I hadn’t realized that Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece (Viz) was popular enough here to get the Naruto Nation treatment. I know it’s huge in Japan, but I thought it was one of those books that sells very respectably if not spectacularly. (Favorite bookstore memory: seeing two stylish exchange students from the local university totally geek out when they saw One Piece on the shelf.) But Viz is releasing a whole bunch of volumes on a very accelerated schedule, and it’s been publishing omnibus editions of the early installments. New volumes have also been cropping up in the manga section of the New York Times Graphic Book Best Seller List, though pirates don’t seem to have quite the commercial force of ninjas or vampires or James Patterson.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I read a handful of early volumes of the manga and enjoyed them well enough, but not quite enough to keep up. I don’t have quite the attention span for shônen that I do for some other categories. But the publisher recently sent me review copies of volumes 29, 30 and 31, which picks up roughly in the early middle of an arc about a mysterious chain of islands that floats up in the clouds, and it seemed like a good opportunity to see what’s up with the crew.

The Straw Hats, the pirates who form the comic’s core cast, are scattered throughout this floating island along with a dauntingly large number of guest characters representing different island factions. It’s not impossible to figure out what’s going on, but if you’re going to sample One Piece, I can’t recommend the 29th volume as your starting point. (I think the “Skypiea” arc starts in the 24th volume.) There’s an evil god who’s pitting all of these factions against each other, and our dimwitted hero, stretchable pirate Luffy, is on the path to becoming sufficiently annoyed to knock said god off of his perch.

That moment is likely to be very, very satisfying. Oda has that key shônen skill set of investing action with whimsy and just enough import to keep things lively, and Luffy’s primary function, at least as I see it, is to gradually reach that point where he concludes that something (definitely energetic, possibly ludicrous) must be done to set things right. Until that moment, we get lots of characters fighting each other in imaginative, slightly puzzling ways, escaping perils of varying degrees of menace and lunacy, or realizing just how out of their depth they actually are. (Luffy is immune to concerns of depth, which is why he’s the lead.)

What makes me eager to see the conclusion is the fact that Oda takes a break from the floating-islands mayhem to take readers back to where everything started, centuries before Luffy was born, before he ever considered pillaging as a life calling. (Oh, and if you’re leery of cheering for a bunch of criminals, Luffy’s concept of piracy is really mild.) In the flashback, a botanical explorer finds one of the islands that will later take to the air and tries to befriend its imperiled residents. It’s shônen in miniature, with rivals becoming friends, skills displayed and shared, and brave promises of loyalty made, but it’s also moving and tragic. It gives heft to the main event, and it shows how focused and precise Oda can be as a storyteller. Beyond the fact that it works in the larger context, it’s nice to see something linear and restrained in the midst of the mad jumble.

In other developments, there are two Straw Hats who are new to me. One is a tiny reindeer named Chopper who serves as the crew’s doctor and seems given to panic. He spends most of these volumes unconscious, which is unfortunate, because what sensible person doesn’t want to know more about a tiny, panicky doctor who’s also a reindeer? The other is a taciturn archeologist named Nico Robin who can make arms grow anywhere and then control them. Given that most of her crewmates are amusingly hyperactive dingbats, her relatively serene, contemplative presence is very welcome.

I’m really going to miss Viz’s A la Carte collections of classic culinary manga Oishinbo, written by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated by Akira Hanasaki. The last installment (I’ll say “for now” because hope springs eternal) focuses kind of loosely on Izakaya, or Pub Food, and it covers a lot of the territory that’s become so endearingly familiar over the course of the series. For instance…

That doesn’t strike me as a compliment, but the characters’ raptures over various dishes often don’t. They say things like, “Oh, the bones of the fish give it a nice crunch!” or “The muskiness is so refreshing!” But there’s absolute sincerity in these exclamations, and that’s part of the charm. I’m not saying I’m ever going to echo the sentiments based on anything I eat, but they do keep things lively and they help paint a taste picture.

I was a super picky eater as a kid, so I have what might be a misplaced level of empathy for the characters featured in Oishinbo’s food peril stories. Let me explain what those are: every now and then, the regulars run across a friend or acquaintance or co-worker who absolutely must learn to like a food they despise. If they don’t, their professional, educational or romantic prospects will go right down the drain. Now, I’ll try any food once at this point, and I’m pretty good at expressing honest dislike of this or that food without judgment or apology, but there’s that nagging anxiety of the picky child. So while the stakes in these stories can be a little ridiculous, I feel the characters’ pain.

Not liking potatoes, though… dude needs to get over that.

Preach it, sister. The panel above is from a story that embodies two big Oishinbo themes: booze is awesome, and kids these days don’t know squat. The latter is generally expressed in the lead’s rivalry with his horrible father, but I’m pleased to report that there are no scarring father-son showdowns in this volume. Instead, a young actor fears for his career because he can’t drink sake properly. Our heroes take him out of town to snack and drink and snack and drink some more until he racks up the right sense memories to really look like that sake hits the spot. Along the way, he learns to hold his liquor and to pace himself so he can drink and snack with the best of them. And that, my friends, is valuable information no matter where you live or how old you are.

Is All My Darling Daughters (due this week from Viz Media) the best comic Fumi Yoshinaga has ever created? Of course it isn’t. It’s not as ambitious as Ôoku: The Inner Chambers, as funny as Flower of Life, or as sexy as Ichigenme… The First Class Is Civil Law.

Should you buy All My Darling Daughters? Of course you should. It’s by Yoshinaga, so it’s still funnier, smarter and warmer than most comics you’re likely to encounter.

The book collects interconnected short stories that spoke out from an adult daughter and her mother. They live together until the mother remarries a much younger man she met in a host club. Your automatic assumption might be that the mother is in the midst of a mid-life crisis or that the husband is looking for a meal ticket, and the daughter would agree with you. I remind you that this is Yoshinaga, so it’s more complicated than that.

Everything is more complicated than it seems in Yoshinaga’s narrative universe. People are both nicer and meaner than they initially seem, and relationships are more quietly satisfying and functional than an observer might assume. Yoshinaga is deeply interested in the grace notes of interpersonal interaction, even in her slighter works. That’s the source of a lot of the pleasure for me – the apparently minor, digressive moments that get to the heart of her characters.

I enjoyed all of the pieces collected here, but my favorite was a two-part look at a beautiful, selfless young woman who decides to pursue an arranged marriage. It works very nicely as a comedy of nightmare dating, but it evolves into a much richer character study. It’s sweet, funny and, by the end, surprisingly sad, but sad in a way I can absolutely support.

While she’s not in every story, Mari, the mother, is a treasure. She’s a survivor, but she’s got self-esteem issues. She can be abrasive, but her honesty never fails to be refreshing and sometimes even useful. I smiled a little every time she showed up, knowing she’d provide some withering observation on the endearing flakes around her, a flash of unexpected tenderness, or both. Of all the men and women portrayed here, she best embodies the aspects of life that interest Yoshinaga – work, family, love, and the resentment and solace they can provide.

All My Darling Daughters ran in Hakusensha’s Melody magazine, an older-skewing shôjo magazine that’s home to Ôoku. I’m not all that familiar with the magazine’s output, but Yoshinaga’s participation is certainly enough to put it on my radar.

(This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)