Forum - View topicShelf Life - Sketman
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erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist
 Posts: 598 |
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Ha HAH I always fast forward through flashbacks, intros, and outros when marathoning. With Shonen Jump fighting shows I fast forward until I see the show title, since that means the recap is over. My husband is fond of giving percentages of wasted time. "Skypia could've been 20% shorter," he said last week. Or "Alabasta could've been 30% shorter." There could definitely be a One Piece Kai...
I call this Shonen Jump Resurrection Syndrome. I wasn't really aware of it until a certain Naruto Arc when spoiler[Chouji totally looked dead, along with some other characters] and then later they all miraculously recovered in the hospital. The characters in One Piece are often dealt near-fatal blows, especially towards the end of arcs, only to fully recover later. Consider something like DBZ, where everyone keeps getting wished back to life or healed via sensu bean... I think that may have set a precedent. |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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Yep. She is an insult to the feminine gender.
...The first 100 eps?...I liked Dorry & Broggy. Buggy's always so much fun. Captain Kuro was an excellent villain & Jango was fun. Ace is ALWAYS great.
Speaking as a chick, I do not give a rat's rear if she's "hot" or not. I read yaoi to avoid annoying chicks. The Japanese have a fascination with bossy chicks which is not to be confused with liberated chicks. Robin is cool. I accept her as a fellow intelligent gal & not a harpy. She keeps her head in situations & remains pretty unflappable.
So you dislike Supernatural, Buffy, Angel & other shows that employ a "Story so far" sort of intro? Understand One Piece is aimed at a family audience. Children love repetition. They like being able to say the transformation chants or the catch phrases. Adults, for that matter, like them (Yipee Kaiyai yay Mother******. Did I do that?) & other memorable lines (Where we're going, we don't need roads).
Oda is adverse to killing for killing's sake ferom what I've heard. Look at it from a real world perspective. Society prefers to lock the baddies up rather than kill them, to try them & hopefully reform them, so why should all the pirates of One Piece not be jailed? As someone who works with convicted felons for a living, trust me, they aren't all rotten monsters. Too many get addicted to drugs & wind up doing things they normally wouldn't to feed that addiction. Or they lost their job & did things they wouldn't otherwise. And not all pirates set out to be evil, rotten plunderers. Some were victims of circumstances. There's a long romantic history about people wearing the neame of criminal to do what was perceived as good. Face it, the Founding Fathers of the United States were domestic terrorists. Same for the French Revolution in the takedown of nobility. The victors write the history. |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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And Nami doesn't? I'm not sure how far along in One Piece you are, but there have been several instances where Nami has shown to keep her cool in very tough situations, or even to take care of herself when others may have just been rescued. About intelligence... she is the only one of the crew with the ability to read the weather patterns and is the only one skilled at cartography and orientation, both making her an excellent navigator. Do you hold Robin's intelligence to be higher because it deals with history? |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4575 |
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Oh lord...
I don't really see how this comparison holds up at all, since Nami tries to protect her friends when they're in trouble...which is kind of the exact opposite thing that Elizabeth did there. I've never even heard of Gatekeepers 21, so I have no idea what you're referencing there.
Yes, there were plenty of other fun moments, but in terms of sheer emotional impact, nothing came close to the climax of Nami's arc. spoiler[Nami sitting there in the road, stabbing herself in the arm, desperately tossing dust at Luffy to get him to leave, and then finally breaking down and begging him for help...Luffy wordlessly placing his treasured hat on her head...and then the fantastic march on Arlong Park.] Those scenes send chills down my spine every single time I see them, and they have that impact because we've seen the tragedies of Nami's past, and how much she sacrificed to try to help the people she loved. She has an amazingly strong character, certainly far more than you give her credit for.
So you read ridiculously-idealized fujoshi-wish-fulfillment versions of homosexual relationships, the majority of which fall into the obnoxious "uke/seme" dichotomy, yet you don't like "annoying" or "bossy" chicks, even if they actually are intelligent and level-headed as Megiddo noted. I'm sensing a fairly massive double-standard here.
I'm not really sure that there could, at least nowhere near the scale of an effort like DBZ Kai. From what I understand (since I've made it a point never to watch DBZ), most of the issues that Kai resolved had to do with individual scenes being dragged out to ridiculous extents, or the excising of big chunks of filler material. One Piece doesn't really have the latter, and the former isn't normally a big issue, unless you're counting the recap material. From what I've heard, the marathon feature on FUNi's DVD sets actually skips past a lot of the recaps along with the opening and ending themes, so that almost serves as a bit of a "Kai" in and of itself.
While there are certain notable parts of the series that do have some ridiculously-long recaps at the beginning of an episode, they're mostly only a couple of minutes at the worst, and usually easily skippable due to their location before the episode title screen. There aren't many parts of the series that resort to needless lengthy flashbacks in the middle of an episode, either. In any case, I consider a bit of recap material to pad an episode to be a far better alternative than having to resort to a few dozen episodes of filler between canon arcs.
That wandering from island to island is part of becoming King of the Pirates...one has to traverse the entire Grand Line to find One Piece, and that means surviving the myriad dangers and obstacles along the way. In a greater sense, though, the structure of the series reflects what's probably its most important philosophy: the destination isn't nearly as important as what you do along the way and the friends you do it with. To Luffy, the freedom to sail from adventure to adventure with his loyal crew is the very definition of being a pirate, and that's truly what drives him. I think most long-term fans of the series have accepted the fact that there's no huge pile of gold waiting at the end of the Grand Line; there's a running gag along the lines of, "One Piece is really friendship!"  The journey itself becomes its own reward. That being said, though, there's also an overarching story of literally global proportions that's elaborated on more and more as the series progresses, and it's fairly clear that it will come to a head before everything's said and done.
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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Regarding Luffy, his desire to become King of the Pirates, and the One-Piece itself:
There is a scene where Luffy and friends are talking to a particular old guy. This old guy knows about the One-Piece and can tell Luffy certain things about it; he offers to tell Luffy about it. Usopp starts saying how they'd like to hear what he has to say when Luffy stops Usopp and states very clearly: He *does NOT* want to be told about the One-Piece. He doesn't want to know what it is, or where it is, or even whether or not it really exists. He wants to find all that sort of stuff out on his own, and not be given it on a silver platter. In fact, Luffy says that if he were to be told straight out like that, the adventure would lose its meaning and value, and that he would give up being a pirate. To Luffy, it's all about the adventure -- it's about the journey. Yes, the goal is important, because it validates the journey. But he wants to do it on his own. A similar thing happens with Robin where the same guy says that they had read all the glyphs and know the lost history. He offers to tell her, but advises her to learn it on her own instead, as she will interpret it differently and maybe come up with a better solution than he did. This sort of thoughtfulness is one of the things I really like about One Piece, and why I'm happy to follow it along even after so many episodes. A good story is worth the journey for me. |
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Shenl742
Posts: 1524 |
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It would be hilarious if someone else were able to claim the One Piece/Glyphes first because Luffy Robin didn't listen when hey should've.
Knowledge is power! |
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