One Piece 18

One Piece is the only series I read… er, weekly.  It’s really that good.  This week’s chapter is one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen (for later reference: 513 and Luffy’s nakama), so I decided it was a good time to read the newest English volume I had to cheer me up.

Bon Clay will cheer me up under any circumstances.  The English version tickled me pink.  In the original, Bon Clay is an okama, which in this case is like a drag queen.  Any instance of “Oh Come My Way” is “Okama Way,” but “Oh Come My Way” is actually close, and is the name of Bon Clay’s theme song which I’m considering uploading briefly for the hell of it because I like Bon Clay so much.  I believe his fighting style is Okama Kenpo, he wears a cape that says Okama Way, and when Vivi is talking about the rumors she’s heard about him, she is saying “I didn’t know what he looked like!  I only heard that he dressed like an okama, talked like an okama, had ‘Okama Way’ written on his back…”  It’s why he’s Mr. 2 Bon Clay, both the male and female code names, because he just doesn’t need a female partner.  His ballet theme also fits in… er, tangentially with his code name, since there is a dance, the Bon-Odori dance, that is performed during the Obon festival (though it’s got nothing to do with ballet, to be fair).  I don’t really care about the change in the English version, because it’s a bizarre thing to have in there in the first place, but it was funny in the original, and it’s funnier to see it edited out here.

EDIT: I hadn’t really thought about this, but Bon Clay could be seen as an extremely negative stereotype if you did not know he was straight.  One of the first things he does is hit on Nami, and then transform into her to show off her breasts.  Perhaps “okama” has a different connotation than “drag queen,” and perhaps it does imply that he’s gay, I’m not familiar enough with it to say.  He seemed like a drag queen to me though, and not really a parody of anything but himself.  If he is meant to be a stereotype, then that is seriously one of the most offensive things I’ve ever seen in my life.

Bon Clay obviously enjoys himself immensely, and I’m still waiting for him to come back into the story somehow after the Alabasta arc in non mini-comic form.  I especially like how he enjoys bugging Miss Merry Christmas so much.  The fact that those two are opposites in every way pleased me greatly.  Mr. 2′s just extremely funny in a way that is unique to One Piece, in that every character is funny in a new and different way every time.  His sleazy wink at Nami, the way he got along so well with Luffy and company, and his dance line through the desert with his crewmates, basically every scene with Bon Clay is spectacular.

What about the rest of the volume?  Well, the preliminaries of the super-long Alabasta arc are laid out, the Straw Hats wind up in the country and move from town to town, and the political situation between the king, the rebels, and Mr. 0 is explained at length, along with how to cope with the desert conditions.  Exposition exposition, except somehow One Piece makes it awesome.

Oh, and I almost forgot.  More important than Alabasta, and even more important than Bon Clay, we get Portgaz D. Ace.  He doesn’t stick around for long, unfortunately, but he’s still one of the most important characters we’ve met so far, and he’s just come back into the story as of a few months ago in Japan.  Not all the way back in, but there is some… question about how he is faring.

So yes, One Piece is still one of my favorite series of all time, and Bon Clay is just one more reason it’s quite literally one of the best series money can buy.