One Piece Diaries #61: The Crewmates’ Whereabouts And A Special Retrospective Before Marineford

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 be updated biweekly every other Thursday.

Episodes Watched: 453 – 458

Hello hello! My apologies for the delay. When I discovered that I was not, in fact, starting Marineford, but was instead going to have to watch several episodes of checking in with the rest of the Straw Hats and two filler episodes, I wasn’t exactly jazzed about continuing and I ended up focusing more on Thanksgiving with my family and NaNoWriMo (which I won!!) than catching up on One Piece.

But I’m back, and before I actually start Marineford, I’ll have to tell you about what came before.

The Crewmates’ Whereabouts

For this set of episodes, we got to check back in with the Straw Hats during their various adventures.

Nami’s storyline sees her deciding that she actually likes the weird old man with weather powers, and that she wants to learn from him. While not tremendously engaging, it does set the stage for her developing new powers so that’s fine I guess.

You all already know that I dislike Sanji’s episode. It’s amazing to me that the scenes involving the Newkama in Impel Down were so positive and inclusive and the ones in the Kamabakka Kingdom are so gross. It’s probably because they’re depicted through Sanji’s eyes, and Sanji is a transphobe who apparently has a thing for forced feminization. I guess that’s something new that I learned about him? Maybe if this helps him explore his relationship to gender and be less weird about women it’ll end up being a good thing, but I’m not holding my breath.

Franky is still being powered by tea instead of cola. That’s fine, but at this point the joke is a little stale. What was cool about this half episode was that he ended up in the lab of Dr. Vegapunk, a scientist with an incredible name who’s been hinted at more than once. I really want to know more about him, so it was fun to see that come up.

Most of Zoro’s section was spent getting lost and bickering with Perona. It was a rehash of the previous episode so it wasn’t that interesting. I did appreciate the ending, though – seeing Mihawk implies promising things to come.

Robin continued her adventures in the despotic land of Tequila Wolf. While this story is probably the best plotwise, it would be nice if Robin could have at least one good thing happen to her. Her life has already been screwed up beyond belief by the government, so is this whole interlude necessary?

Usopp is still on the Boin Archipelago, and he might be stuck there for a while. While this island is covered in delicious food, the land devours anything that’s, “overweight,” for…some reason. This doesn’t make any logistical sense. It can’t be based on mass, because if that’s true, trees – which weigh more than people no matter how fat they are – would be eaten too. Could the island specifically want to eat fat? Maybe, but then they’d have said that. It just feels like a weird excuse to make fatphobic jokes and I’m not into it.

Chopper remains on the island of giant birds and racist native caricatures. This time, instead of just running away, he ends up caring for an injured baby bird – who is about ten times his size. It’s nice to see him get the chance to use both his doctoring skills and his ability to talk to other animals, but that’s about it.

Brook learns that the people of Harahettania want him to defeat the Longarm Tribe, who they’ve been at war with for a while. He isn’t impressed by their unwillingness to even try to solve their own problems, but he does want to help because they were kind to him and gave him food. This could have been an interesting idea had it not been interrupted every ten seconds by Brook’s panty obsession.

A Special Retrospective Before Marineford

This wasn’t the worst clip show I’d ever seen. It focused on reintroducing characters and relationships who will most likely be relevant in the upcoming arc.

Some of the formatting was a bit weird – the first episode, for example, was formatted as if it were Luffy’s memories, but it included scenes that Luffy wasn’t a part of. Still, it was fine. I wouldn’t recommend watching this just for entertainment value, but if you feel like you need a refresher on Ace’s history or the various high-ranking members of the Marines, this does a decent job.

Overall, I’m not that enthused about this set of episodes, but I am looking forward to finally, finally getting to start Marineford.

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