One Piece

That's the problem when I write about games I adore. I put so much love and work into it, that I'm exhausted when I try to do another post afterwards.

So maybe this great anime won't get the post it deserves, but it would be definitely the bigger insult to NOT to write about it.

There are many reasons to watch One Piece. The first one is to have an X and an Y chromosome. To be a man. Why? Well, just have a look at the female characters...

But that's not enough to create a good anime. What I like most about One Piece is its message. The typical shonen anime messages: Follow your dreams, value your friends and fight to protect them.

But One Piece transmits these messages in a unique way. After watching an episode of this anime, I always feel like going on an adventure by myself. But let's explain what's the story about and who are the main characters.

Monkey D. Luffy, the protagonist, was once rescued by a friend when he still was a child. His friend was a pirate called the Red Shanks and he lost an arm while saving Luffy's life. Shanks gave him his straw hat (which later becomes a very characteristic symbol of Luffy and his crew) and Luffy promised him that one day, he would become the King of Pirates.

Wait, what? King of Pirates? Well, the pirates in the world of One Piece are somewhat different. At least, many of them. There's a complex system behind that, involving the battles between the Marine and the pirates... But summing up, there are good pirates like Luffy but also the typical stealing and murdering bad pirates.

It all started when Gol D. Roger, who was considered the King of Pirates because of his great adventures and actions, was captured by the Marine. At his own execution, he revealed that his great treasure, the "One Piece", can be found in the Grand Line (one of the big oceans of the One Piece world). And now Luffy and many other pirates want to find his great treasure and become the next King of Pirates.

Luffy starts from zero, literally. At first he has no ship, no shipmates, nothing. But, when he was a child he ate the Gum-Gum Fruit, one of the so-called Devil Fruits. These fruits give you a special ability. For example, Luffy, after eating the Gum-Gum Fruit, turned into a rubberman: he can stretch his body like if he was made of rubber.

Luffy quickly finds different people with their own dreams, like Roronoa Zoro who wants to become the world's greatest swordsman or Nami who dreams of drawing a map of the world based on her own adventures. They all travel together to the Grand Line and experience a lot of adventures.

What makes this series so special are the characters and their objectives and how they to fight to accomplish them. As you could expect from an anime I like, it's also got a lot of humour.

Well, it's another anime I grew up with and not a long time ago I decided to catch up on the current episodes. And I don't regret it. I think it's really sad that the future children won't grow up with great series like this one. I mean, just look at the new animated shows on TV. Most of them seem to be rather stupid...