One Piece (East Blue Saga, covering from chapters one through one-hundred)

The first few mini-arcs of the longest-running manga series of all time (1,036 chapters!), for how fun they are, conveyed a series that’s perfectly fine but not to my liking. When a character poured their heart out to tell their tragic backstory, I’d be like “that’s nice, I guess”. Then comes the Arlong Arc and while some of my complaints about fight choreography and path choice persist, I was on board with the emotional beats, including Nami’s knockout backstory, and the climactic duel between Luffy and Arlong captured the whimsical yet purposeful aesthetic the series was clearly aiming to capture.

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