Catching up on One Piece – Fishman Island

So not a review, but a continued documentation of my thoughts on One Piece. I started watching One Piece a couple of years ago, and have been doing these every time I finish a Saga. Overall, I'm enjoying finally getting into One Piece, but I do get the advantage of being able to give my thoughts on these without any kind of Nostalgia glasses on. Note, I won't be worried about spoiling things, so if you aren't caught up to this point on One Piece, proceed at your own risk.

So I looked into other people's thoughts on Fishman Island after watching it, and it turns out a lot of people didn't like this one. In a lot of ways, I see where they are coming from. One Piece has always walked two really thin lines. One of them is keeping things from feeling like it drags on too long. Sometimes the show does great with this, Alabasta and Water 7/Enies Lobby manages to go on for a long time while keeping this interesting and engaging throughout. But then you had arcs like Skypia and now Fishman Island that lend themselves to the wrong end of that.

Specifically with Fishman Island, the problem comes because the arc is, largely, just here to show off how far the Strawhat Crew has come. At the end of the day, the villains of the arc just aren't much of a threat. This can be fine, but not when the arc drags off for as long as it does.

The second choke-point of One Piece is the balance between keeping things tense and things getting too goofy to take seriously, and this is really where Fishman Island struggles. It has some heavy themes surrounding the tensions between Humans and Fishmen, and many moments give you the impression that the show is taking this seriously. Then you have to juxtapose that with most of the actual conflict of the show only escalating to the point it did because of a lot of silly and goofy misunderstandings and shenanigans. And as mentioned before, this arc largely is here to show the growth of The Stawhats from the two-year training montage, so when the resolution comes it just... doesn't feel earned.

Despite that, I can't bring myself to hate this arc either. Once you get to the main conflict it is a bunch of over-the-top and chaotic fun. It starts with a battle of The Straw Hats vs 100,000 Fishmen, and you just get to see everyone go wild. Highlights being Frankie calling out a giant Robot that was somehow packed less firepower than Frankie himself (Look, I could list every batshit goofy thing involving Frankie in this arc, but I'll leave it at this), Sanji showing he managed to teach himself the Moon Step that was introduced as part of the fighting style of the CP9 guys back in Water 7, and Nico Robin summoning giant naked legs.

Plus, there were a lot of interesting things introduced to the Lore of One Piece. The current state of the Four Emperors, including Blackbeard among their numbers now, the new head of the Marines, and an introduction to Big Mama. As well as more tidbits of information on The Void Century, including the name 'Joy Boy' and one of the ancient weapons.

And for another tidbit I liked, we get an actual explanation for how Brooks 'Revive Revive' Devil Fruit Power works. It's a lot more than just bringing him back to life once, I won't detail it here but it's pretty interesting. Also, Brook is one of the most strangely terrifying members of the Strawhats.

Yes, the arc does have a lot of the show's more negative aspects, but it's still a lot of fun to watch. It needs some trimming, the arc has a lot of bloat considering how little tension exists in the fights. But at the end of the day, the good outweighs the bad, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.