Chapters 1 & 2

Chapter 1: Romance Dawn

Strangely enough this issue has the same name as the pilot and retells a lot of the same back story. Information not found in the pilot includes: the execution of the pirate king Gol D. Roger, Luffy's encounter with the mountain bandits, and "Red Haired" Shanks battle with the mountain bandits. The pilot and first chapter of One Piece are by far the longest both having 50+ pages. As I mentioned in my previous post there are a number of discrepancies between issues 0 and 1. the most important of these discrepancies are how Luffy came across the gomu gomu fruit, what shanks lost his arm to, and the lack of the word peace main. The idea of Luffy being a peace main was obviously dropped as I have not seen it anywhere in issues 1-150. This is one of my favorite issues because it gives us a much better idea about Luffy's relation ship with "Red Haired" Shanks than we got in the pilot. I also enjoyed the improved artwork in this issue.

Chapter 2: They Call Him "Straw Hat Luffy"

In this issue Luffy's journey to become pirate king finally begins. The issue starts with some great comedy as Luffy is sucked into a whirlpool. It appears as if Luffy has died and the scene shifts to the Lady Alvida pirate crew. This issue is the first in the series to have the usual 20-30 pages. As the issue progresses we see that Luffy's fighting capabilities have grown and that he has mastered his gomu gomu powers. Luffy also meets a cabin boy named Koby. Luffy protects Koby from  Lady Alvida and they form a friendship. Koby explains that he wishes to be a marine and Luffy promises to make that possible. This is the first time that the underlying theme of the manga begins to be clear and as I post more reviews you will notice that almost everyone Luffy befriends has a dream, Koby's being one of the tamer dreams. Overall this was a decent issue I found Alvida to be a little too weak and to have been defeated before creation of a real plot could take place, but Koby's plot had to start some where and this issue was a good place for that. I was disapointed by the return to the chapter 0 style art work.

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