It's about time I raved about One Piece. Alongside Death Note, this is one of my favourite animes. It's all about Monkey D. Luffy, and his quest to become Pirate King by fiding the legendary treasure One Piece. On his travels, he gathers a crew (the Japanese term is 'nakama', an elegant term that means a friend who isn't related, more like a comrade), finds a ship, explores the world, and of course fights bad guys with his Devil Fruit powers.
I'll admit that when I first started watching it, I had just finished watching a lot of Naruto, so it took me a while to get used to the different animation style, also the pace and humour. But once Luffy sets off from the first town with the Marines that should be arresting him instead waving him off from the shore, crying manfully, I really started to love it.
But it's hard to sum up just what's so good about One Piece in a short synopsis (plus there's the issue of spoilers). This is an anime / manga with a lot of heart and a lot of style. There's very little of the introspective brooding that other shows use to drag out storylines (hello Naruto), and all the characters are given their good and bad sides, and are more lovable for it. Oh, and it's also damn funny.
****Side note: This is the original Japanese version I'm talking about, or course. The American version has been butchered by editing and redubbing (violence has been toned down and the orchestrated score has been removed). The good news in that Funimation (the guys behind the English dubs of Dragonball and the excellent Yu Yu Hakusho), now have the One Piece license, so hopefully it'll get a better treatment.****
Anyway, the best way to find out more is to just watch it! There's a couple of really good fansub projects for this show. The first I would recommend is this:
Kaizoku fansubs
These guys are doing a really good job with subbing One Piece, but they're a little behind with the episodes. Still, if you're only just starting to watch One Piece, you'll have 200+ episodes to watch before worrying about that problem.
If you watch 200+ episodes and need a new subber, you'll have to bounce between various places:
Gerusama (episodes 219 - 258)
ADC Elites (episodes 248 - 294)
Vegapunk (episodes 294 - present)
Go watch.
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