the small details and joys that make One Piece so great
what I truly love about One Piece that it’s full of unexpected joy. I mean really, really unexpected joy. The kind that exists pretty much nowhere else. I’m not talking about Luffy’s kindness, because that’s connected the plot, part of the main storyline - I’m talking about the little, absolutely unnecessary little details that could be easily omitted from the main story, yet, here they are.
Let’s take Buggy, is there anyone who tought he’d be more than the baddie of the week? Yet he just kept appearing, and the fact that he’s a Shichibukai now is just. Goddamn. Hilarious. We all know that he has no buissness doing any serious piracy, but damn, we can’t help but root for him at this point. Fake it till you make it, Buggy boi.
Or take Bon-chan, he started out as a annoying caricature, turned out to be pretty cool and then a noble-hearted dude after Alabasta. After a while, after we’ve forgotten about him a long time ago - Enies Lobby, Thriller Bark and Sabaody happened, duh - we meet him again in Impel Down!! A little friendship and kindness in the dark. How he helps Luffy through the hardships of Impel Down, rooting for him as he fights the poison, how he stays behind, sacrificing himself again is just. Wow. Bon-chan truly is the real MVP.
It would have been easy to write around him - don’t poison Luffy, let Ace destory the Marine ships at Alabasta, have Boa or the promotion-hungry Hannyabal open the Gates of Justice at Impel Down. It’d even have been way easier than spending the ink and pages on him, yet here he is.
We have Zoro, Mikawk and Perona, the three of them not only being polar opposites, but they have literally no reason or means to even really meet at all in civil life. Like, Zoro is with Luffy, Mihawk is either nagging Shanks or some random pirates, or pouting in his castle, while Perona is at Thriller Bark.
And yet, somehow fate - and Kuma - brings them together, and they became the wierdest and most unexpectedly candy-colored goth family in existence. Think about how we got to know Perona! She was just some random annoying one timer side-villian. And a few hundred chapters later she’s accompanying Zoro to Sabaody!! Simply because she was worried that he’d get lost!! And, as we see on the cover pictures, she even stucks with Mihawk after that. The only reason being is that they just simply got to like each other’s company during those 2 years. No villianous plot against our heroes, no planned revenge, no some mystery alliance, no further advancement to the plot. They just do everyday stuff like farming and playing with baby bears. Probably daydrinking a lot. Just two very extra human beings being absolutely mundane. I love them.
There was no reason at all, from a writer’s point of view, to bring back Perona. No one would have cared. These kind of characters are always kept separate, they live in different circles. No one even liked her - but this is just great:
(u bitch, as if you didn’t remeber breaking two of his).
Or, a wierd example at the first glance, Sengoku. Law already had his sob backstory, a truly tragic, sad, and well-written one. The amber lead poisoning, the whole Dofflamingo-Rosinante Tenryuubito affair, etc. It gave a lot of depth to the charaters, gave information about the Goverment’s corruption, reason for the upcoming battle against Dofflamingo. It would have been more than enough for Corazon to die saving Law from his brother. Honestly, it’s fucking tragic even by One Piece standards, where everyone and their dog’s got a past that makes you cry.
But there’s also Sengoku in the picture. We don’t really know anything about him, how he is as a person. It doesn’t really matter. But here it turns out that he too, like Law, loved Corazon as family, as a son, and now the only person he can share this feeling is the kid-became-a-pirate that he died saving. His grief, his connection to Law doesn’t give any plus as far as the story goes. It’s like Perona’s and Mihawk’s case - normally no other writer would connect two charaters as separate as they are.
Garp taking in Ace, saving the Pirate King’s son was absolutely crucial to the plot, to Luffy, to the main events unfolding on the long run, not that it takes any of his credit away. But in Sengoku’s case it doesn’t change a thing - he didn’t raise Law or saved him at Dressrosa. He could have been completely left out. He’s just another big name character, an antagonist, a fleet admiral who helped to kill Ace. Yet turns out he’s also just another human being, who grieves someone he loved.
Koala is similar too - she shoudn’t have been more than a plot device little girl to show us how bad the tenryuubito were and how kind Fisher Tiger was, maybe how the human-gyojin realtionships were going, but then! We see her again as an adult in the Revolutionary army! As Sabo’s partner! She’s a gyojin-karate instructor now! She’s alright and happy!! Like, it could have been just some other random girl, but then we never would have known that. Thanks, Oda.
Laboon! We all shed some tears when Luffy promised him to visit him after becoming Pirate King, didn’t we. And we kind of put him aside too - we knew it’d take a long time till they can meet again, and we’d just have to hope this scene woudn’t get lost by the - probably very eventful - end of the manga.
But then! Then! We meet Brook at Thriller Bark!! A member of the original crew that sailed with Laboon! And they haven’t forgotten about him at all, they were planning to go back! And Brook still does, and can only be persuated to stay with them after hearing about the new promise. Now the both the old and the original one will be fulfilled the same time!!!
It’s supposed to be a small thing, bc what is meeting a whale compared to the grand events unfolding. But maybe that’s it - it’s so small, so “meaningless” in the bigger picture, all of these are, that it’s really just nothing but the endless kindness and love this series is just full of with. They are really nothing but a wonderful gift to the reader.
And the best thing is, they all work by the inner logic of their world, they aren’t just random lucks and miracles. Why wouldn’t Kuma send Perona to the next best horror island he knows? He sent everyone the best place possible, and Peronsa likes this stuff. Why wouldn’t Bon Clay be in prison after getting caught by the Marines? After experiencing what she had, of course Koala would leave her village and join the rebel army. Buggy did really serve on the Pirate King’s ship, escaped Impel Down, was at Marineford, buddies with Shanks, no wonder people mistake him for a bigshot.
(These are also great for worldbuilding - there is an actual, lived-in world with people and their motives surrounding our heroes. The Earth doesn’t revolve around them, after all.)
This kind of attention to detail One Piece has is just wonderful, we all know that - but what really makes is so awesome (and heartwarming) are the little unimportant events like these.
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