somewhere on the Grand Line. And, of course, he has the 2-page color spreads once every 2 months or so, where we see the crew together having some beyond the impossible adventure, usually with even more fantastical animals.

But the story arcs that began in the midst of the Captain Kuro arc, showing Captain Buggy trying to get back his missing body parts and reunite with his crew, are something special. At first I took them to be pure comedy, not mattering much to the plot. I wasn’t expecting to see Buggy again, and he wasn’t exactly one of the Big Bads of the series, even at that point. The same applied to the arcs with Jango and Hatchan, both minor mooks in their boss’s respective arcs, and both far too silly to take seriously. Even the arcs with Coby and Helmeppo learning to be strong Marines, which had an amusing Admiral who wore a dog-eared (literally) hat didn’t faze me. It was amusing, but felt inconsequential.

This was partly as I wasn’t paying as much attention (Viz’s Shonen Jump did not help, as it cuts one of every 3 title pages to save paper – which ruins each and every arc), but partly as I wasn’t expecting to HAVE to. Who drops massive hints and has suggestions of future major plot arcs in their one panel per chapter gag pages? Well, Oda does, of course. Buggy is saved in his arc by Alvida, and they decide to join forces. This then comes up 45 chapters later when the crew arrive at Logue Town and meet them. Coby and Helmeppo’s Admiral who takes a shine to them is none other than Admiral Garp, one of the high-ranking marines… and Luffy’s grandfather, something we discover 350 chapters later. Jango joins the Marines, and returns at the end of the Baroque Works arc. Hatchan’s arc with his cute mermaid girl turns out to be highly important in the Sabaody arc, and so forth.

Essentially, Oda’s story is so epic that he can’t actually tell it all in the 18 pages provided to him every week. Every single title page arc has turned out to either have major plot points or foreshadowing for later volumes, with the exceptions of Wapol, Gedatsu and Eneru, and I’m fully expecting those to come up later as well. What’s more, they’re a story well-told. We see, over the course of single panels with no dialogue, exactly what we get from One Piece every week. Big, goofy villains, epic battles, lots of fun laughs, befriending enemies, and following your dreams.

That last bit is most important. Oda once said in an interview that Luffy doesn’t believe in killing his enemies, he’d rather destroy their dreams. And indeed, most of the protagonists in these stories start off with absolutely nothing, and go through tremendous trials. But in the end, we see new dreams from each of them, as if Luffy’s destruction has given them freedoms they were never able to pursue before. Helmeppo’s decision to stop being a whiner and train to be a good marine, Hachan’s octopus shop, Baroque Works reopening their coffee shop… isn’t that better than trying to kill people and take over the world?

As I noted, the arcs start with the minor, sillier villains. To a degree, there’s some of this in later arcs – I’m sure Oda drew Gedatsu’s hot spring adventures simply as Gedatsu was such a loony that he wanted to do more with him. And I suppose Wapol might qualify as this at first. But Wapol’s arc was the first one to startle me, as he was a nasty jerk. His arc was kind of like if Oda had done an arc with Kuro, or Arlong. And indeed this arc seems to delight in torturing Wapol, who’s now homeless and essentially eating garbage. And yet he finds something he can do, something that brings happiness to children. And more importantly, brings money to Wapol. This then leads to scientists examining him and finding he can create an amazing new metal. He starts a factory, and is even richer than he once was. Oh, and he marries Miss Universe. Note Wapol is not redeemed, per se – it’s implied that he’s going to be as ruthless in big business as he was in taking over a kingdom.

The Baroque Works and CP9 arcs also feature villains who were more hateful than goofy, and shows some of them actually getting happy endings. But it really reaches its zenith with Eneru’s great space adventure. Eneru is a rather unique villain in One Piece. While he enjoyed tormenting the residents of Skypeia, his goal is not shattered when Luffy and the others free the Skypeians from his brutal dictatorship. Instead, Eneru’s ship survives, albeit battered, and he flies off to the moon. We see what happens when he gets there in the title page arc. Any idea you might have that Eneru is going to discover his inner fluffy lamb is crushed here. Most of the plot is fueled by either his random cruelty, his desire for revenge (after his ship is destroyed), or an honest-to-God curiosity about what the heck is going on here. In the end, he succeeds in reviving the robot mole race that was in suspended animation underground. He also finds that he seems to be descended from their creators. The final panel is that of Eneru, standing proud, with his giant army of moon people who worship him at his side. Clearly for Eneru, karmic retribution is something that happens to other people.

Honestly, I could go on forever. There’s just as much brilliant imagery here as there is in the series – indeed, sometimes it gets even weirder. There’s much-needed character development that’s given here so he doesn’t have to waste time on it later. Most of all, Oda has found a way to pack every single part of One Piece with adventure, even taking over the title pages to tell awesome stories. One Piece overflows with ideas from every corner. One Piece makes you care about its worst villains. One Piece is awesome.

Eensy Weensy Monster Volume 1

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By Masami Tsuda. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine LaLa. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

After the success of Kare Kano (well, success in a broad sense – I know many people who read the ending and now disown the series and everything to do with it), Tokyopop picked up a few other titles by Masami Tsuda that were a) short, and b) easy to translate. (B is likely why we aren’t seeing her newest series, Chotto Edo Made, a romantic school comedy set in the Edo period, which scanlators dropped after one chapter due to the vocabulary.) The first was a short story collection bundling a few of her Japanese one-shots, and this is the second, a two-volume series she did for LaLa in 2007.

I quite enjoyed it, and it’s good at showing off the technique that Tsuda has learned by working on the long-running Kare Kano. The premise has Nanoha, a normal girl who happens to hang out with two childhood friends who are the queens of the school. She’s sweet, likeable, has trouble with classes, and is noted to be unmemorable. She also possesses a “little monster” inside of her, one that comes out whenever she meets the smooth, suave Hazuki, who is a handsome guy who wraps all the other girls around his finger. He drives her nuts, and when this grabs his attention and he calls her on it, she completely opens up and tears his “petty, superficial” self to shreds.

There’s lots of things to like here. Hazuki is indeed a pretty-boy phoney, but it’s not a deliberate mask. He was spoiled by his parents, and praised for his looks and natural intelligence, so it’s never occurred to him to look further. One he does, and finds that he hates what he sees, he makes an honest effort to change, even if this means blocking himself off from the girls who want to be around a hot guy. (The girls tell him point blank they know he’s not boyfriend material, he’s just there to be seen with.) Naturally, when he thinks of HOW he can change, he turns to Nanoha.

Sadly, Nanoha’s not the sort who will cheerfully counsel him. He still grates on her nerves, and now that it’s no longer because he’s a vain stooge, she can’t figure it out. What’s worse, she thinks about how she went off on him, and now he’s a loner with few friends, and realizes that her ‘little monster’ is bullying him. So now she’s simply nervous and twitchy, trying to control herself and avoid him as much as possible. Too bad he’s now sitting next to her in class…

One of my favorite parts of the manga is in Chapter 5, where we get POV shots of the two characters on opposite pages. First we see Nanoha sitting at her desk, watching Hazuki be calm and self-possessed and sneaking glances at her, while she sweats, freaks, and tries to do her notes. On the opposite page, we see Hazuki, watching Nanoha constantly, and seeing her looking diligent and serious – without all the super-deformed freaking out we saw in her own POV. It’s great to see this sort of layout in a shoujo manga, especially a story like this that depends on understanding another point of view. The art helps to teach the story.

Another thing I enjoyed was the suggestion that the other, supporting characters are having lives and adventures of their own just off the page. This can be a drawback sometimes, of course – you risk the reader wanting to read about them more than your heroes – but it’s fun here. We see her friend Renge, who reminds me a great deal of Hanajima from Fruits Basket (not all that uncommon – many shoujo series have a cute normal heroine, a tall lanky blonde female friend and a silent, serious female friend) and her strange family that still call each other by baby names. There’s Hazuki’s sister, who is just as pretty as he is but forces her brother to do her hair and makeup so that she can achieve that – which may seem petty, but given he was a spoiled brat, actually seems to be more like an object lesson in humility. And then there’s Ryuzaki, the “Lady Oscar” of the school, who’s blonde, elegant, gorgeous… and dirt poor, as she notes herself. She maintains a garden solely because they need vegetables to eat, and her equally gorgeous brother works at a broken-down construction site. Kare Kano showed us how much fun Tsuda has with her side character’s backgrounds and lives, and we see that even in a much shorter series such as this.

Eensy Weensy Monster only has two volumes, so no doubt Nanoha will get over her issues soon and fall for Hazuki – it is a shoujo romance, after all. But the quirky characters and the mature art design help to sell me the story, even more than the name recognition of the artist who did Kare Kano.

Manga the week of 12/2

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Comic stores get their manga on Thursday next week owing to this week’s Thanksgiving holidays. This should be the last time this happens in 2010 – apparently the Christmas and New Year’s holidays do not disrupt UPS quite as much.

Though Diamond shipped it to everyone but the Northeast this week, for me it’s the final shipment of Del Rey titles. I’ll miss them. Tsubasa and Psycho Busters finish before the gun, but the other series shipping this week are left in limboland until Kodansha USA announces plans. I’ll especially miss Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei and its love of observational humor combined with its love of insane schoolgirls.

Two Tokyopop titles that didn’t show up this week are here next week, as we get Vol. 7s for Lagoon Engine and NG Life. Lagoon Engine has caught up with Japan, so volumes are few and far between. Meanwhile, Tokyopop may want to push NG Life out the door as fast as possible – 8 ships next month. (I note, despite my hoping, that Gatcha Gacha 8 did NOT ship this week, and isn’t out next week either. I don’t know where it is, but hope it will appear as soon as possible.)

Bandai has Volume 4 of Gundam-00F, the latest in the long franchise. It runs in Gundam Ace, Kadokawa’s shonen spinoff from Shonen Ace that’s devoted to Gundam titles. That’s how big Gundam is over there. Even One Piece doesn’t get a One Piece Jump, for contrast.

Udon finishes off its Magical Girl title Fairy Idol Kanon, which is drawn by an artist known for her yuri series, but as this was put out by Poplar, a Japanese company that markets to kindergartners, I wouldn’t expect any in this. They also have a new Street Fighter title.

And Vertical not only has the 2nd of their horror manga 7 Billion Needles, but also the debut of a new Tezuka title, Ayako. This is a big omnibus of the 3 volumes that came out in Japan, in one 720-page brick. It originally ran in Shogakukan’s manly Big Comic from 1972-1973, and is eagerly awaited by all. I definitely recommend it.

Despite being the first week of the month, Midtown doesn’t list any Viz titles. Sometimes if the 1st falls on a Wednesday, they’ll bump all Viz’s stuff back a week. That seems to be what’s happened here.