One Piece Diaries #42: Ice Hunter Arc

One Piece is one of the most beloved anime in history, but at over 1,000 episodes, it’s tough for those who haven’t been watching from the start to jump on board. One Piece Diaries tracks one writer’s experience with this daunting rite of passage. With hype for the highs and critique for the lows, this column will help you decide whether to take your own One Piece journey – or let you relive the one you’re already on. It will update biweekly every other Thursday.

Episodes Watched: 326 – 336 – Ice Hunter Arc

In my last review, I said that I hoped there would be something to enjoy in the Ice Hunter arc. My hopes were in vain, because I was bored out of my mind during this arc.

Maybe it’s because we’re starting the Fall 2022 anime season and there are a ton of exciting new shows I’d rather devote my time to, or maybe it’s because the arc was genuinely terrible, but whatever the reason, I did not have a good time.

The arc involves an encounter with the Phoenix Pirates, a pirate crew who turns out to be working for a family of bounty hunters who are looking to cash in on the Straw Hats’ recently acquired bounties. More importantly, they want to get ahold of the Straw Hat’s Jolly Roger, which they intend to give to their father Don Accino as a birthday gift. The Straw Hats are trying to get the flag back before their captain finds out it’s gone and criticizes them for failing to protect it.

I didn’t find any of this especially compelling. The Accino kids were one-dimensional and boring. The only ones I was even a little bit interested in were Arbell, her little sister Lil, and her husband Salchow. Salchow and Arbell’s lovey-dovey relationship was extremely cute, even if it kept being interrupted by Sanji’s attempts to break them up. That part was really annoying. I get that Sanji’s a pervert, but trying to break up somebody else’s relationship seemed like a step further than he would go in canon.

I did find Lil’s conflict interesting – she missed hanging out with her sister after her marriage, so she ends up attaching herself to Robin instead. That was cute, and it resolved nicely in the end when Arbell apologized.

But that was the only thing about the Accino family that had any emotional depth whatsoever. The rest of it was just yelling about uninteresting powers and having boring, easily resolved fights. Seriously, one of them was named Hockera and has exactly zero attributes other than fighting with a hockey puck.

Now, about the whole ‘capture the flag’ thing – I get why their jolly roger is important, but it feels massively overstated in this episode, especially since they have TWO FLAGS. It’s not like they can’t display their identity or make a new flag if they really need a new one. Their whole mission didn’t feel like a real problem, so it was hard to get invested in the outcome.

Don Accino wasn’t an especially impressive villain either. I guess his relationship with his kids was interesting – they seemed to simultaneously love and be terrified by him. But that element wasn’t really developed. And his Hot-Hot Fruit was nothing noteworthy. We’ve already seen flame-based powers in much cooler characters like Ace.

Also, not that I’m desperately offended or anything, but stereotypical, poorly developed Italian-esque mafioso characters always kind of annoy me, since the Italian part of my family apparently was involved with the mafia a few generations back and everything I’ve heard about it is super depressing.

The side story about the Phoenix Pirates was a little bit more interesting. The captain, Puzzle, is deeply depressed after sustaining a severe injury in the New World and losing one of his crewmates, Vigaro. Once he recovers enough to have an opinion, he thinks they’re much better off working as bounty hunters – apparently, that’s a safer gig. I don’t really see how it is since it involves directly confronting pirates constantly instead of occasionally working with them, but whatever. With the encouragement of his crew – and a little from Luffy – he eventually does decide to go back to being a pirate.

One thing that stood out to me is that they actually had someone die. While death has happened in the series before, this is the first time we’re hearing about it happening in the New World. That implies that the New World is a pretty dangerous place. So, good on this arc for setting the stage for the future, I guess.

At the end of the arc there was an AU based on Japanese superhero shows and call-in programs. I think I would have gotten more out of it if I were more tuned in with Japanese live TV from 2007, but in 2007 I was an American lit major who barely even kept up with American pop culture because I was too busy writing Death Note fanfiction in between trying to read Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. The episode was fun, but I was mostly just waiting for it to be over.

Overall, I don’t recommend the Ice Hunter arc to anyone who isn’t a stubborn completionist like me. But next up is something I’m really excited about – the Thriller Bark arc! You won’t be seeing this until much later, but as I write this, I’m ten days out from Halloween. I’m pumped about being able to start the spooky arc in time for the holiday! Since it’s 45 episodes long, expect several reviews.

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