Why You Should: One Piece

One Piece is one of the greatest anime of all time and I will never let anyone convince me otherwise because they would be wrong and I don't listen to wrong people. It is a MASTERPIECE. An exercise in impressive and engaging storytelling. You know what's crazy? The One Piece Anime is 20 years old and still manages to keep an audience engaged and build suspense. 20 YEARS of the same handful of pirates and we STILL CARE ABOUT THEM!? Your favorite show can't keep a character interesting for 2 seasons and One Piece has kept Luffy fresh and dynamic for almost my entire life. That alone is so much of a feat that I don't even know why you would need convincing after that. Honestly, anime aside One Piece might be one of the greatest shows period across all mediums and it's not hard to see why.

One Piece is about a boy, Monkey D. Luffy, whose life goal is to become king of the pirates. We watch him compile his crew, grow and train, and travel the seas as pirates do. Sounds simple enough, right? But unlike any other show/anime/manga ever, One Piece completely goes off the rails and spirals into plot threads and adventures so unique and strange that it's literally impossible to anticipate what's going to happen next. It's too out there. For example, the characters of One Piece end up fighting an over-powered, anthropomorphic talking mammoth on top of a massive and ancient elephant named Zunesha and on Zunesha is what is functionally an island that has been home to a tribe of various humanoid animals for centuries. Like.... bitch WHAT?!! How do you even make that shit up?? And have it work?? One of the crew members is a reanimated skeleton with a talent for soul music??? Bro, this show is wild creative and so grounded in it's own reality that everything manages to work. In fact, the characters never accept the excessively strange without questioning it and I feel like if your going to do such an out there show, you need to establish a functioning reality and outliers that even your characters notice. One Piece also manages to be the perfect shonen. We still get to watch a young boy grow into a powerful man and face endless adversity on the way. We get to watch Luffy get messed up, which is something that needs to happen to all shonen boys. We also get to have the team/ensemble build that is critical to a well done shonen and the straw hats are one of the most entertaining ensembles there is in shonen. And the most critical of all shonen troupes, it's damn INSPIRING okay One Piece has literally been the only reason I got out of bed on some days because I was inspired to do so by Luffy. Don't judge me! Imagine, being so fundamentally eccentric as a show, while still ticking all of the necessary boxes. Your faves could NEVER! Listen, just watch the anime. Or read the manga. Or both honestly just take One Piece in anyway you can. I know there are hundreds of episodes and quite a few movies but the episodes are only like 17 minutes if you cut out the openings, endings, and recaps and the movies aren't central to the plot. Plus, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll stay up writing fan theories and hey, that's a good use of time. It's worth it, just trust me and remember to come back and thank me when you've fallen in love with it!