The “young man with a dream” story is as common to manga as dead girlfriends are to super-hero comics. These callow lads want to be sports heroes, great chefs, and master gamesmen. There’s a surprising amount of variety within the genre, and the level of drive the protagonists display can range from amiably low-key to full-out obsessive. But what happens when the dream in question is kind of stupid?
In the case of Shonen Jump’s One Piece, you get a daft and surprisingly heartwarming comedy that’s probably a lot smarter than it seems.
Monkey D. Luffy, the dreamer in this instance, wants to be King of the Pirates. There’s some question as to whether he actually knows what pirates do. Luffy grew up in a seaside village that provided refuge for a rather unusual pirate crew, led by good-hearted Captain Shanks. Since the pirates used Luffy’s home as a hideout instead of a target, the boy never saw the darker aspects of piracy. From his perspective, pirates are good-natured rogues, living lives of adventure on the high seas and drunken fellowship on dry land.
Shanks and company discourage Luffy’s attempts to join their crew. (Did I mention Luffy can’t swim?) He’s impervious to discouragement, though. By the time the pirates save Luffy and his town from a group of mountain bandits, the boy is hopelessly hooked on piracy as a career choice.
Luffy isn’t much of a long-term thinker, though. By the time he sets off in a sad little tub, he has no crew and only a vague notion of what he’ll do next. And he still can’t swim. As a child, he ate a strange fruit that turned his entire body to rubber. While that has its uses, buoyancy isn’t one of them.
So Luffy sails off to assemble a crew and pursue his goal, armed only with a beloved straw hat (a gift from Shanks), a rubber body (surprisingly effective for clobbering), and impenetrable optimism (maybe it’s made of rubber, too). In short order, he runs afoul of pirates a bit more representative of the lifestyle. They pillage and murder, often taking sadistic pleasure in the fear they inspire. It’s hard to see how Luffy will fit in with this ilk.
Happily, he doesn’t modify his full-speed-ahead tactics a bit. Luffy clearly has his own vision of what piracy is, and he’s blissfully dismissive of any counter-examples. His oblivious determination is also reflected in his attempts at crew recruitment. First up is Zoro, a noted bounty hunter of pirates who wants to become the world’s greatest swordsman. Second is Nami, a clever thief who preys on pirates and wants to score enough loot to buy a village. Both take an understandably dim view of Luffy’s profession, but the dork who would be King is undeterred.
In the course of the first two volumes, Luffy bounces through a range of misadventures. He finds Zoro in a town under the thumb of the sadistic Captain Morgan, befriending and inspiring Koby, a would-be navy officer, in the process. Next, he hooks up with crafty Nami in a town under siege by evil pirate Buggy the Clown. There’s peril aplenty, with Morgan, Buggy, and their colorful henchmen doing their best to bring Luffy’s quest to a lethally premature end.
But there’s plenty to laugh at, too. While creator Eiichiro Oda does some exceptional physical comedy and builds some nice set pieces, the most satisfying laughs come from reversal of expectations. Koby, Zoro, and Nami all do their level best to explain to Luffy what pirates are really like, generally right before Luffy does something courageous and generous. He’s a tough kid to dislike, and it’s hard not to root for him. Dreams of piracy aside, he doesn’t sink to other pirates’ level, and he doesn’t let their brutality disillusion him.
Oda’s visuals are a cartoony treat that remind me a lot of Todd Nauck of Young Justice. He does terrific character design, particularly on scurvy antagonists like Morgan and Buggy. Oda has also come up with some creative renderings of Luffy’s rubbery frame, but he saves them up for maximum impact and comedy. He strikes a very nice balance of actual brutality (Luffy’s kinder, gentler approach to piracy wouldn’t have any impact if there wasn’t a contrasting reality) and highly stylized antics.
Is One Piece a great manga? Not really, but I don’t think it aims to be. It seems more satisfied to be creative genre entertainment. What raises it above its legion of “young man with a dream” peers are the subtle ways it subverts its own genre. In the final analysis, it offers good pirate fun, solidly crafted and sneakily smart.