One Piece 1-3 (Omnibus)

Eiichiro Oda – Viz – 2010 – 56+ volumes
this is a 3-in-1 volume, different from the VizBig omnibuses. It’s labeled “East Blue.”

I’ll be brief here, since I’ve already covered this material elsewhere on this site.  Actually, wow, there’s only three volumes of One Piece I haven’t talked about, and these three are it.  I think that’s because I wrote a big long gushy full-length review for these, but since nobody has seen those in years… ah, I’ll still try to keep it brief.  Nobody wants to hear me gush more.  I’m doing that enough as it is with the Skypiea arc.

The 3-in-1 volume is a pretty good deal.  It’s 600 pages for $15, which is cheaper than the three volumes would be, and it also takes up less room.  Now, this isn’t like the VizBig omnibuses, it’s the same size as the regular volumes and has no color pages or fancy cover or bonus content like those do.  This is literally just the pages from the three volumes bound together into one volume.  The paper quality is also… er, very… thin.  Very thin.  But I always kind of like that, even if it’s thin enough to feel like it’ll tear as you turn the page.  I think thin paper goes along well with the types of stories in manga, somehow, but that’s just me.  I know most people hate thin paper.  This has it.  It’s also very cheap price-wise, and I liked having all three volumes to read together.  Take that as you will.

It’s labeled “East Blue” the same way the new volumes are labeled “Skypiea” and “Water 7.”  I wonder if all the volumes until the characters reach the Grand Line will be rebranded “East Blue,” or if that’s just for these early stories since they lack a common theme.

It’s strange going back and reading this while I’m simultaneously reading Skypiea (and, heck, the newest chapters at the execution stand, so it’s like beginning, middle, and sort-of end).  It’s amazing that the art looks more-or-less the same since artists usually evolve over the course of 30 volumes, but the art started out very good in the first place.  If anything, it’s gotten much more playful, cartoony, and detailed over the years, and usually the opposite happens in a long-running series like this.  The storytelling is the biggest change, and it’s been so long since I’ve read the beginning that I was rather surprised by how far it’s come.  These first chapters are simple defeat-the-bad-guy stories.  Luffy is a bit more coherent, but he has to be since his crew isn’t there to balance out his zaniness (though Nami appears in volume 2, and things get better from there since she’s a good straight man).  You can see the themes of “treasure” being more than just gold coming through very early on, and how Luffy and his crew’s goals differ from that of regular pirates, but since the story and characters are just being established, it’s like a very rudimentary version of One Piece.

The biggest shock was in how I perceived the first chapter.  The first time I read it, it blew me away.  I had heard of the series before, but I read that chapter in the first issue of Shonen Jump USA and immediately read the next 30 volumes.  I’ve never been so completely in love with a series from the first chapter.  All these years later, it’s not quite the same.  That’s probably just because I’ve read it too much, though.  It’s still good, very good, and I’ve always appreciated the way it nearly stands as a one-shot story (probably because it’s the third version of a one-shot story).  While the moral is not subtle, I like the way that Oda trusts the reader to pick up on it, rather than have it explicitly spelled out by several characters the way it usually is in shounen manga.  Romance Dawn is magical still, I think I’ve just been 0ver-exposed.

In this omnibus, we see the confrontations with Alvida, Captain Morgan (ironic that the first historic pirate reference is a  marine, and also a brand of rum), Buggy, and the beginning of the Klahadore/Captain Kuro story.  I still love the weird situations and characters here, but it’s pretty clear that it’s sticking pretty close to the shounen manga formula.  I’d speculate that the series gets more fantastic, literally and figuratively, as a result of Oda getting more creative control as it got more popular.  Again though, this is all still very, very good, even as the most basic thing One Piece has to offer.

The strangest thing is probably the humor.  Oda hasn’t started using the two-faced technique, which is a bit better for the jokes since the characters are more obviously reacting to the punchlines (a serious face on one side, bug-eyes and teeth on the other).  The jokes just aren’t the same without the wacky gag faces the characters make.  I always thought it was a weird thing to do, but having it taken away here, I see how well it works.

New to One Piece?  Start at the beginning, friend.  It’s worth it.  Pick up this cheap volume to help you on your way.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.