From the back cover:
Luffy narrowly escapes being executed by his old nemeses Lady Alvira and Buggy the Clown, but now he has the Navy hot on his trail. Leading the hunt is the relentless Captain Smoker, a man who has never let a pirate escape from his jurisdiction!

Review:
There’s no other way to describe this volume than “ridiculously fun.” Where else will your heroes battle an opponent who can turn into smoke, encounter a lonely whale and give him a reason to hope, and drink themselves into a stupor in a town full of bounty hunters?

While I have to cringe at some of the idiocy the boys get up to—like picking a fight with said whale or destroying a valuable navigation tool—there is still plenty of cool stuff to make up for it. The method of navigating the Grand Line, for example, is pretty sweet. Strong magnetic fields make an ordinary compass useless, and instead, a ship must pick one of seven paths and then travel from island to island along that path, logging each island’s magnetic field somehow (a process which can take days or hours) before moving on to the next one. All paths ultimately converge and the final island is the mythical Raftel, which has only been visited by the king of pirates (and thus may be the location of the One Piece). I’m sure the science here is a bit dodgy, but it’s fun nonetheless and provides a handy excuse for encountering lots of kooky people along the way.

Although One Piece seems to shun the power-ups that other shounen series employ, Zolo did recently buy a couple of spiffy new swords. The scene in which he finally tries them out, against a hundred bounty hunters, is rather awesome, as well. It feels like we haven’t really seen him fight in a long time, since he was so injured during the Arlong Park stuff. His prowess convinces the villagers that the wanted poster must be mistaken, that he must be the captain worth 30 million berries, so they decide to focus their efforts on him while a bloated Luffy snores away unheeded.

So, yes, nothing incredibly deep here but that didn’t prevent me from being thoroughly entertained.

From the back cover:
After almost drowning at the hands of “Sawtooth” Arlong, captain of the nasty Fish-Man pirates, Luffy bounces back with a few tricks up his sleeve. The fate of Coco Village, if not the rest of the East Blue, rests on the outcome of their final battle!

Review:
After a fight involving lots of chomping and a completely silly move known as “shark darts,” Arlong Park is destroyed and the villagers rejoice. Nobody seems too concerned that they don’t recover Arlong’s body, which I suspect they will regret later. Luffy is kind of awesome in this fight, in that he takes special care to destroy the room in which Nami was made to draw charts for the fish-men, and declares from atop the pile of rubble that used to be Arlong Park, “Nami! You’re one of us now!” I swear, I actually got a bit teary. Shounen manga is so wonderfully uncomplicated.

A corrupt naval official wants to take credit for defeating Arlong, but when he is prevented from doing so, he takes his revenge by issuing a world-wide all points bulletin for Luffy. As our heroes set out for the Grand Line, they stop over in Roguetown, where Luffy is recognized by some past foes as well as the naval presence and is about to be executed upon the very spot where the last king of the pirates met the same fate. Meanwhile, Zolo acquires some new swords with the help of a knowledgeable young woman (in a chapter that is oddly fascinating), Sanji buys a big fish, and Shanks finds out (courtesy of Luffy’s wanted poster) that the boy he met long ago really did become a pirate.

Some very interesting things are afoot! I’m glad to see Shanks again, and the naval captain at Roguetown also seems to be a pretty decent guy. I’m kind of bored by the return of Buggy and Alvira, but it brings up an interesting point. Their meeting and cooperative efforts were documented in a series of splash pages, which Oda-sensei likes to use to tell stories about minor characters. Does that mean these stories are canon? If so, based on the splash pages going on currently, another foe may reappear at some point after escaping the clutches of a Vice Admiral whose ship has Triumph the Insult Comic Dog for a figurehead.

Arr! Belay reading on if ye not wish to be spoiled.

From the back cover:
Luffy’s navigator, Nami, has been working all along for “Saw-Tooth” Arlong to steal enough treasure and buy back her village. In return, the pirate has handed over her fortune to the Navy! Now Luffy and his crew prepare to risk their lives for Nami’s sake against their most ruthless opponent yet.

Review:
It seems that for each volume in which the plot advances, we get one like this, which is almost entirely fighting. Answering Nami’s tearful plea for help (see note at end of review), Luffy and friends square off against Arlong and his crew. Predictably, Arlong just so happens to have three powerful minions, which means that Zolo, Sanji, and Usopp must each face off with their opponent before the real fight—between Luffy and Arlong, of course—can begin.

For the most part, the fights follow the typical shounen routine. The good guy takes a beating that would kill a normal man, rallies, and eventually defeats his opponent. All moves have a name and these names are shouted as the moves are executed. The one exception is Usopp’s battle. His first instinct is to avoid conflict, but when he thinks about the comrades who are depending on him, he manages to fight in his own way, which is less face-to-face and more about sneak attacks. I thought this was a nice way to keep him in character while allowing him to contribute something to the battle.

Although the fights still manage to be fairly entertaining, despite going exactly as one would expect, my favorite scene occurs at the end. Nami can no longer stand being away from the battle that is being fought on her behalf, so she arrives and challenges Arlong. He forces her to decide whether she’ll return to his crew, in return for him sparing the lives of the villagers, or whether she wishes to align herself with Luffy’s crew, who is looking miserably beaten by this point. She chooses to believe in Luffy, which is a big turning point for her. I appreciate that even in a volume full of brawling, Oda-sensei still manages to work in moments like this.

Note: Have I been pronouncing Luffy’s name incorrectly? I’ve been thinking that it rhymes with Buffy, but in one of the storyboard presentation pages we see the rough outline of Nami’s tearful plea again, and the katakana she uses for Luffy’s name could be romanized as “roofy.”