One Piece Review - Sky Island
Our next story saga is a transitory one, and pretty short compared to the others, but that doesn't mean there isn't any praise to sing and issues to hash out!
We start as Jaya, we get introduced to the concept of sky islands, which add more to the wacky world of OP, and allows Oda to explore much more than normal islands would allow him. Especially at this point in the story, I think this is a great story element. I often find when I write that the hardest part of the story to write is right after the beginning into the start of the middle. Your ideas for the beginning are running out, but you're far enough in that you need to consider all the way through where you want the story to go. Taking our crew up and away from the world they, and we, know allows for the introduction of new elements while not bringing up questions about why hadn’t people thus far heard of this? Oda takes this and is able to still deliver a utterly concrete look at his characters in preparation. It's almost as if he's saying “This is Luffy, this is Zoro, this is Nami, before I wasn’t sure, but this is what they are for the rest of the story”. Luffy and Zoro don't fight back against small fries, but Luffy isn’t afraid to throw a punch in someone’s defense. This arc also serves as proof that the straw hats need to move forward to find challenges, the only fight ends in Luffy one-tapping Bellamy, a character which will come back. We do see some of these challenges as a little preview, Luffy meets Blackbeard but doesn’t know who he is, and we see a meeting of some of the Warlords of the Sea to discuss Crocodile’s defeat and replacement, showing us Kuma and Doflamingo, who both will eventually fight the straw hats to varying degrees.
At the end of Jaya, the straw hats get launched up into a new land, Skypeia. We get a pretty well thought out nation with the main cause for attention being Upper Yard, where the main villain resides. Something interesting is that even though Luffy wants to explore it, they have to be dragged there while trying to leave Skypiea. Enel, the villain, showcases some strong power and we get into the fights leading up to the main event. This is when I started noticing one of my main problems with at least early to mid OP, the minion fights are rarely very interesting to me. To briefly compare it to another manga you probably know, Dragon Ball, I would much rather watch the Nappa or Ginyu Force fight than those of One Piece. If I had to guess it's because rarely has anyone in One Piece heard of these villains and there's nothing to suggest our heroes might not win. We get Vegeta freaking out over the Ginyu force arriving, and like with Nappa, a lengthy fight for survival until Goku arrives. These things helps add much needed weight to these, albeit short lived, villains. One Piece rarely has something similar for better and for worse, with this situation benign for the worse. Moving onto the final battle, I do like how much of a team effort it is, Sanji, Ussop and Nami all confront Enel, with Sanji even working to destroy Enel’s ship forcing him to rush to fix it, giving time for Luffy to recover from his first encounter with Enel. We get another great Luffy moment, needing to ring the bell to prove to Mont Blanc from Jaya that his city of gold is real, its also a subversion of expectations as we expect him to use the golden ball, but he actually hits Enel into the bell to ring it. We also get some maybe unintentional foreshadowing, with Skypeians wishing for a god, and Luffy shows up, and we see his silhouette through the clouds, which could be taken as references to the Sun God Nika that Luffy comes to resemble later in the series. Over all this arc is pretty good, it still has the issues I’ve had with earlier arcs and they’re starting to grate more, but lets see how it continues!
