One Piece's East Blue Saga
In 2022, I caught up on One in the span of 5 months after one of the most lifeless periods I've ever had, but it is also one of my proudest eras. Ever since, I have been keeping up with both the anime and manga (more the latter now because of the break) which has allowed me to slowly regain the motivation to eventually rewatch the show. In these last 3 years I have convinced several of One Piece, and most recently I got to reach the East Blue Saga with my mom and sister and thought i should start reviewing One Piece as I've felt my opinion on the pre-timeskip era change. I will start off by saying the obvious: the East Blue Saga is One Piece's weakest. Although I admit that it's when I first fell in love with One Piece, my rewatching of it made me understand that at least in the anime it was pretty poorly executed and occasionally a chore to go through. As our lord and saviour Charles "Moist" White said; "it's full of just ... nothing!" and I completely agree with that. Yes, the arc does serve the purpose of setting up the basis of the story and introducing us to the main characters, but it does so in a pretty basic and not completely interesting manner. With how much Arlong Park is touted for being the point where everyone falls in love with One Piece, I'd actually argue that point does not even exist in this saga.
My least favourite part of this Saga is the Syrup Village Arc, which originally single-handedly made me HATE Usopp until Egghead. This Arc is made up of 10 episodes but each time I watched it, it felt like if I would be watching the entire Godfather series with no breaks in one day it would be more enjoyable, and it full of NOTHING!!!!! Kuro sucked!!! And while I did like the Nami moments in Arlong Park, I'd say that my favourite arc in the Saga is Loguetown. Loguetown is, in my opinion, a good arc as it very effectively close the Saga and sets up your expectations for what's to come. Many characters who later proved to be important to the story either clashed with each other or were foreshadowed, for example: Buggy reappeared, Vice Admiral Smoker and Captain Tashigi were introduced, and most importantly Dragon made his first appearance as a mysterious character. This arc also nicely explored Zoro's relationship with women and his swords, which made me want to see more of that in the current arcs!!!
However, the East Blue Saga is otherwise pretty bland, to the point I cannot think of anything else to expand on in this review. As a whole, I think One Piece started picking up its pace in Alabaster until it reached Water 7, where the story finally reached a whole new standard.
My personal score? 6/10. As a One Piece fan, I can admit that I completely understand why so many people struggle to pick up the series, and I hope the remake will solve this issue. ◾︎