Zoro carries an air of menace even after being bound up and starved for almost a month. A bit self-defeating if you ask me, but that sort of thing never stops Luffy, which is the whole point of his character spurred on by the ROMANCE of his journey to Pirate Kinghood. Simple, but not really.īut what is a Pirate King without his crew? Luffy sets out on his own and the first thing he does is try to recruit someone called Zoro, who is a pirate hunter. Technically, being a Gum Gum Fruit user, he can never run out of gum, but that doesn't stop him from kicking ass anyway when someone asks for it, generally by messing with other people's freedom to do what they want. Luffy wants freedom for every one, but wants the greatest freedom for himself, which is why he is trying to become the Pirate King. Until they end up hurting other people, that is. He isn't really selfless either, as we'll see later on, but he wants everyone to have the freedom to do what what they want. In this way, he has more in common with Lemillion from My Hero Academia than the actual protagonist of that series, Deku. Between gaining his (initially, seriously handicapping) powers at 7 and setting out for the sea, 10 years have passed, with him most certainly training his fighting abilities mindlessly in preparation for his future forays away from his village. Luffy is the typical Shonen protagonist - dumb, gluttonous, impulsive etc. I sometimes find it hard to fully grasp fight choreography in certain mangas, but it's safe to say that I have never had that problem with One Piece. The way Oda depicts action already bears his trademark flowing, impactful visual style, with impressive structure from panel to panel, which makes action scenes a real treat to read.

The art style, although less elaborate than what it would evolve into in later arcs, is clean (I'm looking at you Togashi) and detailed. The character art is a bit lacking, but is eventually much improved upon. The design of the characters was slightly different from their post-time skip selves. It was nostalgic to revisit the story in this form.

On another note, knowing what happens further on in the story in no way dampened my enjoyment of Romance Dawn. In hindsight, it seems like an odd call from the producers at Toei, though I had no grievances at first viewing, and still don't now. The main difference between the manga and the anime at this point is that the latter did not start off from Luffy's childhood, instead electing to introduce us to Koby first. It more than compares favorably to the anime. It's the first time I'm reading the first volume of One Piece.

One Piece, Volume 1 by Eiichiro Oda