rallamajoop

As I type, I am watching a commercial break in the middle of a random movie about gangsters or assassins or something similarly generic that would not have caught my eye at all except for two small details: firstly, one of the stars is Ryan Reynolds, and secondly, the title of the movie is Smokin’ Aces. It is possible that this means I am now crossing the steams of my current fandoms in a dangerously stupid fashion, but mostly I’m just enjoying the discovery that this movie is every bit as gratuitous as my excuses for watching it.

Anyhow, this all seemed like as good a reason as any to finish off one last post on the subject of My Thoughts On One Piece which has been sitting around on my hard drive for a while now.

( This is basically a collection of assorted thoughts on some of the bigger names from the One Piece rogues' gallery that I never found the place to bring up in any of my other posts. )

Been having a bit of a month over here.

Sydney Animania: Was great! Numbers were a bit on the meh side, but I spent more money on shiny new merch than at any other con in ages, and as always half the fun was just getting to catch up with all our friends from over east, and for that alone the trip was awesome.

Akemi Okamura (a.k.a. the voice of Nami, a.k.a. the Guest of Honour): Seemed very happy to see a Nami cosplayer around (there were only two of us at the whole con! Two!), and autographed the back of my handkerchief for me. :3

My Clima Tact: Blew bubbles (with red or blue lights for heat/cool ball effects), did lightning effects and separated into three parts, not including the semi-detachable lightning globe on an extendable chain for swing-arm possibilities, and one me Master Weapon Engineer on Sunday. \o/ Finally got it working, like, the day before we left.

The World Cosplay Summit Australian Finals: Congrats to K and Aly! You were great, and it is absolutely your turn already.

Why I did not post about the con in the week after we got back: Because I came home to find myself with an epic case of con and/or travel blarg, and spent most of the week in bed. :/ (Honestly, I have been sick so little this year that it felt like it was surely my turn, so it was not really so bad.)

Why I did not post about the con in the week after that either: Because I may have spent part of my downtime getting myself shamelessly addicted to this show called Teen Wolf and I have been very distracted okay? (Oh my god, you guys this show!!!)

Full con report, cosplay photos and shameless new fandom squee all coming soon.

So as I mentioned in part one, a big part of the appeal of this game is the wonderful individuality to how all the different characters play. To illustrate exactly how and why, I present you with my impressions on all thirteen.


( That's all nine Straw Hats, plus Jinbe, Hancock, Whitebeard and Ace )

Yeah, not quite done blathering on about One Piece yet, folks. There's still a bunch of stuff I never found the right space to talk about going through my viewing experience saga by saga, so here's some assorted extras that I still felt like talking about.

( In which I bring you my thoughts on Haki, filler, grumblings about the lack of women standing around in the background, and assorted other commentary )

I’d heard the New World saga picked up in a big way with this arc, and while overall I’d rate Fishman Island more of a slight dip in awesome than a real disappointment, Punk Hazard (where does Oda come up with these names anyway?) has been going out of its way to remind me why I love this series so much.

( ‘The Heart Pirates’ sounds so much more badass when you realise what they meant was likely more along the lines of ‘the STILL BEATING-Heart’ )

For once, I have nothing of much substance to say about heart-wrenchingly adorkable wonderfulness that is the D brothers flashback arc. All I've got is a bucket full of unadulterated squee and a sudden desire to go back and rewatch Ace and Luffy's Alabasta reunion with new eyes.

( Two things that I probably ought to cut for spoilers, even though neither are remotely serious )

If there's one advantage to being so thoroughly spoiled for a show as I am for One Piece it's... well, okay, if I had to pick just one, I would have to assert that the very best kind of spoilers are the ones that give you something to look forward to. But if there's one advantage of being spoiled for things you're not going to enjoy, it's that at least you get the chance to prepare yourself for the worst. So while I may have loved just about everything leading up to the Great Strawhat Separation, every casual spoiler I'd ever heard from events beyond that point suggested this might be a good time to lower my expectations. The Honeymoon is over. We're in for the long haul.

Luffy's next couple of stops on the road to Pirate Kingship were to be the Island of the Amazons and the Gulag of Minor Antagonists and Transvestites, promising a nice long arc of material which would be tedious and illogical at best, and frustrating or severely depressing at worst. Or to get into some specifics, tedious = episode after episode where the our reliably awesome supporting cast are replaced by the population of Impel Down; illogical = the notion that the overwhelming majority of the Amazon population could be this clueless about boys and/or sex without all dying out long ago, everything about Newkama Land; frustrating = Boa Hancock and the wealth of unfortunate implications arising from all that stuff already covered under 'illogical'; depressing = Aaaaaaaaaaccccceeeeeeeee ;_;. I've watched my sister go through the whole saga already, in real time. I know where it's all going. I know roughly what significance it's all going to have in the big picture. None of this guaranteed getting there was going to be much fun.

( Like Wonder Woman, if Wonder Woman had been a narcissistic misanthropist with an angsty past instead of a generically well-intentioned superheroine, and hailed from an island of militant isolationists instead of a feminist utopia. )

Bit of a mixed bag, this time around. While it picks up so much in later episodes that I had quite thoroughly forgiven it by the end, ye gods, but me and Thriller Bark did not get off to a good start.

( Here be spoilers )

Thus far my One Piece binge has got me to the end of the Water 7/Enies Lobby arc (episode 335 to be exact) and still very much in the honeymoon period of my love affair of every last one of those wonderful Straw Hats. How Oda managed to pull off the dynamic of what should, by all reason, have quickly devolved into a Ranma Half-style traveling sitcom the occasional endless shounen battle scene I do not know. God, but I could watch that merry band of dipshits mess around on deck just about forever without it getting old.

I think that a lot of what makes it work is that as easy as it should be to split the crew down lines of smart/dumb or strong/weak, everyone gets their moments of subtle genius, and everyone falls victim to their personal blindspots (be it women, money, or ability to follow simple directions) frequently enough to mess things up. Everyone can be scared, everyone has their moments of bravery; everyone screws up or gets a face full of seastone and needs to be bailed out once in a while and everyone might be that last crew member left on their feet or the one person in the right place at the right time to make the difference. They'll bicker and bitch and have to physically hold Luffy back from punching sleeping giants in the eye, but even the prickliest members of the team really don't have to be pushed all that far before Zoro and Sanji have ditched their latest argument and are working like a well-oiled machine, and Nami is telling Usopp not to worry about the money. Because One Piece, at its heart, is a story about nakama, and the wealth of affection everyone on that crew has for everyone else is never far below the surface, but it goes a long way down. They all complement each other and compensate for one another's weakness, and add up to a whole that is infinitely more than the sum of its parts.

On which subject, even beyond the Straw Hats themselves I feel like there’s a remarkably strong theme about the families you create running all through the story. For all the family the crew leave behind as the join the Straw Hats and all the childhood tragedy that seems to be prerequisite for candidature, hardly anyone’s birth parents or genetic siblings have any major role. I kinda like that; I’d be hard pressed to think of any other story where adoptive relationships are consistently given so much weight.

( Cut for a paragraph or so of character-squee x 8 Straw Hats )

( But where would the Great Age of Pirates be without some SHIPPING? )

In conclusion: Apparently I slash everyone. And really need to do some more poking through fandom to see if all my ideas have been written already before they get any deeper entrenched in my mind. Recs, anyone? =D

help I have fallen for One Piece and I can't get up