Rewriting One Piece's New World: Conclusion

How long have I been reading "One Piece"? When did the DS game "Jump Ultimate Stars" come out? Has it really been, perhaps, 15 years?

"One Piece" and Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" have had an irreversible effect on my life, if I recall correctly. For reasons I don't remember, I wanted to write stories just like that. Except darker.

What makes "One Piece" attractive compared to, say, "Naruto", "Fairy Tail", "Zatch Bell!", "Rurouni Kenshin" and "Fullmetal Alchemist" was that it was weird. Not many authors would make their protagonist a man made of rubber. Neither would they make him inherently funny and really, really, really stupid. Of the successors to "Dragonball", Oda deserved the most credit for adding onto Toriyama's ideas a sense of setting, character and nuanced action.

The story of Water Seven is probably the most "One Piece" of the stories, demonstrating Oda's tremendous talent. Our wuxia pirates fight secret government spies trained in superhuman martial arts with the help of a cyborg. The art is clean and beautiful, emphasizing the waves of water over a submerged train track, and the polished ivory walls of a government courthouse obsessed with the ephemeral concept of justice. In all of this, a man with a long nose has the audacity to lie about being the "Sniper King", writing a theme song on the spot. It's not a perfect story, but it's a perfect demonstration of someone's unique aesthetic.

This rewrite gave me the pleasure of enjoying the weirdness of the series even more than when I first began it, especially after my analysis of the published Wano story. In fact, I stopped enjoying the weirdness as I moved out of my teens. For whatever odd reason, young men are obsessed with computation. It was more important to me that Luffy could beat X and Y and that there existed organization Z and that villains A, B and C were so unique and cool. It's all numbers, really.

The strangeness of "One Piece" is extremely welcomed as I have become older, especially when no one from this most recent generation has ever embraced the series' penchant for weird. I have also come to respect Oda's sense of humor, which probably indicates something, but I take it for what it seems to be at face value, which is, stupid. He is a creator, and there is a pretty big chunk of ambiguity where no one is sure if that creator is being serious, is joking, or is simply expressing their thoughts, which, of course, they have the right to.

But after this experiment, I don't think I want to write something like "One Piece" anymore. I think I have grown out of it.

Don't get me wrong, it was really fun to do. I obsessed over it a little, to tell the truth. It was somewhat like an engineering project in miniature, where the only way to transform materials and specific requirements into a usable solution was to employ lots and lots of creativity.

But there's little expression in this type of story, which is the purpose of art. "One Piece" is a hodgepodge of drama, comedy and curiosity, but the format is not really good for one thing or another. The drama in Dressrosa is probably better served in a war romance. The comedy is probably better for "Gin Tama". The element of curiosity, coming from island geography and culture, is probably the element that is most characteristically "One Piece", however much it is obscured by the other two.

And the fighting, fighting, fighting. I hated the fighting, unless it had a nice resolution at the end. I really like Chopper's brush-up with Caesar in the rewrite, an ending more creative than I thought I could come up with. Doflamingo's denouement with Luffy as his foil was really satisfying, especially after I admitted I did not like the original fight at all and struggled to retain certain elements from the original.

Action ought to be a series of arguments. Powerscalers do not like that. They wonder why X did not beat Y. As a writer, the story's meaning is more important than myself vicariously acting as these supermen. I prefer a one-sided fight unless the fighters need to "argue" i.e. the wonderful fight between Ashura and Zoro in the rewrite where the former impresses upon the latter as a venerable mountain after exchanging blows.

George Morikawa's "Hajime no Ippo" has veeeery long action scenes, of boxers dueling one another, but that proceeds in an argumentative structure: opponents try to pull ahead of the other in the early rounds with their athleticism and wit. A match entering the later rounds is a testament to the drive and skill of a fighter. "Ippo" is a major influence on me.

Writing "One Piece" then is a fractured experience, all the worse because you have to build up to a nauseating climax of so-and-so beating so-and-so, to the extent you start ignoring the smaller details that make the series charming. Oda writes a storyboard once a week.

I understood why Araki made "JoJo" so weird as a result: it's a way of keeping him interested in the material. What fascinates Araki, clearly, from analyzing the action scenes in "JoJo", is that curious blend of psychology, intelligence and faith that makes the human mind so resilient and dangerous. He is a great artist.

That feeling of seeing a new place, wondering why the layout and the people are the way they are, wanting to try new things and seeing new sights, and perhaps making memories, even bad ones, of scammers, suspicious people, accidents, are experiences unique to "One Piece". That is the romantic part of their romantic adventure. That element must pull over any other element; it must be the point of emphasis of that adventure.

But the fighting element has won over, epitomized by the story of Marineford, which is just fighting. That story is well-beloved by the fanbase too. I myself don't quite get it. Slowly but surely, it has tainted the rest of the series.

My writing style

My writing pet peeve is to straighten everything out into one action.

You can have as many movements in one action, much like a classic concerto will have various moods and ideas, but the movements themselves are governed by one idea.

This primarily comes from my love of "Mad Max: Fury Road". The overall action is extremely clear: escape from Immortan Joe's Citadel with his wives, and, after a plot twist, circle back to the Citadel to seize it having found out that paradise has indeed been lost. The work remaining is to fill in "What?": what do the characters do, what do the characters think, what does this effect, what happens, essentially. It's not only clear to the creators what remains but to the audience as well.

In a substantial way, the art of writing is in writing something that surprises the author as much as the audience. Togashi, in a 2016 interview with Kishimoto and Jump GIGA, in his lovely way said he came up with the Greed Island concept for "Hunter x Hunter" as otherwise he would have been bored writing the story.

I love situations where characters have conflicting motivations. It comes from some unconscious love for the Tournament of Power in "Dragon Ball Super" and Ozone Baby's three-way battle in "JoJolion". It's a good way of making the plot unpredictable and showing off a lot of characters, so long as there is a MacGuffin everyone is searching for. Obviously the Wano ending is this to a T.

I somewhat exaggerate King Riku by making him nearly Christ-like, though to be fair he is almost the same in the original, I just gave him a heftier role. I think I get this trait from Oda, particularly from his writing of the Skypiea story. Of the stories of "One Piece", I personally love Skypiea's the most; I really like Wiper, who is almost not a "One Piece" character.

Oda's writing

From King Riku, we see that Oda at heart is a moralist. An act of evil is not forgotten; usually, it is repaid in the span of a few chapters.

Not that I inherently have any problems with this, but I sense that the reason is a result of Oda himself not wanting to see evil. Sure, he is writing a shonen manga, targeted at a young audience, but there is hypocrisy in the form of the author creating a world filled to the core with supposed evil yet is easily resolved when the protagonist finds the MacGuffin or defeats the bad guy. Oda does strike me as a sensitive person in SBS ("Shitsumon o Boshū Suru", English translation: "I'm Taking Questions").

That sensitivity furthermore results in him reacting to what his audience thinks. Nerds want more "lore" (I hate that term). Power-scalers want characters to "train" more and fight Y and Z. Shippers want these characters to be together in however many panels. Gender theorists want this character to be of this sexuality or that character to be of this gender assignment, or this female character to save herself. Dramatists want character conflict and death (death meaning nothing in a, you know, fictional story).

I think one of the biggest challenges for a writer is to be smarter than your audience but not to outwardly show it. It's one thing to smile at the audience and nod at their requests, and it's another thing to then intelligently chart a path through the narrative incorporating those requests at your leisure, rather than complying fully and immediately. And I don't believe that the author needs to have a snobby attitude, ignoring their audience's praise and criticism; in fact, I rather refute that. What is needed is a thicker skin.

What I have observed is that, as "One Piece" grew in audience and content and therefore demands, Oda has been ignoring what is good writing in his own heart.

Akira Toriyama

Toriyama is a pleasure to read when he is not miserable.

I do feel how an artist makes a work is relevant to our understanding of the work. Art is expression, after all; the "how" is as important as the "what". Knowing Van Gogh's influences can elucidate the "why" and "what" of his work, greatly improving our enjoyment.

When your characters are getting their bones broken, blood spilled by world-destroying, battle-hungry demons, en route to apocalyptic, society-obliterated futures, it is hard to argue that you are in a happy state of mind.

I am shocked to say that I can't read the "Dragon Ball Z" stuff and that I love "Dragon Ball". I am not sure what 16-year-old me would say. "Why do you like that junk? It's just someone going from one location to the next." Exactly! "Cowa!", "Sand Land", even "Jaco the Galactic Patrolman" are so pleasurable to read because characters are exploring new destinations, meeting new people, and trouncing bad guys.

My favorite moment in "Cowa!" is when our protagonist, Paifu, pretends to match the sumo wrestler's offer of $10,000, runs, hides behind a tree, and then lies about coming up with the money. It's just too funny.

If I'm correct in understanding, Toriyama began to enjoy creating manga after "Dragon Ball Z". His cotton candy bushes and jelly bean heads, as well as his dishonest, somewhat clumsy protagonists, invite mystery, invite difference, invite unusualness, invite creativity.

A character is not a machine that does X in this situation and Y in another situation. A character is an inquirer of their environment. A character has character, a distinct presence that at once blends in and contrasts with the setting. A character is not a source of drama. A character is not real, meant to be mourned only for their birth and subsequent death. A character is not just a color in the setting. Toriyama's manga are filled with characters.

Oda admires Toriyama, and it shows. He loves adventure. He loves meeting new people and seeing new places. Luffy is a moron, who is more gut than brain, and his gut often leads him to beating up the bad guy just because he was being a jerk.

It's other people who made "One Piece" into something else beyond the adventure. It's fans, critics, editors alike who demanded the adventure be surrounded by this overarching plot about governments; who demanded the Straw Hats had to fight one-to-one-thousand; who set up a meter for cool, and "hype"; who asked for more content, sticking their hands out with money. I'm quite sure it's their fault too, not that Oda isn't complicit. He probably should not participate in so many movies, events, and video games, exhausting all of his energy. But there are genuinely interesting ideas in "One Piece" that, like the seed of a fruit, need more time and care to really pay off. I would rather have Oda spend an entire chapter talking about the flora and fauna of Wano than have more character reveals, exposition, fighting that itself isn't interesting and contributes nothing interesting to the story.

My critique

By the way, I am well aware Kaidou having the Eternal Log Pose is the plot of "One Piece: Stampede". This, in fact, leads me to believe Oda is overworked, wasting some ideas on the films over his main series.

If I have any critique for the artist himself, it's that Oda is stretched waaaay too thin. I think this is the problem "Strong World" caused, and we can observe that it came out around the time of the Marineford story. "Strong World" is the first "One Piece" film Oda actively participated in, fleshing out his world so as to support the film's villain whom he himself designed. Everyone found the films were far better received, financially, with his involvement, and since "Strong World" he has been unable to say No to working on the films...videogames...plays...

Again, sometimes a creator needs to be smarter than their audience. A creator should have their own head-canon for the story, but they further need to not show it, in case they need to adjust it for something more interesting.

Yes, there is a happy medium between Eiichiro "I'm the next Walt Disney" Oda and Yoshihiro "Four year hiatus" Togashi. It's Hirohiko "18-month-hiatus while writing Rohan spin-offs" Araki. The irony is that, even though Polnareff of "Stardust Crusaders" fame has joked about becoming the next Walt Disney, Araki has been pretty conservative on what he involves himself with.

Because I don't think Oda has really devolved into a worse writer, though his writing has been bad. The writing is rushed. The dialogue and the panelling, which encapsulate all of the minor details about the world and the characters, are bad, the structuring is sensible, and the settings, scenarios and characters are still unique, though less emphasized. The former two are logical issues, so they can be solved over time.

Not to be someone who shouts "Sell out", but when a work of fiction makes money there suddenly becomes a million voices saying to do this and this and that. For a mangaka, it probably starts with small and inconsequential things like anime-only details and designs for film-only character, and then spirals out of control into authors and script-writers publishing book-sized content separate from yours. The incentive is financial, not just for himself but for his company, their partners and the artists they support. Any human being would, from an existential perspective, eventually question the very concept of owning a creative property, which is why I assume Oda is trying to stay at the helm by being involved in a great deal of that content.

Nowadays he clearly wants out, attempting to end "One Piece" in five years, so he says. I don't think anyone can blame him, since the franchise will operate just fine without him (see: "Boruto"). His moves are obvious and logical. I only wonder if he has considered he can always say "No". He can always say "No", to participating in this project, or even allowing the project to continue, and hurt someone else's expectations of him, perhaps hurt even his own, but still preserve his sanity and creativity. But that is perhaps the reason why Oda is so Oda: he is ever the workaholic, ever the people-pleaser, ever Don Quixote trying to juggle several things at once with elan at one moment then languor. Let us hope we never discover he is a sex pervert.