"A man's dreams will never die!!!"
In a world of endless oceans and exotic islands, a Golden Age of Piracy has arisen following the demise of the infamous "Pirate King", Gold Roger.
Pirates from across the globe are searching for Roger's cache of treasure—known as One Piece—said to be hidden somewhere in the Grand Line, the most dangerous stretch of ocean in the world.
One Piece, a manga by Eiichiro Oda which has also been adapted into an anime, is the story of Monkey D. Luffy, an ambitious but kind young man who dreams of following in the footsteps of his childhood hero, Captain Shanks, by becoming a great pirate. In fact, he plans to find One Piece and become the new "Pirate King". To that end, he's assembled a loyal crew of eclectic sorts:
- Roronoa Zoro, a lazy former Bounty Hunter and student of three-swords fighting style. He carries a one in each hand and a one in his mouth, and dreams of becoming the world's greatest swordsman by defeating Dracule "Hawk Eye" Mihawk.
- Nami, a sly, spunky female thief and navigator who dreams of making a map of the entire world. She's quite greedy and obsessed with cash, often conning other characters, even her own crewmates. In her backstory, we find out why.
- Usopp, a long-nosed, cowardly sharpshooter with a penchant for bragging and telling tall tales. Has the alter ego of Sogeking, the "King of Snipers". He dreams of becoming a great warrior of the sea, much like his father, with the side goal of visiting Elbaf, an island of giants and a "warrior's paradise".
- Sanji, a snarky, girl-crazy, chain-smoking Chef Of Iron who saves his hands for cooking by fighting with his feet. He dreams of finding the "All Blue", a sea where the four "regular" seas (not counting the Grand Line) converge, and therefore holds every species of fish in the world.
- Tony Tony Chopper, a naive and adorable reindeer who also happens to be an expert doctor. He dreams of becoming a doctor that can cure any disease.
- Nico Robin, mystery lady, archaeologist, and former agent of Baroque Works that dreams of finding the Rio Poneglyph, an enormous stone block that holds the world's "True History".
- Franky, the crew's resident shipwright/cyborg/speedo enthusiast. Powers up on cola and dreams of making an invincible ship that can sail to the edge of the world. Word Of God is that he's based on Jim Carrey's Ace Ventura.
- Brook, a fencing musician skeleton with an afro, a weird sense of humor, an odd obsession with seeing women's panties, and the power to come back from the dead. Once. After he's already decayed to a skeleton. He dreams of reuniting with Laboon, a whale his crew befriended before leaving for the Grand Line, and betrayed by dying before returning to him as promised.
Together, the Nakama crew of Straw Hat Pirates travel the world, making their way to and through the Grand Line, facing villainous rival pirates and the forces of the corrupt World Government.
The big gimmick to the show is that many characters on the show, including Luffy, have consumed a Devil Fruit, apparently magical fruits that grant the user incredible powers, at the cost of making them physically incapable of swimming. Luffy, for example, has eaten the Gum Gum Fruit, turning him into a Rubber Man that is capable of stretching his body like elastic. The powers granted by the other Devil Fruits are a varied bunch, from producing natural soap to turning into a giraffe to becoming a being made of living ice.
One Piece suffers so much bad luck trying to be (properly) accessible in the United States, it reaches epic proportions that compares to a Terry Gilliam syndrome! Much to the outrage of fans of the series, 4Kids Entertainment picked up the rights to show the anime in the U.S. and proceeded to edit, rewrite and otherwise mangle it to an absolutely horrific extent, even by comparison to their previous works. Entire arcs were removed, almost all the violence was toned down and guns were either laughably passed off as "water pistols" or crudely redrawn into things like slingshots or weird telephone/shower-head/hammer things.
When 4Kids gave up dubbing One Piece in 2007, Funimation picked up the license and began redubbing the series, with better dialogue and greater overall faithfulness to the source material. Unfortunately, this was not enough to save the badly-wounded franchise's run on Cartoon Network, and the TV broadcast was canceled.
Then in 2009, it was announced that the series would be simul-cast on the internet. And The Fandom Rejoiced... until digital pirates took the sub off the website before Funimation put up an official link to it and released it early. After this, the whole simulcast was delayed for three months to tighten their security and prevent any future leaks. And now it's here! They continue to produce One Piece on DVD, starting from the beginning, uncut and unedited. So at least a happy ending there.
What's more Viz, and the U.S. Shonen Jump are now releasing the manga five volumes per month starting from January 2010, allowing the English readers to quickly catch up with the Japanese audience (similar to their treatment of the Naruto manga). The U.S. Shonen Jump has also moved ahead to the Impel Down arc after finishing the Alabasta arc.
It has had far less trouble establishing itself in other parts of the world, especially its home country. In fact, One Piece is the best-selling manga of all time. So yeah, it's sort of popular.
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