The Arc That Sold Me On One Piece 

Pinned comment question of the day: what's _your_ favorite arc of One Piece (if you have one), and why? If you haven't gotten into the series, _NOW'S YOUR CHANCE_ - come back and tell me! I'd love to hear from you all.

Luffy's hat matters greatly to him. It was Shanks' gift to him before he left with his crew, almost seeming like an older brother to Luffy. Any time that it gets dropped, damaged, or blown in the wind, he's always quick to chase after and retrieve it before he loses it. It's such an important item to him that he based his pirate iconography around it. So when Luffy willingly put his hat on Nami to say that he would help her be free from the Arlong pirates, I knew stuff just got real. While I loved the struggle of seeing Luffy getting Tony tony chopper onto his crew as well, it had nowhere near as much emotional impact as knowing Nami had worked from childhood on a collection of maps for evil pirates. This is the arc that will sell you on the series.

The Arlong park arc is where the manga goes from enjoyable to something clearly special, something about the arc really shows the potential of the manga moving forward

You put it so well ;_; please keep talking about One Piece, you remind me also why I love the series aaaaaaa

I still say Arlong’s most impressive feat was doing all of this a boat ride away from where Smoker was stationed. One whisper of this reaching Loguetown and his head would have been on the block before you could blink.

not gonna wade through the comments to see if someone's mentioned it already, but i totally agree with your criticism of the anime for being badly paced and drawing out boring shots, etc. i watched the series with my wife and got to episode 800 or something before we learned about One Pace, a fan project designed to cut the anime down to match the pacing and storyline of the manga much more closely. its fucking amazing and i would recommend anyone interested in One Piece to check it out. huge props to the team working on it. One Piece is truly a revolutionary story and i love every bit of it. Oda is an amazing writer and artist.

"Help Me" was such a great moment only rivaled by "I want to live!" from Water 7/Ennis Lobby

Like literally when I went to my bookstore they were missing like the first 5 or so volumes of one-piece so I started reading near the end of the arc right before this one until a little after until I ran out of volumes at the store & was like hooked immediately by Nami's arc it was when I knew I was in the good shit. I still haven't sat down & sunk my teeth into the rest of the one piece but this arc alone made me consider myself a fan of the series

Jeez this video is 27 minutes longs, well scripted, well edited and well voiced and yet you still manager to stick deltarune chapter 2 music in the video that's crazy

i hate to admit that i did chuckle at the bipolar bear joke

I was expecting this to be abt Robin's arc, as that is what did it for a lot of people (myself included), however i love this Nami Appreciation video 💞💞💞

Comment for the algorithm. Praise be to the algorithm. Please bless this beautiful hedgehog with more views! Tbh the two scenes of Luffy putting his hat on namis head and him destroying the map room are the first scenes that pop into my head when I think of one piece. For good reason!

Even just a video about this arc is still enough to make me cry.

I've never seen or read any of One Piece, but I was in tears hearing you talk about it.

NezumiVA, thanks for making this video. I only come across your youtube channel to see your views on Ace Attorney, Fullmetal Alchemist, and this One Piece video, but you have cover somethings that I appreciate about each of these series and I thank you for that. I LOVE the way you went over everything that makes Arlong Park great (and I admit it's my favorite One Piece Arc). You point out the great way the arc slowly shows us Nami's backstory and how much both her village, family, and the Straw Hats mean to her, which makes the liberation of her and her village all the more sweeter. Also, I feel that describe how this arc demonstrates Luffy's character. Luffy is a friendly person, goofy, and optimistic, but he's here for Nami, his friend and crewmate. He saves the village, but that's more because it is tied to Nami's freedom from Arlong, not because he's out to save the world. It's very human for him to be more concerned with his crew/nakama/found-family, rather than some random opposed people. This is made very clear when you describe the map room scene, with Luffy basically ignoring Arlong himself to demolish the room, as he's concerned about breaking Nami free of Arlong's control on her, not defeating Arlong himself, as the destruction of charts and work he got out of Nami being more impactful to Arlong than a direct defeat (though his ego is definately bruised heavily everytime Luffy beats him). Regardless, thanks for the video and keep up the good work.

I’ve heard before that this arc is the one to get through to like one piece, so I’m stopping at 3:30, just after you said the arcs name and reminded me about it. I’ll come back when I’ve at least gotten through that much of OP

fuck, I cried so much while watching this video, after years of being a fan I still can't fathom how much I love this manga

So in summary, this was a good arc. You legitimately made me cry just from describing it lol

I knew it would be Arlong Park.

I swear you can find one line in each arc that will instantly bring tears to my eyes. Even the small ones. Maybe even Davy Back Fight. Maybe.

Watching that scene where nami asks for help ALWAYS makes me cry hard. wtf, i did not need this rn. 😭😭😭 (tho tbf, there are a lot of scenes in one piece that always make me cry. 😂😭😭😭😭😭😭)

I'm crying. Nintendo direct kicked ass and now I'm crying. Great vid.

oh this is perfect timing ive just been getting into one piece. good video!

I watched One Piece as a kid, but didn’t remember much about it at all. Through the years I’ve _constantly_ heard about how incredible it was, yet I kept putting off watching it because of how daunting the task was (lol since there are over 1000 episodes now, right?) Anyways…I’ve started watching again & the first 20 episodes or so weren’t that great.. and I didn’t understand the hype/wasn’t impressed. But continued on anyways. But just like this video says; when I got to the Arlong arc (about Nami’s backstory & her hometown) it made me see how great the show will eventually be. I love the camaraderie shown. As I’m writing this I just started episode 39. Luffy hasn’t even defeated Arlong yet, but of course I know he will lol otherwise there wouldn’t be hundreds of episodes. I’m not going to be watching this every day, but now I’m excited that I have *SO MANY* freaking episodes to watch. (Have to say that it’s creepy that my phone recommended this video to me, because I’ve been watching One Piece on my tablet. Lol glad I watched this tho)

16:48 that Made in Abyss ost caught me off guard

I don't watch the anime that much, but the Aarlong park arc has some of Lucy Christian's best acting ever.

If you’ll notice in the series, Luffy actively avoids listening to stories about his crews and others past. I’ve always viewed this as him not caring about who they were, but who they are now and will be in the future.

Fantastic video. I'm nearing (I think??) the end of Water 7 at this point in the manga, and I largely agree--I was 100% in with One Piece with the introducing my boy Usopp, but Arlong Park is the first arc to get tears out of me.

Damn you almost got me to cry at that end. Almost!

What the hell? I think this video might have just sold me on one piece. It sounds so earnest, sometimes it's cheesy but I like it when stories wear their hearts on their sleeves

Once again, a great video!! This was also the arc that got me really invested and into One Piece. I loved this arc. It was so good!! Thank you for putting everything good about this arc into words. Good job!! And I can't wait to see your future One Piece content!!

And what a better time to start your venture into One piece as it sails into its final saga

“ONE peace, that is!” 🤣

Memories, thanks for reminding me how great this arc was

3:40 Thank you.

Couldn't agree more! I have a friend who I'm trying to convince to jump into One Piece, but it's been slow going. And that's why I keep saying to just hold on until this arc.

YES!

Really miffed at myself that I didn't sub to your channel sooner before today even though I watched your scoob and shag video. Your stuff is great and I love seeing peoples interpretations, respectful opinions, and criticisms and I really like the way you do it! I'm eager to watch more of your stuff, if you ever feel like you might not know what video you should do next, I dont know if I can definitely speak for you or your audience id definitely reccomend a jujutsu kaisen video or maybe one about the game inscryption! (Definitely check out the second just on its own even, if you enjoy a card game thats easy to get into with horror themes its such a crazy story that I can't even talk about the mechanics without spoiling it but i can only compare it to undertale in how it managed to get me to feel and reflect about a videogame while also being impossible to talk about )

They grow ofcourse

Yay!

i was Watch One piece From the Begining but It didn't Really grab until the Skypiea Arc. XD

the fact you use klonoa ost at the start? like

What is the music at 9:36

duude Zatch bell

I hear one piece is still great. I fell off the wagon some time ago. Dressrosa was supposed to be the most emotional arc yet when I saw it, with a really important devil's fruit and a promise of brothers paying off after years of the Marineford death. Years later though, all I can feel when I bring the arc back into my mind, is a strong feeling of been over the strange pacing of massive, months-long flashbacks restarting the plot right before its climax, with flashbacks within flashbacks doubling down on the same issues, effectively feeling more like filler than what they were supposed to be. I'm sorry to say this, but, One Piece has taken one of the worst aspects of Superhero comics, the never-ending part, and has infused into it one of the worst literary devices of the shonen genre, the episodes long and convoluted flashbacks. This arc, the Arlong arc is such a great example of how well the show could balance those exact elements, flashbacks and character progression. Nowadays that shame strategy it feels so artificially bloated and repeated to the point you kinda find yourself not caring all that much. The main characters have all gone through their character journeys more or less and are, sometimes, functional adults, when they are not just dumbed down for comedy's sake, but that has backfired majorly, making people freaking Zorro, Luffy, Sanji... kinda boring. I don't feel the same fire for the show and I blame a lot of that lack of interest more on the show itself than on me growing up and, possibly, experiencing a pretty natural swift of tastes, something that doesn't seem to be the case. The interesting part is that I do still have strong emotions for Arlong Park, for Alabasta, for Impel Down, for Marineford... but the excitement and the enjoyment keep escaping my grasp as the shoe goes on, pretty much doing the same thing, leaving the characters mostly the same traits wise, without much drama by now as they are as I said before, mostly worked through their issues. I don't know, I'm tired... I want something new, something different, hell, something retrospective and maybe deconstructive of the whole genre. (cough cough Chainsaw Man, COUGH COUGH) Wake me up when we dig out the one piece I guess.

Saying the anime chapter count is almost equal to the manga chapter count as support for the recommendation to read the manga instead of the anime is misrepresenting the situation. For hundred of episodes, the anime adapts around 2 chapters per episode, and only after hundreds of episodes drops the number of adapted chapters per episode below one. I disagree that the manga is the superior choice for the first parts of One Piece, as the anime is very good I think, and the anime and manga both have advantages and disadvatages.

But can one piece BEAT GOKU?!

I am so happy you are doing the manga and not the anime. The anime is devastatingly bad . Other than the excellent voice acting, it’s just so sad that one piece is paced worse than original dbz’s anime. It’s shocking it’s accepted by anyone these days. A couple of the movies are rad though.