Summary
- One Piece arcs don’t need big fight scenes to entertain fans, as world-building and storytelling are key.
- World-building in One Piece sets the stage for cool moments and enhances the series’ appeal.
- While fights enhance storytelling in One Piece, world-building and plot development are equally crucial.
Fight scenes seem to always be some of the most popular parts of One Piece. Between massive and extremely well-animated encounters, like Garp’s battle against Kuzan or Kaido’s fight against Gear 5 Luffy, fight scenes are truly worth watching the incredibly long series. This is especially true with the recent increase in the quality of One Piece’s animation, ushering in a new age of incredible fight scenes to enjoy.
However, oftentimes these fight scenes heavily overshadow other elements of One Piece, especially the more tame moments of the series. In fact, at times, it feels like the community completely forgets that One Piece is more than just these extremely well-animated, high-budget fight scenes. Outside of these amazing One Piece fight scenes, the series demonstrates that there are plenty of ways to still tell an engaging story, without having high-stakes fight scenes.
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One Piece Arcs Don’t Need Massive Fight Scenes To Be Entertaining
Some Of The Best Arcs Have Little Fighting
One Piece arcs tend to follow a similar pattern, with a few notable exceptions. Mainly, these arcs follow the Straw Hat Crew in One Piece discovering a new island. Here, they explore the location and go on smaller-scale adventures, meeting the locals, and uncovering some sort of plot that they must solve. After this, the Straw Hats must then engage in a massive battle, with each member of the crew often pairing off against their own opponent for a fight scene.
There are things that matter more than power. – Luffy
However, not every arc focuses on this structure entirely, with a few important arcs of One Piece being notable exceptions. Mainly, arcs like Sabaody Archipelago, Water 7, and Zou, while featuring a few fight scenes, don’t have nearly as many high-scale fights as fans might expect compared to other arcs. Despite this, these arcs are still beloved by the community, and are often regarded as some of the best in the series, and it isn’t due to their fight scenes.
World-Building Is The Base Of One Piece’s Writing
These Elements Are What Makes The Cool Moments
- World-Building Is The Start Of Cool One Piece Moments
- Zou Is A Great Arc That Uses World-Building To Be Cool
What makes these arcs cool, despite having a lack of notable fight scenes is mainly due to One Piece’s interesting world-building that these arcs feature. Oftentimes, arcs, and the final fight scenes especially, are only cool due to the context and the world-building that comes before it. In many ways, this interesting world-building is where the “cool factor” starts, and is already cool enough on its own.
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Looking at an arc like Zou, very little action actually occurs during the arc, with most of the major fight scenes happening before Luffy’s arrival. However, what makes this arc interesting and cool is the world-building of One Piece’s Mink Tribe, learning of their conflict with Jack the Drought, and the reveal of their loyalty to Raizo. While these moments have no traditional fights, the use of clever world-building, interesting plot devices, and the unique nature of the Mink Tribe, many fans regard the arc to be one of the best post-time skip One Piece has to offer.
Water 7 Used Intense Drama And Stakes For Its Coolest Moments
Paired With Enies Lobby These Arcs Create A Perfect Saga
However, while an arc doesn’t need fight scenes to be cool, when world-building is paired with an amazing fight scene, One Piece reaches its full potential. Although the Water 7 arc is great on its own, providing an interesting and dramatic conflict between CP9 and Robin, paired with the fight scenes of One Piece’s Enies Lobby Arc, the entire Water 7 Saga becomes one of the best examples of storytelling that One Piece has to offer. In many ways, Luffy’s fight against Lucci wouldn’t be the same without world building and plot development of Water 7, and in turn, the plot development of Water 7 needed some sort of payoff, which came in the form of the fight against Lucci.
Robin! We still haven’t heard you say it! Say you want to live! – Luffy
Still, despite this, One Piece doesn’t need fight scenes to be cool. The many slower, world-building scenes of One Piece are cool on their own, despite not being huge flashy moments that everyone discusses on Social Media. Although some may consider these moments to be boring, the world-building scenes of One Piece are the building blocks that truly make the series cool.
One Piece
- Release Date
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October 20, 1999
- Network
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Fuji TV
- Directors
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Hiroaki Miyamoto, Konosuke Uda, Junji Shimizu, Satoshi Itō, Munehisa Sakai, Katsumi Tokoro, Yutaka Nakajima, Yoshihiro Ueda, Kenichi Takeshita, Yoko Ikeda, Ryota Nakamura, Hiroyuki Kakudou, Takahiro Imamura, Toshihiro Maeya, Yûji Endô, Nozomu Shishido, Hidehiko Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou
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Mayumi Tanaka
Monkey D. Luffy (voice)
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Kazuya Nakai
Roronoa Zoro (voice)
