One Piece: The Whitebeard War

Wow.

When your opening volley alone involves one side summoning a tsunami and then the other freezing it solid before it hits, it might just be time to reconsider your definition of the word ‘epic’. Henceforth, things that are epic shall be rated on a scale that goes from zero to the Whitebeard War.

So this is it, boys. War in fiction generally falls into two broad categories, highlighting either the glory (an epic victory against an irredeemably evil foe, say, Star Wars) or the futility of the exercise (I can think of no better example than Grave of the Fireflies). It’s not an either/or proposition, there’s plenty of middle ground (say Lord of the Rings) – longer works may run the full gamut from one end to the other and back again. But right from those early Impel Down scenes where Ace talks about the prospect, here you quickly get the impression this one maybe isn’t going to lean so heavily on the idealistic side of the scale.

( Twenty years from now, the survivors will be telling the story of how ~they were there~ )