One Piece, Anime Extraordinaire.

Captain Jack Sparrow, ahoy! A lad is about to take your place.

As long as I can remember, I have resisted the pull of anime. Throughout my University days, I would listen to my colleagues talk, fight and defend their favourite animes. One man’s meat is another’s man's poison. You keep your anime and I will hold on to my books.

It was the Boys that finally led me to Anime, my very first anime was Pokemon. I watched a few episodes just to get a hang of what they were watching and determine if it was safe enough for them to consume.

Then they moved on to Naruto, I enjoyed watching this with them but when I heard about the number of episodes each season had, I gave it up. How could I invest some much time into this? Precious time I can use to devour books? No, thanks.

Netflix came in and the Boys started cooing about One Punch Man. I wearily followed to make sure they were not exposed to things they shouldn’t be and got hooked. One Punch Man was the first anime I truly watched and enjoyed. Then I checked anime movies since anime series can be long and unending.

Flavors of Youth: International Version, New Gods: Nezha Reborn, Violet Evergarden the Movie, and Spirited Away caught my attention and although I am no big Anime fan, I can say I am in the fandom.

Then Netflix announced One Piece. One of the first things I did was to research how many episodes it had, 1,075. I laughed in Fantasy and left it alone. If it had 1,075 episodes and Netflix is only creating 8. Just how long would it take to film it all?

A friend convinced me to watch by giving it a good rating, and then people started throwing spoilers left, right and centre. So I thought to myself, it is best to watch it before they spoil it just as they did October first.

It was one of my best anime series decisions. One Piece was all I never thought it was and more.

We followed Monkey D. Luffy, with his signature straw hat and his rag-tag crew on an epic voyage for treasure, the prized possession which once belonged to the infamous dead pirate Gold Roger which is the One Piece.

The straw hat crew includes swordsman Roronoa Zoro, thief and mapmaker Nami, storyteller Usopp, and sous chef Sanji. I don’t do this often but I liked Zoro immediately I saw him. It helps that his name is Zoro, a childhood reminder of a hooded Mexican hero who fights for the poor.

Luffy with his elastic limbs is always optimistic which drives both his friends and rivals crazy and earns him the loyalty of his crew as he can be trusted to show up and fight for their dreams.

Since I came in fresh without background knowledge of his powers, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw how far his rubber body could go. While it was fun to watch him do all that, there would be no Gum Gum fruit for this pretty lady, not being able to swim in a world that is filled with water is too much of a risk to take.

The villains themselves are spectacular from Alvida, Kuro, Buggy, Arlong and Dracule Mihawk. I was impressed with Mihawk. He fought off three swords from Zoro, a legendary pirate hunter with a tiny blade. That is badass. I don’t know if Axe Hand Morgan would be considered a villain since he is on the side of the Marines but a change of attire and he might as well be one of them.

Despite all the challenges and near-life-and-death experiences, they went through, they kept pulling through being there for each other regardless of their past and working it out.

Would I recommend it? Yes. Please go and watch it.

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