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So, the other day I downloaded 94 volumes of this disgustingly long manga series called "One Piece", and I was about to just go ham on reading it, when a thought struck me: in this TYoOL 2020, the sort of person who'd be able to actually claim they're "blind" on One Piece is like.... extremely rare. And I know the series has a shitload of fans who might be interested in what a random layman like me has to say about (for example) the worst character in literally anything ever Usopp. So I figure, why not take the time between chapters to write down my thoughts? And why not write them down in my favorite place for dumping words into a white box, this wonderful internet site called somethingawful.com? Anyway, I'm sure I won't be reading this super fast or anything, because I'm not reading in my native language (which is English) and also because I'm generally an excruciatingly slow manga reader anyway! (Not excruciating for me, mind you, but for literally all my friends who've ever wanted me to read something quickly, very much so.) I imagine writing my thoughts on each and every chapter won't exactly speed up that process, but this'll be fun for me so I don't care. Also, regarding spoilers: The point of this thread is basically for fans of the series to enjoy a retrospective, while also seeing what this one idiot thinks of your favorite moments, or whatever. So I expect anyone who replies here will be a fan of One Piece. PLEASE let me stay as blind as possible for this. Like, I assume all of you are smart enough to use your best judgement here, but just to be clear, here's a list of examples that I WILL consider a spoiler for the purposes of this thread. "Don't worry, Usopp gets better." "I'm so excited for him to read that one moment coming up." "This one comment of his is really ironic because of reasons." "Haha, you don't even know how correct/wrong your predictions are." [Getting really excited about a character that I'd have no reason to expect becomes a bigger part of the series.] And so on. If you really want to comment about how I made an absurd and hilariously wrong prediction, or how my one comment will be really ironic once I get to [future part], etc, please post it in the general One Piece thread or wherever else. And here are some examples of things I WON'T consider spoilers. -Engaging with my predictions/etc by offering in-universe logic from chapters I've already read. Though be really careful with this one, because sometimes details are meant to be overlooked so that a later reveal hits harder without being an rear end-pull. Then again, I don't really know if One Piece has huge reveals like that. -Talking about your impressions of a character/plotline/etc from the perspective of exactly where I am in the series. What I mean by that is, stuff like "yeah, I also think/thought the arc drags a bit here" is fine, while something like "this arc does drag a bit here, but it picks up by the end" is not. And I'm sure there's also plenty of acceptable behavior that I forgot to mention. I trust you to use your best judgement. Now then... this is where I talk about how I'm not exactly SUPER purely "blind", but according to my friends who read One Piece, the extent of my knowledge is essentially infant-esque. But it's really important in a blind read to list off literally everything you know going in. So that's what I'll do here, organized roughly by where the info comes from. WHAT I KNOW: Things I remember from that time 6-ish years ago when I read up to the beginning of the Arlong Park Arc (in English) -Luffy's crew eventually consists of Sanji, Nami, Usopp, Zorro, and I think maybe one additional unimportant character who never does anything. -Usopp is the literal worst character. I remember practically nothing whatsoever about him, except that I had this impression of him when I was reading, lol. -Clown pirate named Buggy or some poo poo. -Nami has a sister who really loving loves oranges. -There's some kids named Onion and Carrot or whatever during the arc where we meet Zorro. -Magic fruit gives you superpowers and also you can't swim for some reason. Things from that one fighting game I played when I was like 10 -There's a small reindeer who becomes a buff reindeer. -There's some like, ballet dancer who makes arms come out of the ground...? -Badass smoke dude. From the internet -There are some character designs that I know eventually become part of Luffy's permanent crew. Off the top of my head, these are buff reindeer, disco skeleton, and... this other guy I can barely recall who has star motifs or something. -There's a timeskip at some point where Nami's design gets more problematic. -There's something called the "Grand Line", and at a certain point Luffy gets there and that marks a huge turning point in the plot. Yeah, I'm fairly sure that's everything. I've already read chapter 1, so I'll put that first post right after this one.
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Apr 22, 2020 06:11
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[img]https://lpix.org/3718943/ONE PIECE 1 - p005 [aKraa].jpg[/img] CHAPTER 1: ROMANCE DAWN ...which by the way, isn't referring to *actual* romance, just heroism and adventure and stuff like that. You know, the kind of "romance" that Don Quixote is famously a parody of. So in case that ever confused you, that's why. In Japanese, the English words "romance" and "romantic" are still heavily imbued with that subtext based in medieval literature. I've actually seen it used more about adventurous stuff than lovey stuff to be quite honest. This is also something that's overwhelmingly mistranslated in fan scans, so it's a nice bonus to manga comprehension if you keep in mind that if a character ever says "romance" or "romantic" and it seems off, they were referring to this kind of romance. So...... I'm assuming this is, like, the cover page for the entire arc? Cuz I'm pretty sure that's Zorro and Nami [edit: That's Shanks and I'm an idiot], and... they don't appear at all in this chapter. Except, all the other characters in the background (particularly Unnamed Fat Pirate) probably won't even show up again for the entire arc, since it's kinda been like 10 years since Luffy's even seen them? Lol. So that kinda throws a wrench into my theory. But whatever, it's a good-looking spread and really gets across how EXCITING AND FUN being a pirate is supposed to be. So I'm clicking through chapter 1 again for this post, and it just occurred to me that Luffy's hometown is never actually named...? Unless we're gonna decide it's actually just called Minato Village. Which, I mean.... the tone is silly enough that I'd buy that. Wait, what am I even saying? Plenty of places in actual Japan are just as literally named lol.  Oh holy crap! Looking at this closer, that's a goddamn deep loving cut! It looks like he's stabbing into the back of his loving eyeball! Like, obviously the kid has guts and that was my first impression of the scene too, but like... you didn't have to cut that deeply! You probably almost caused yourself permanent blindness in that eye! ...... Oh wait a second... pirates have eyepatches. Okay nevermind he was probably loving hoping for that lmao. So, as far as MC introductions go, I like this a lot for three reasons. First, it's telling us his story in chronological order. Like, flashbacks aren't a bad thing by any means, but one of my major pet peeves is when it's something that could have easily been told chronologically, and the only reason to tell it out of order was just to shoehorn a hook into the first couple pages of the manga. (See Doctor Stone chapter 1 for perhaps my most hated example of this). Here, however, Oda was smarter than that. Instead of opening with, like, punching a giant fish or whatever, he wrote the story so he doesn't need to shoehorn a dumb hook into the beginning. Because a kid stabbing himself in the drat face is already enough of a hook. (Also, on the topic of chapter 1 flashbacks, I naturally started thinking about how Hunter x Hunter, a series I love, did it too, and... isn't it really loving funny how One Piece starts with Luffy's childhood motivation to go on his adventure which relates to an adult role model who abandons him, and THEN he punches a giant fish, while in Hunter x Hunter those are told in reverse order. Lmao) Second, it instantly answers the question the reader was probably asking after the MC design reveal on the previous spread, of "what's up with that scar?" When your main character has a scar on his design, it's a pretty safe bet that the cause of that scar will turn out to be narratively important in some way. So clearing up that dangling end right off the bat is a really good way to go about things! Bam, already a question answered, and we're only on page... well, 5 counting the intro + cover-spread, 2 of the actual story. Third, which is the most obvious one, it establishes his personality in an iconic way. I mean, I certainly haven't heard of any other protagonist, shounen or otherwise, whose first on-screen action is stabbing himself in the drat face! And it's even cooler that this establishing action becomes a permanent part of his design, so that every time we look at him we can be reminded of his self-sacrificing determination to be a pirate. Also....  What a drat face to open on. Lmao. He really was fated to be the rubber boy right from the start. Tho it's kind of a waste that our first impression of him is this weirdo ugly kid (not necessarily incorrect lol), because...  Look at this! He's so loving adorable one page later!!  Oh loving hell lmao. Missed this on the first go-around, but lol.  Alright, time to talk about Shanks for a bit. I mentioned HxH earlier so I'll go ahead and call him the "Kite" of this series. Except that really doesn't do him justice at all because for all that I love Kite in the chimera ant arc, he was barely established at all in the first chapter. And Shanks here is like, a full-fledged character already. Basically what I'm saying is, this dude is guaranteed to come back at a pivotal moment when the series turns to a more mature tone. I can only hope he doesn't turn out to be a villain! Please, I just want to read a heartwarming reunion scene. Oh yeah, also, speaking of scars! Lol, this dude totally slaps me in the face for all the poo poo I was saying before, cuz he has a bunch of scars that don't get explained. Except this guy's established as a hardened pirate, so random unexplained scars do make sense. Though I wonder if the wild scratch-marks on his face won't ever be explained further down the line...? the.... GRAND line, perhaps....??? (i'll see myself out) ANYWAY, Shanks is such an awesome figure of idealized masculinity. Well, of a certain kind. Like, he's just so... carefree and poo poo. He seems like such a cool dude to just, hang out with. His "cool big brother" energy is just off the drat charts. The balance he pulls between being genuinely cool and aloof, but also blatantly goofing off and bullying Luffy is so good at establishing this really unique feel to his character that I love. Plus, if I wanna get deep with it, it's also a perfect representation of the "pirate" dichotomy that's also been established in this first scene: the difference between the fun laughter and adventuring, and the darkness and suffering under the surface. Also, good lord I am such a sucker for this kind of pseudo-sibling relationship where they don't want to directly address their (familial) love to each other, but you can clearly sense it in their words and actions. Like, for Shanks it's evident in the way he's trying to steer Luffy clear of the dangerous pirate world (and then later when he encourages Luffy's dream). And with Luffy it's how he's concerned with Shanks leaving, and stuff. Gahhh, its too cute! Actually, now that I think about it, that's not really a trope limited to brothers, but pretty much all men in general. It's sort of a trend (understandably, considering real life norms) for masculine figures in media to have extreme difficulty expressing their emotions. So when a masculine character shows some subtle sign of caring, or like, breaks his aloof facade for just a second, it's way more impactful than it should be. Another thing established early on is that Luffy can't swim, which is funny because when Shanks initially said that, I sort of assumed he was already talking about the magic fruit, cuz I'd been spoiled on that plot element. So when it showed Luffy actually eating the fruit, I was like "ohhh, so he just can't swim like a normal child can't swim." It's funny though, how that plot detail really doesn't even matter in the end, lol. Either way he can't swim. I suppose this is just to cement the fact that there's no possibility of him ever becoming able to swim.  There's not much to say about this guy. He's pretty boring. However, there is a funny thing that nobody was probably able to adapt to English very well. The rivalry between the bandits and the pirates. It sort of doesn't make a lot of sense to a Western audience why these groups would be rivals. Well, I suppose it's sort of tangential to the "ninjas vs pirates" rivalry, but still. In Japanese it's immediately obvious and also quite silly lol. Basically, "pirate" is written with characters that mean "sea thief" and bandits are written as "mountain thief". So the rivalry is literally like... "We hate you because you're sort of the opposite of us!" Which is adorable. Like, they should logically be buddies, cuz they kind of share the same profession, but their territories don't even clash at all. But whatever, I guess they hate each other because of uhhh... "nationalism". Alright, so now I can talk about the stretchy powers. Well, it's not like I have a ton to say about them, but.... While I was reading this chapter I kept thinking how unique this sort of ability is for a main character! Like, we sort of take it for granted because Luffy's been around for literal decades, but this concept of rubber-bodied shounen protagonist is so novel. But probably the thing I like about it even more than that, is that it's so fitting on a meta level. The style of One Piece is already so cartoony, which by its very nature means "stretchy" art. So giving your main character an in-universe reason to be stretchy like a cartoon character is genius. Idk if that's what Oda was going for, but it's still genius. Okay, so that's basically everything I remember wanting to say about this chapter. I'll just skim through the rest and write vague disjointed thoughts about anything that seems important. Let's see... I'd probably have more to say about the fight if I'd actually taken notes while reading (which was a couple days ago), but in hindsight, well, it shows off the baddassness of Shanks's crew perfectly fine. The compositions are dynamic and engaging. Really good chapter 1 fight. I know this is really boring commentary lol, moving on. ...Oh wait, let's not forget that they loving shot a guy in the head! drat, kid's entertainment in Japan really does have fewer restrictions than here. Oh man, I somehow totally forgot that the bandit leader died unceremoniously via fish chomp. (inb4 he comes back later and survived in its stomach or some poo poo) Ah, right. So Shanks losing his arm and the transfer of the hat are the last 2 pivotal events in the chapter. I suppose the purpose of the arm thing is to show Luffy about how scary the pirate world can be. And the hat thing is, well, obvious drama. I can't help but get the feeling that this entire sequence is just building up to the inevitable reunion like 300 chapters later. And then he punches a giant fish. I feel like rating each chapter out of 10 to sum up my feelings, but since I literally have no metric yet, I'll use this chapter as a baseline and rate it a 5/10. Though I really enjoyed it, so this is probably misleading. Based on the first chapter alone, I anticipate myself liking the series quite a lot. And I hope so, because if I do, then there's so much loving content waiting for me ! Right, so I wrote a fuckload more than I wanted, but I suppose that's to be expected with the first chapter. I have to write my impressions of a lot more things that I won't have to in the future. Mainly, like, stuff about how it's a good opening chapter. Beginnings are really important, guys!! Also, sorry if this was a bit disjointed. I wasn't really sure how I wanted my post to be like, and just sorta winged it. Let me know if you'd want to see any changes to how I approach this. Otherwise, just sit back and let me do my thing, I guess.... you know, whenever I feel up to it. Mr. Steak fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Apr 22, 2020 |
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Apr 22, 2020 06:11
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I haven't seen or read anything One Piece related in over a year, but I love One Piece and have been into it for decades, off and on. I liked your first post and I look forward to seeing more
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Apr 22, 2020 06:24
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If you get one chapter reviewed each day, you can finish this thread in a mere 2.6 years. I already want to say so many things but they are all spoilers, many of which won't be relevant for literally hundreds upon hundred of chapters.
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Apr 22, 2020 06:32
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This is a cool thread but I hope you start doing multiple chapters or even a volume per post just to preserve your own sanity. Otherwise you’re gonna be writing so much about this series you might not have time to enjoy it
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Apr 22, 2020 07:10
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Yeah if you want to actually survive doing this, write about it in bulk. It’s a cool idea but you won’t make it a quarter of the way through or even enjoy it if you tackle it like thjs. I love One Piece but the volume of content would be daunting if you’re just starting now, let alone writing about it chapter to chapter. Please do keep going though and anyone else who wants to start give it a go. I love reading new readers impressions, it never gets old seeing reactions to the plot reveals , like the ones I had when i started all those years ago
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Apr 22, 2020 07:22
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Definitely snip out little frames from pages that you like and comment on them though, that's always fun because oda always cams so much into his pages
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Apr 22, 2020 07:24
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OP is my favourite fiction of all time and just watching people consume it is a hobby, I was gonna nag at you to read the official english scans until I saw the japanese 
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Apr 22, 2020 09:02
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This is quite the project  Good luck
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Apr 22, 2020 09:43
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Good post, good thread. Also just gonna reiterate for everyone to please use common sense and not post spoilers in this thread. We have a manga thread for that. According to Mr. Steak that includes posts such as quote:"Don't worry, Usopp gets better."
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Apr 22, 2020 13:00
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Meme Emulator posted:This is a cool thread but I hope you start doing multiple chapters or even a volume per post just to preserve your own sanity. Otherwise you’re gonna be writing so much about this series you might not have time to enjoy it seconding this i did a full reread last year thanks to a lot of downtime at work and i really rediscovered how much i love this dang manga, hope you have a great time w/this OP
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Apr 22, 2020 13:12
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DREAMIN Don't give it up Luffy
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Apr 22, 2020 13:25
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Great idea for a thread. I'd shoot for five chapters per post, maybe ten if you want to start condensing things a lot more, which wouldn't surprise me. The first chapter is obviously very dense, but you can definitely accelerate things a bit and get through the series a lot faster. We're roughly half a year off the big 1000, so if you can read 5 chapters a day then you'll be caught up around the same time. Doctor_Fruitbat fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Apr 22, 2020 |
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Apr 22, 2020 13:46
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I definitely second the reviewing in bulk for sanity/enjoyment reasons. Also, I super enjoy anything "missed in translation" like that mountain bandit/sea thief dichotomy in the Kanji. Also super into the first-time response to reveals/cool moments/etc.  Good luck!
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Apr 22, 2020 14:16
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lmao goddamn this is definitely a project, I would advise doing chunks at a time, since this series is LONG AS HELL! Otherwise very interested to seeing how someone new takes to it, having nearly 1000 chapters might be daunting, but you'd be surprised how easy it is to get sucked in and read massive chunks at once, also means it'll be a long while before you're stuck reading week to week. Godspeed, enjoy the first few arcs!
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Apr 22, 2020 14:20
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Oh, this is real good! Bookmarked. Hope you enjoy Oda's wild fuckin' ride
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Apr 22, 2020 14:23
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I mean, how long does it take to read 10 chapters? Not long at all. Do ten of those and you're a tenth of the way there in no time at all. Ten of those and you've done what far too many people seem to think is an impossible task.
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Apr 22, 2020 14:28
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All the best goon, and you're in for a pirating experience!
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Apr 22, 2020 14:39
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Haha, I love experiencing things I love through other people's eyes so this is very much my jam. Best of luck to you OP!
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Apr 22, 2020 15:21
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Bookmarking this thread to see what happens when OP catches up! Because if the world is still around by then, One Piece still won’t be over.
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Apr 22, 2020 23:09
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Good luck OP, hope you enjoy your read. One of my all-time favorite details in Chapter 1 of One Piece is during the bar scene, everyone is partying and having a grand old time. Including this guy in the background.  Oda jam packs SO much detail, and as he drew the party he apparently decided it would be fitting to have a monkey dancing during it.  A few notes on things you've mentioned so far! 1) Luffy's village is named! I don't think they give the name in the manga itself; but in supplementary material Oda has dubbed it Foosha (Windwill) Village. Oda is incredibly thorough about naming locations and characters, even if you need to do some digging to find out (PLEASE DO NOT GO DIGGING. Wiki-holes are a dangerous thing.) 2) I'm not sure if you'll be reading the SBS Corner along with the manga chapters, but I highly recommend you do if you're able to! Oda takes questions from the readers and he actually expands a lot on little things that a lot of readers wouldn't think much about. It actually addresses a couple things you've brought up here. They're present in the volume releases if that's what you're reading. 3) You know how you said it was a good idea to hook your audience in with a flashback? Well Toei thinks you're an idiot, that's why they inexplicably moved this flashback to Episode 4 and started the series at Luffy's first grown-up adventure. Which isn't as good of a beginning, but Toei knows better I guess. Going to second the poster who said the lost in translation stuff is seriously interesting. There are a handful of misconceptions that have gone around regarding the series to this day, and I think a majority of them come from terrible scans being taken as fact. Somebody fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Apr 23, 2020 |
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Apr 22, 2020 23:34
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This sounds interesting.
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Apr 22, 2020 23:54
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Scratchman Apoo posted:Going to second the poster who said the lost in translation stuff is seriously interesting. There are a handful of misconceptions that have gone around regarding the series to this day, and I think a majority of them come from terrible scans being taken as fact. Most of them, probably. Although the official translations of the early volumes by Nakatani and Casselman aren't great either. Mr. Steak, since you seem to be reading the Japanese volumes and thus presumably have a good grasp of Japanese, I'm curious about a few points. For example, Nakatani and Casselman have characters referring to Luffy's Devil Fruit as "the fruit of the Gum-Gum tree." Does the original Japanese ever indicate that it grows on a tree?
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Apr 22, 2020 23:58
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lets be honest we're all hoping the bastardised translations of peoples names appear in this thread due to the ops translation abilities like in the original fan scans
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Apr 23, 2020 00:38
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Jose posted:lets be honest we're all hoping the bastardised translations of peoples names appear in this thread due to the ops translation abilities like in the original fan scans He’s already used “Zorro” instead of “Zoro”. (Fun fact: Viz actually uses “Zolo” in order to keep consistency with their own early translations, which used it to keep consistency with the 4Kids dub of the anime. I assume 4Kids was worried about lawsuits from the owners of the Zorro IP, although the Funimation dub would later use Zoro without any lawsuit.)
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Apr 23, 2020 01:04
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Silver2195 posted:Mr. Steak, since you seem to be reading the Japanese volumes and thus presumably have a good grasp of Japanese, I'm curious about a few points. For example, Nakatani and Casselman have characters referring to Luffy's Devil Fruit as "the fruit of the Gum-Gum tree." Does the original Japanese ever indicate that it grows on a tree? Not in this chapter, at least. Or at least, not really by my interpretation. It was only referred to as ゴムゴムの実, which, like... in normal circumstances, the construction of 〇〇の実 could definitely be interpreted as "fruit of the 〇〇 tree" and it'd be valid. But that's so much less catchy than just saying "Gum-Gum Fruit" so idk why they translated it like that. Maybe that's because there's a real tree called gum-gum, i guess...? And they were trying to preserve the pun...? But yeah, that's clunky as hell and definitely wouldn't continue working for [spoiler] any future devil fruits that may or may not exist. Scratchman Apoo posted:One of my all-time favorite details in Chapter 1 of One Piece is during the bar scene, everyone is partying and having a grand old time. Including this guy in the background. I noticed that monkey, actually! Lol I basically had the same thought process as you. Oda must have just been loving around and decided to put a monkey
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Apr 23, 2020 01:17
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Jose posted:lets be honest we're all hoping the bastardised translations of peoples names appear in this thread due to the ops translation abilities like in the original fan scans haha i've already had enough trouble deciding how the gently caress to spell "Albida" in my chapter 2 notes
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Apr 23, 2020 01:34
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Mr. Steak posted:haha i've already had enough trouble deciding how the gently caress to spell "Albida" in my chapter 2 notes the official translation is Alvida, fwiw
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Apr 23, 2020 01:44
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Mr. Steak posted:Not in this chapter, at least. Or at least, not really by my interpretation. It was only referred to as ゴムゴムの実, which, like... in normal circumstances, the construction of 〇〇の実 could definitely be interpreted as "fruit of the 〇〇 tree" and it'd be valid. But that's so much less catchy than just saying "Gum-Gum Fruit" so idk why they translated it like that. Maybe that's because there's a real tree called gum-gum, i guess...? And they were trying to preserve the pun...? But yeah, that's clunky as hell and definitely wouldn't continue working for [spoiler] any future devil fruits that may or may not exist. Thanks! That's basically what I suspected.
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Apr 23, 2020 01:49
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There could even be a running game out of it tbh. Post a bunch of your interpretations of names when you run into a character for the thread to answer with the 'real' ones (and the wack-rear end garbled ones from that one period of rushed multi-language scans when necessary).
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Apr 23, 2020 01:52
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Excited to learn Japanese from this thread
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Apr 23, 2020 01:52
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Oh, you know what I noticed while skimming through the Viz version of chapter 1 out of curiosity.... When Shanks teases Luffy by giving him juice to drink ("Bwahaha, see? He's such a kid, drinking juice!"), in the official translation it's milk instead...? I didn't look much deeper to check, but I imagine that's related to alcohol censorship. Probably they turned "beer" into "juice" so they needed something else for when the original actually said juice. Which got me thinking, a little. Cuz like, if that's the case, Viz wasn't entirely wrong to censor that. The scene is totally set up to mock Luffy for being too young to drink beer, so I can easily imagine some kid reading that scene and wanting to drink beer to be more "grown up" or cool like these cool pirates drinking beer in the manga. I wonder if that was ever an issue in Japan...
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Apr 23, 2020 03:12
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Mr. Steak posted:Oh, you know what I noticed while skimming through the Viz version of chapter 1 out of curiosity.... They actually cut the bit where Luffy gives himself the scar under his eye from the anime for exactly that reason. Wouldn't want kids running around accidentally stabbing their eyes in an attempt to be like their cool pirate idol!
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Apr 23, 2020 03:20
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jokes on them, tbp stands for theblindparrot for that very reason
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Apr 23, 2020 03:49
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Mr. Steak posted:Oh, you know what I noticed while skimming through the Viz version of chapter 1 out of curiosity.... I honestly think that Milk also works better because drinking milk is one of those things that is used in real life as a sign of childishness. Not that the juice kid thing isn't also true, they both work contextually so I find it a fairly okay translation either way.
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Apr 23, 2020 03:54
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GOD SPEED!
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Apr 23, 2020 07:19
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 CHAPTER 2: THEY CALL HIM “STRAWHAT LUFFY” [By the way, this might be even less organized than the last one Because I took notes during the chapter, and then edited/expanded those notes into the post you see before you, so perspectives of mid-chapter and post-chapter might be intermingled in a weird way. The post turned out to be half short snippets of live commentary, and half extended diatribes, with no rhyme or reason for their placement, lol. I'm still getting into the groove of this, please bear with me.]Oh yeah, I forgot to say this even though it was first mentioned at the end of chapter 1, but... well, Luffy’s vague mission to “find crew members” is so naive, like... I know it’s probably *supposed* to come across that way, right? Okay so I am dying to reference Don Quixote (again) even though I’ve never actually read the novel so I shouldn’t pretend to be smart by citing fancy literature. Like, don’t get me wrong, my understanding of Don Quixote is strictly limited to the wikipedia summary, but seriously, Luffy is such a Quixotic character. Just, for pirate stories instead of chivalrous knight stuff. He only wants to do stuff because “this is what I’m supposed to do in the story I want to act out.” Like, pirates have crews so I’ll get a crew. And then we’ll get an awesome ship and a flag and find treasure! And then after that.......... Uhhhh??? In Luffy’s mind, they’ll probably just keep hunting treasure and having fun on the open seas for eternity. [Post-chapter edit: I'm leaving this previous note for posterity, which I wrote before reading the conversation about Luffy's goal to find the one piece. So I guess "become the pirate king" isn't such a nebulous goal after all. Luffy is still 100% Don Quixote-esque though, no question about that.]  Oh nevermind, Luffy’s loving dead. Honestly though, does he have no regard for his own life? He’s just sitting there in the whirlpool like [guess-i’ll-die.jpeg but with luffy’s hat cleverly edited onto the dude’s head]. Though, logic aside, the humor is effective here. I laughed several times already in the first few pages of the chapter. The way he goes “Oh! I’ve got it!” as if he figured out a solution, but then he’s just like “Actually, it doesn’t matter if I can’t swim, cuz I’ll die regardless. Awesome!” Lol. Yo, for such a neat freak, this Alvida lady is surprisingly okay with getting blood all over her deck. I suppose for her, blood is “pure” so it doesn’t count as filth? Lol sure, that’ll be my super creepy headcanon until proven otherwise. Maybe she also collects human hearts! Yeah.... I like where this is going. I'm rooting for Gore!Alvida to make a dramatic return later in the series. Speaking of Lady Alvida (Is that her first name, by the way? Perhaps we'll never know), a note on villains: So... it's not like I was expecting a lot of depth from the villains in general (at the very least, not this early), because of the overall tone. I don't think One Piece was trying to go for the "sympathetic villains" angle, lol. But obviously, that's not inherently bad. I have nothing against so-called "one note" villains as a narrative tool. Like, these two single-chapter villains were undeniably "one note", but the chapters were both great because the villains and their one-dimensional personalities supported each of the individual chapter plots excellently. They didn't *need* any more depth to them. And in terms of being entertainingly quirky, Alvida is easily the winner of the two. One thought exercise I like to do for this kind of 100% evil, kicks-puppies villain, is to consider what specific traits the author is painting as evil. This is sort of a way to differentiate between otherwise similar evil folks, while also analyzing the work through a cultural lens (ooh, fancy talk). For example, I'd consider Higuma to embody the vice of "pride" while Alvida embodies "vanity". Erm.... wait. Coby encountered the pirates by.... accidentally walking onto their ship while trying to go fishing? What the hell? Lol. Who makes a mistake like that? (Oh, Luffy literally commented on this exact thing RIGHT after I made note of it) Luffy: “Ahaha, lol I hate you!” Bro, read the room! Also, it’s hosed up that you hate him just for being dumb and spineless. Like, you can feel sorry for him, but hate?? drat. “ONE PIECE” Okay, we need to talk about this name. I'm sure y'all must already know this, but.... ワンピース (ie: the name of the series and the legendary treasure), um.... it means dress. Lmao I haven't the slightest clue what connection this has to the plot, but that's just the literal Japanese word for "dress". As in, the article of clothing. It's not a pun, or an alternate spelling, it's just the word exactly as written in dictionaries. WHY???? Lmao, now when they eventually find the treasure, I want it to just be a really fancy dress. And the entire series was all just a setup to that one horrible horrible pun. The fact that Oda waited ever so patiently until halfway through chapter 2 to even drop the title of the series, shows that he really has a firm grasp of how he wants this manga to be paced. If this is any indication, the series was always planned to be incredibly frickin' long lol. Cuz Oda is clearly taking his time with a lot of things. Note: That could be meant with a negative connotation, but I mean it strictly positively. The pacing doesn’t feel too slow at all! Like, even though stuff is certainly taking its sweet time coming together, I’m continually getting the sense of progression. I’m not giving the series TOO much credit, cuz I mean, this is only chapter 2 lmao. But all these tiny impressions I’m getting from the storytelling add up to a lot of confidence that Oda really knows what he’s doing. Like, hmm, how do I explain what I'm talking about? Like for example, the small-scale pacing of certain personality traits in Luffy. Chapter 1 had him commit self-harm for the sake of his dream, and in this chapter he one-ups that by expressing his willingness to die for it. Chapter 1 and early chapter 2 show Luffy being just... absolutely naive to an obnoxious degree, but then in the second half of chapter 2 that same "stupidity" and complete lack of forethought is what inspired Coby to pursue his own dreams. Basically, everything feels like it follows after one another. Even smaller things like Alvita mentioning offhand that Zorro was captured by the navy, and then what do you know, our gang's destination happens to be that same place! And another small bit of Oda's storytelling that I love (which might be cheating a little because it's based on the first panel of chapter 3), is... well, I generally really love it when chapters flow into one another smoothly, with barely any detectable jump or even a single recap panel. Like, yes recap panels are necessary sometimes, but I just love it when the first panel in the next chapter could make perfect sense immediately after the last panel in the previous one. And he appears to have done that here, because chapter 3 starts off with a continuation of their conversation, seemingly right where it left off.  This isn’t funny, but I took the time to edit it, so now you have to look at it too. Oh no.... as soon as Coby said he wants to join the navy, that was an immediate flag raised for them to be enemies in the future. drat, Oda keeps on setting poo poo up for himself.  loving yes, Coby! Go off!! Also lol, Coby came across as super loving snarky there accidentally by changing his mind halfway through. Cuz in the end, what he said was basically “Wait, Luffy! Take it back! You can’t call her a stuck-up hag! .... Because she’s actually the fugliest bitch in the sea!!” To be honest, I’m getting like, unnecessarily pumped up at this Coby plotline, even though he like... by all accounts should just be a random nobody side character. His little character arc in this chapter was surprisingly effective, so I'm glad we get to see him stick around for a bit longer. I suppose it was inevitable that Luffy'd pick up someone rational soon, to comedically bounce his stupidness off of. Aha! They also mentioned the Grand Line! Which is apparently also called the pirate graveyard. So this is blatantly more setup for much muuuch further on. It’s kind of amazing how ambitious Oda was with this series right from the start. He really seemed to know the series would be incredibly long, and had a crystal clear plan for the plot. All of this just oozes *confidence* and that’s one of the things I like most about the series so far, I think. The fact that I can sit back and trust that the author knows what he’s doing ahead of time. So yeah, great chapter! As for my rating system, I changed my mind about how that'll work. Instead of establishing a baseline of 5/10, I'll establish chapter 1 at a baseline of ±0 and then just determine a value for each chapter based on how it compares to everything else so far. There's no minimum or maximum limit. That said, with the first chapter being ±0, I rate this chapter +1.5. It was essentially just as good, but the really good conversations between Luffy and Coby, plus the additional establishment of important plot stuff, pushes it over the edge. Mr. Steak fucked around with this message at 08:41 on Apr 23, 2020 |
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Apr 23, 2020 08:23
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Yeah, to me One Piece isn't long because of horrendous pacing or anything. It's just a really big story.
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Apr 23, 2020 10:09
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I love that after all the poo poo Luffy gave Coby, as soon as he was willing to stand up for himself, Luffy clocked Alvida right in the face for him. Then as soon as the major threat is gone, Luffy tells all the chumps to get Coby a ship so he can pursue his dream. Your Don Quixote parallels are insanely apt, by the way. This series is all about adventure and that's laid out plain as day right from the forefront. Also, nothing beats the cover of a One Piece chapter. Luffy's standing all tall and proud with his new emu pals in front of a pirate flag. It has nothing to do with anything, but Oda clearly sat down and wanted to draw some goofy animals with his pirate friend, so here we are! Scratchman Apoo fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Apr 23, 2020 |
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Apr 23, 2020 11:08
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Oh hell yes, I love reading first time reactions about things I love probably more than I love reading things I love haha I'm gonna be rereading OP with you but for like the eighth time so no first time commentary. What does this panel say in the original, though?  lol In my Swedish books Luffy calls her ugly, which to me fits much better as a thing to say about Alvida after her obsession about looks. Rude is such a weird translation to me but is it more accurate?
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Apr 23, 2020 14:36
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