TL;DR - Enies Lobby fucking rules!!
With the recent spate of appreciation threads popping up on WG, figured I’d start one for what (in my opinion) is the best arc in the entirety of One Piece - Enies Lobby.
Up to this point, Oda has drawn OP as a regular shonen manga: the protagonist goes on a journey with a lofty goal in mind; they find powerful/useful allies wherever they visit; they come into conflict with someone and have to beat them, typically with the secondary motive of freeing downtrodden people/saving those who can’t fight for themselves, all with the main objective never shifting. Excusing the finer details, this is the exact structure of almost every arc in One Piece up to and including Water 7.
However, EL was about these things and a little more - the supposed betrayal of one main character, the voluntary exit of another, and the state of disrepair that befell their ship, all against the backdrop of the first real indication that becoming Pirate King involves much more than visiting new places and outrunning the Marines. It dealt with more serious themes than Oda had really touched on to that point, like coping with loss, loyalty to your friends, and aiming to topple an oligarchical government with nothing more than your fists.
Having to grapple with these issues was necessary for the Straw Hats...they weren’t flying under the radar anymore, fighting small-time villains on random islands; their enemy became the entire World Government, meaning the easygoing days were coming to an end. Without that rapid maturation, chances are good they wouldn’t have survived past that arc. Difficult choices had to be made by everyone involved, with bigger stakes and more poignancy than any other challenges the main crew had experienced to that point.
As such, it makes sense that this was the arc where each Straw Hat unveiled their first big power-up move(s) in the heat of battle - Luffy with Gears Second AND Third, Zoro with Asura, Sanji with Diable Jambe, Nami with Thunder Tempo, Usopp with Sogeking, and Chopper with Monster Point. We haven’t seen most of them get any significant upgrades since then purely because they aren’t necessary like they were against CP9, and each character grew so much that these moves were just the beginning of a new stage, not the upper limits of their strength. Make no mistake, though - there is no Gear Fourth and its attendant forms, no solid foundation for the skills they learned over the time skip, without them going through what they did against Lucci and company.
Speaking of, this was the first villainous group that was totally nihilistic - they weren’t trying to control any land, nor steal food from a floating restaurant, nor murder any rich girls for the inheritance...every member of CP9 was trained from birth to be ruthless killing machines who follow orders and leave no trace behind. These were all skilled assassins given a license to kill by the government; by all rights, Luffy and friends SHOULD have been defeated right away. Thanks to their new moves, as well as an unyielding desire to rescue a friend who had left under mysterious circumstances, they survived and became notorious.
Oda himself has said that EL was his finest work, and I’m inclined to agree. It gave us Franky, the Thousand Sunny, and a myriad of reasons to argue about power levels all over this forum; more importantly than that, it changed the Straw Hats from exclusively goofy dopes who happened to be incredibly strong into formidable fighters capable of grasping the severity of a situation just before entering the most dangerous sea in the world. The art matched the writing the whole way through, and it gave us a reason to truly despise the series’ main antagonists. One Piece is incredible at every turn, but never before had we seen an arc as complete, as dramatic, and as thrilling as Enies Lobby. That might change going forward, but it will always hold a very special place in my heart.
With the recent spate of appreciation threads popping up on WG, figured I’d start one for what (in my opinion) is the best arc in the entirety of One Piece - Enies Lobby.
Up to this point, Oda has drawn OP as a regular shonen manga: the protagonist goes on a journey with a lofty goal in mind; they find powerful/useful allies wherever they visit; they come into conflict with someone and have to beat them, typically with the secondary motive of freeing downtrodden people/saving those who can’t fight for themselves, all with the main objective never shifting. Excusing the finer details, this is the exact structure of almost every arc in One Piece up to and including Water 7.
However, EL was about these things and a little more - the supposed betrayal of one main character, the voluntary exit of another, and the state of disrepair that befell their ship, all against the backdrop of the first real indication that becoming Pirate King involves much more than visiting new places and outrunning the Marines. It dealt with more serious themes than Oda had really touched on to that point, like coping with loss, loyalty to your friends, and aiming to topple an oligarchical government with nothing more than your fists.
Having to grapple with these issues was necessary for the Straw Hats...they weren’t flying under the radar anymore, fighting small-time villains on random islands; their enemy became the entire World Government, meaning the easygoing days were coming to an end. Without that rapid maturation, chances are good they wouldn’t have survived past that arc. Difficult choices had to be made by everyone involved, with bigger stakes and more poignancy than any other challenges the main crew had experienced to that point.
As such, it makes sense that this was the arc where each Straw Hat unveiled their first big power-up move(s) in the heat of battle - Luffy with Gears Second AND Third, Zoro with Asura, Sanji with Diable Jambe, Nami with Thunder Tempo, Usopp with Sogeking, and Chopper with Monster Point. We haven’t seen most of them get any significant upgrades since then purely because they aren’t necessary like they were against CP9, and each character grew so much that these moves were just the beginning of a new stage, not the upper limits of their strength. Make no mistake, though - there is no Gear Fourth and its attendant forms, no solid foundation for the skills they learned over the time skip, without them going through what they did against Lucci and company.
Speaking of, this was the first villainous group that was totally nihilistic - they weren’t trying to control any land, nor steal food from a floating restaurant, nor murder any rich girls for the inheritance...every member of CP9 was trained from birth to be ruthless killing machines who follow orders and leave no trace behind. These were all skilled assassins given a license to kill by the government; by all rights, Luffy and friends SHOULD have been defeated right away. Thanks to their new moves, as well as an unyielding desire to rescue a friend who had left under mysterious circumstances, they survived and became notorious.
Oda himself has said that EL was his finest work, and I’m inclined to agree. It gave us Franky, the Thousand Sunny, and a myriad of reasons to argue about power levels all over this forum; more importantly than that, it changed the Straw Hats from exclusively goofy dopes who happened to be incredibly strong into formidable fighters capable of grasping the severity of a situation just before entering the most dangerous sea in the world. The art matched the writing the whole way through, and it gave us a reason to truly despise the series’ main antagonists. One Piece is incredible at every turn, but never before had we seen an arc as complete, as dramatic, and as thrilling as Enies Lobby. That might change going forward, but it will always hold a very special place in my heart.
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