One Piece 30

Eiichiro Oda – Viz – 2010 – 56+ volumes

I’m not really sure what it is, but man do I love the Skypiea arc. This volume was kind of slow, “killing off” the remaining characters right away to set the stage for the fight between Luffy and Eneru, which hit a snag towards the middle in order to give Eneru a chance to be just a little more evil before Luffy can swing back in and lay him low. I could see all the mechanics laid bare, the attempts to bring in certain characters to please fans one last time before the final battle, the 360 that justified certain characters following Eneru… there’s no secrets here. And yet it’s just far more entertaining here than it is in other story arcs. It’s probably still the novelty of Sky Island combined with how much I like the jolly/evil Eneru.

Even while he’s wiping out all humanity in the sky, I still can’t bring myself to hate Eneru.  He’s got delusions of grandeur larger than any other villain in the series, and his confidence in himself combined with his complete ignorance of a lot of the stuff the Straw Hats know just make him loveable.  He also laughs and doesn’t take too much seriously, which is probably the main reason he projects the likable image.

The mechanic that I’ve been waiting for ever since I learned Eneru was an electricity devil fruit user has come into play, and it was glorious.  There really didn’t need to be anything else at all in this volume, the chapter or two where he and Luffy first meet is simply amazing.  As I said, he’s quite full of himself, so he reacts rather comically when confronted with Luffy’s… natural dominance in their fight.  The single best page in the series is probably the unexpected, extremely detailed full-page illustration in the middle of a chapter containing nothing but Eneru’s face making an exaggerated, Looney Tunes-ish expression of shock.  Beautiful stuff.  I really wish the fight had really been as easy as it first seemed, since it would have been really funny if all that buildup had come to nothing, but now I get to see a little bit more of Eneru and Luffy fighting.  Luffy still has to overcome Eneru’s mantra, which was also pretty obviously there simply to stop Luffy from beating him too bad.  Luffy’s already come up with a few good ways to combat it, though, so let’s see how that works out.

Exciting stuff.  I really can’t ever get enough of this series, and it’s because of storylines like this.  Can’t wait for the next volume.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.