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Exerpts from the review made by Dr Intelegencia (http://www.mangascreener.com/magazine/index.php?id=13)
With over 20 volumes of manga, over 100 television episodes, and at last count, five feature films, Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece is a juggernaut of a franchise in Japan. Since the beginning of the manga in 1997, the offbeat and adventurous tale of a young boy’s journey to become the King of Pirates has captured the hearts (and not to mention wallets) of millions of Japanese readers and viewers. American companies have seen this profit potential and both the One Piece manga (licensed by Viz and currently running Shonen Jump) and television series (licensed by Funimation with an unknown airdate) are being brought over the States. Perhaps now would be a good time to take a critical look at the manga which started the piratey craze that may soon engulf your local comic shop.
The premise of the manga isn’t all that complicated: as a young man of 17, Monkey D. Luffy sets sail from his home town in order to find the legendary treasure One Piece, and thereby become the Pirate King. However, the world has apparently entered the Age of Pirates, so Luffy isn’t going to be the only pirate seeking One Piece. But what makes Luffy different from other contenders is that, as a child, he ate a magical fruit and now has a body of rubber…which may not seem like a very good ability, but Luffy puts it to good use by deflecting bullets, inflating himself as a balloon, and stretching his limbs to extreme lengths and then snapping them back, creating an effect a million times more powerful than any rubber band. Of course, there’s no such thing as a solitary pirate, so Luffy gathers such entertaining crew members as Roronoa Zoro the napping swordsman, Nami the thieving navigator, Usopp the lying sniper, and Sanji the womanizing chef. And they all set sail for the Grand Line, where One Piece is said to be.
Many years ago, the mountain village of Konoha was devastated by a nine-tailed demon. To destroy it, the village gathered ninjas together to battle the demon and in the end, one ninja, known as the Fourth Hokage, gave up his life to seal away the powers of the fox demon within a young boy: Uzumaki Naruto. Naruto, a boisterous pest with a good heart who dreams to someday be Hokage, the strongest ninja in the village. After nearly failing his pre-ninja exams, he is set in a team with Uchiha Sasuke, his number one rival, and Haruno Sakura, his number one crush (being that HE has a crush on HER) to fufill tasks set by their mysterious, but amusing, training master Hatake Kakashi. But unbeknownst to his team, minus Kakashi (who really isn't on the team anyway, but who wants to get technical?), Naruto's a lot stronger and fated for much more than his big mouth lets on.
How many times have we seen this? Boy of not-so-appealing personality has amazing strength that only those priviledged few know of, but meanwhile, he gets tossed into a lot of situations where he can fight and practice some really interesting logic while he struggles to reach the goal of being the best. Naruto is one of those slow-fast series. The main storyline moves slow, hindered by an abundance of characters, who make up for the fast and furious action scenes. Kishimoto, however, balances the fast and the slow rather well, so there's not much time for boredom, minus the few times that the dialogue just gets garbly and leaves the reader with their mouth hanging open hoping that maybe the addresse will punch the addresser just to spice things up. The one thing so far that sets Naruto apart from other standard shounen series about being "the best(!!!)" is the amount of drama that Kishimoto tosses in. The amounts of angst are almost enough to satisfy a shoujo manga. Don't get me wrong though - this is not Neon Genesis Evangelion. Yet, while this setup has been seen a million times and then some in the anime.manga world, Naruto is strangely addictive. This is to be blamed upon the humour, which ranges from the usual perverted humour (Kakashi reading his "Make-Out Paradise" - or "Come Come Paradise" depending on your translator - novels is probably my favorite.) to you usual simply insulting the other party humour, as well as the strange diversity of the cast. It's these two factors that really keep this series alive and kicking....no pun intended.
posted by jhay at 11:21 AM
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