One Piece Diaries #72 – One Piece x Toriko Collaboration Special

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: One Piece Episode 542 + Toriko Episode 51

Hello! I wasn’t exactly on time this time, but at least I didn’t abandon you for a whole year.

I was really getting into One Piece until I hit Episode 542. From 539 – 541, the story focused on the Fisher Tiger flashback. I’ll talk about that more once I get through it, but for now I’ll say that it featured some incredible storytelling. Which is why it was so annoying to be interrupted by this Toriko x One Piece crossover.

Technically, I didn’t have to watch it, but I’ve committed myself to completionism, so I did. I’ve talked before about why Toriko in particular bothers me – I won’t rehash all the details about why the creator is problematic, but if you’re interested you can read One Piece Diaries #66, where I discuss it in detail.

So, what about the actual episodes? In them, Chopper comes down with an illness called Deep Sea Fever. This illness drastically lowers the victim’s body temperature, then raises it, then ultimately ends their life unless they eat a specific combination of rare foods that only grow in certain seasons. Luckily the island they happen to be on has a tower – which was also a mushroom – that contains areas with multiple weather patterns, so they’re able to get the items and feed them to Chopper, leading to his recovery.

To be honest, I was bored out of my mind. That’s why it took so long to write this review – I literally could not force myself to watch these episodes until today. Medical stuff is my special interest – seriously, when I was in college I wrote my thesis on the representation of tuberculosis in literature – so the fact that a story revolving around an illness was so boring to me that I couldn’t even focus for a 20-minute episode is telling. I guess I liked seeing the crew rally around Chopper to help him, but of course they’re going to do that. They didn’t even really seem as worried as they should have been given the situation – maybe because they knew they were in a lackluster special where nothing of consequence was going to happen.

Overall … unless you’re incredibly charmed by the unusual foods in the Toriko world, I do not recommend watching this crossover. Next time, I’ll be back with something more substantial to talk about – I have a lot of thoughts about the Fisher Tiger episodes and I’m happy to be done with this episodes so that I can get back to them.

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