One Piece Moments

This is a new category I’m starting. It has to do with my favourite manga/anime (Japanese comic/cartoon), One Piece.

One Piece is the fourth highest selling manga in the history of Weekly Shonen Jump (the manga compilation that prints it and others like Dragonball and Naruto). It is currently Japan’s most popular, and all-time third-best-selling Shonen Jump title.
One Piece follows the story of the Straw Hat Pirates, so named after their Captain, Luffy. They aren’t the usual vicious, bloodthirsty sea-robbers. Rather, they’re more like adventurers who love freedom and want to pursue their dreams. They often clash with more criminally-intentioned pirate crews, as well as the Marines, but end up helping a lot of innocent villagers in the process.
Themes include the importance of nakama (friends/crewmates/hing-thai); justice and fairness; believing in your dreams; being a true man; self sacrifice and the strength of life. Apart from great action and fights, there’s a lot of nonsense and comedy too! And underlying it all, a superb series of plots that make the One Piece saga a great story to follow.
In this One Piece Moments category, I’ll be sharing brief takes on some of the more memorable instances and events in the series. But first, an intro to the all-important characters, the crewmembers of the Straw Hats:


MONKEY D. LUFFYLuffy is the captain of the crew. It is his dream to become the ‘King of Pirates’, and to achieve that he wants to find the legendary trasure ‘One Piece’. In his travels, he meets and befriends the rest of the crew who are drawn to his attitude.
Lighthearted and usually un-serious, he nonetheless inspires his nakama with his care for his friends, sense of right and wrong, and unbreakable determination. But outside of battle, he loves eating and doing silly things that he thinks are fun! A combat genius, but a moron otherwise.
Luffy ate the Gomu Gomu no Mi (gum gum / rubber rubber fruit), which gives him incredible stretching abilities. Not stretching like play-doh, but rather high-tension rubber. Thus many of his powerful attacks involve extending alimb far out, then snapping it back quickly and hitting the opponent with the high-impact recoil!
Gomu gomu no Rifle is a cool example, seen below. Stretching his arm far back while twisting it, Luffy snaps it back with great momentum and spin – akin to a rifle bullet. Martial artists will know that a twisting punch delivers more force.

RORONOA ZORO
The swordsman of the crew. His sheer strength, skill and determination are second probably on to Luffy’s. He also has the inexplicable ability to barely not-die after losing gallons of blood from his wounds! But other than stunningly defeating enemies, he doesn’t do anything useful around the ship – he just trains and sleeps.
If you’ll notice, the pic above shows him with THREE swords. Zoro trained himself in the very original Santoryu (3 sword style). He fights with one sword in each hand, and one in his mouth! Actually a very deadly fighting style, and spectacular to watch

Oni Giri (Demon Slash)

NAMI
The navigator, and with much more sense in her head than the guys. She doesn’t participate in battles as much, but when she does she relies on her quick wits and thievery skills. She also makes use of her ClimaTact, a staff with which she can affect localized weather conditions. She is also willing to use her feminine wiles to get her way (especially getting Sanji to do something).
Her cartography and nautical skills are excellent, and the rest obey her when it comes to steering the ship. But she has an intense love of money – depicted as her eyes turning into cash symbols.


USOPPThe sniper and all-round handyman. He has an excellent aim, shooting special projectiles (such as gunpowder pellets and rotten eggs) with a slingshot catapult. He is not a super-strong fighter like the other guys, and is also naturally cowardly. But as the series progresses, he shows his growing bravery by facing up to enemies much stronger than a normal guy like himself.
His long nose is a nod to Pinnochio – Usopp is a ‘master’ liar! Often his lies are outrageously outlandishly unbelievable (“I have 3,000 followers waiting to come to my aid!”), so it’s often a joke when an otherwise scary villian actually believes it!


SANJIThe chef of the ship, he fights only with powerful and stylish kicks. In his words, a chef’s valuable hands are for cooking, and can’t be risked injury in battle. He’s also a bit of a lateral thinker, having saved the day several times by doing something clever behind the scenes instead of just duking it out.
He is also a hyper-exaggerated, incurable romantic/ladies-man. He’ll fall madly in love with Nami over some minor display of her talents, then fall in love with Robin instead, then be distracted by another pretty girl. As a macho guy, he also has a rivalry with Zoro. Combined with Sanji’s devotion to girls, this often results in the two fighting when Zoro bluntly says something unflattering about one of the girls.


TONY TONY CHOPPER

Chopper is a cute little reindeer who acidentally ate the Hito Hito no Mi (human human fruit). This allows him to turn from a full deer into a human (albeit not a very normal-looking human) and a halfway-form seen above. He is the doctor of the crew. Being still young, he is naive and easily believes anything the others tell him (even Usopp’s tall tales). He also loves candy, gets starry-eyed at things he thinks are cool, and gets shy easily when complimented.
Chopper really looks up to the super-strong guys, wishing he could be a real man (that is, really manly) or a brave pirate like them. So although he isn’t nearly as strong as them, and gets scared about as easily as Usopp, he tries his best. As a ‘man’, he also doesn’t appreciate being cuddled like the cute furry critter he is.


NICO ROBIN

Robin is an archaeologist, as well as being knowledgeable about many other fields. At 28 years old, she is the oldest and most mature of the crew (who are mostly below 20). She also had a dark, hard life on the run from the authorities and villians who want her knowledge of the secret past. Thus, she is reserved and serious most of the time, but can also joke around with the others.
She ate the Hana Hana no Mi (flower flower fruit), which lets her sprout body parts from any surface she can see. She usually sprouts multiple arms from the ground or from the opponent’s own body, and then disables them with a wrestling hold

Quite an effective fighting style when several arms grab your limbs and twist your spine in breaky ways!

FRANKY
The latest addition to the crew, he is a master shipwright. His original name is Cutty Flam. Due to a horrible accident, he had to repair his body with scrap metal, turning himself into a cyborg. He has built-in weapons like a launchable fist, machine gun, flamethrower breath; and less conventional capabilities like spitting nails, flying with a super fart, and a fridge in his stomach where he stores bottles of cola (his power source).
Franky was the head of a ruffian gang on his home island, and isn’t averse to fighting rough and dirty. He is also prone to posing and dancing weirdly, and crying profusely at a touching story.

With his odd personality and oddball built-in features, he’s a perfect match for the quite nonsense Straw Hats.

GOING MERRY
The Straw Hats’ first ship. A small vessel, but one that has seen them thru many adventures. The crew’s love and care for it caused Merry to have a spirit and to care for them back. Recently in the story, Merry had taken too much damage to selflessly rescue the crew. The Straw Hats bade a tearful farewell to it, as they gave Merry a viking funeral by fire.

THOUSAND SUNNY

After the death of Going Merry, Franky (expert ship-builder) constructed a new ship for the Straw Hats, one that would sail to the end of the world. Traversing a thousand oceans like the sun… Thus the name Thousand Sunny.
It has many features, such as a swimming pool, aquarium that can be viewed from the dining room below, a garden, rocket-propulsion that sends the whole ship flying (powered by cola)… But most importantly, it carries the spirit of Going Merry…