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between_time_and_42I finished the post-Marineford arc in One Piece today, which means I made it to the timeskip, which means I made it to what I had decided years ago would be my official stopping point in the anime. It feels so surreal, considering 1. the fact that I only achieved this by binging the hell out of it in four days (my brain can hardly process everything, I think I'm going to need a long time to come to terms with all the episodes I just watched), and 2. that I first started watching the show nine years ago.
If you're wondering what took me so long, I guess I should explain my history with the show. I would have never started watching One Piece, or any anime really, if it wasn't for my friend I made in my freshman year of college, with whom I would frequently have movie nights where he took it upon himself to introduce me to a bunch of his favorite movies that he was surprised I had never seen. Some were better than others (the Terminator movies vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example), but we always had a good time. Then one night he said he had something he wanted to show me, but it was a surprise. When we got together to watch, he got out the box set of the first few episodes from an anime I had vaguely heard of, One Piece. I'd been excited, but once I saw what he wanted me to watch, I was skeptical. Because of its stigma as a super nerdy thing, not to mention a "lower" form of art (being a cartoon), and because I'd had enough friends over the years try to introduce me to various anime shows that I started refusing to watch anything they recommended out of spite, I had never been interested in watching a show like that. But, well, Film Buddy wanted to show it to me, and I wanted to keep an open mind and trust his taste, so I thought... what the hell. "This series is all about pirates," I remember him telling me as he popped the disc into my laptop. Hmm... well, I had always loved stories about people sailing the seven seas, whether they were pirates or not, so this could be interesting. We watched all the episodes on the first disc... and the intro caught my attention. It was so catchy, and the character designs were so fun! Then the episode actually started, and it didn't take long for my reservations to fade away into intrigue. After watching the flashback episode that introduced Red-Haired Shanks, I had become fully captivated with this squishy, stretchy weirdo of a main character. And then when the disc ended on a cliffhanger, with Buggy the Clown revealing that he and Shanks had a history together, I remember saying "That's the end?? I want more!" To which Film Buddy replied, "I told you!"
It was September 2014 when we first started watching One Piece together, and by December 2014, we had reached the beginning of the Skypeia arc, spending hours watching a disc a night. Then things went downhill between Film Buddy and I (he had a lot of growing up to do and I don't regret ending that relationship, although I am still disappointed in myself for how I handled it), and it took me a few months to decide to continue One Piece without him. I watched it sporadically throughout 2015, eventually finishing the Skypeia arc over summer break that year. Being burned out from what I considered to be a slog of an arc, I didn't pick it back up until early 2016, when I ended up binging the Long Ring Long Land, Water 7, and Enies Lobby arcs all the way through. If I thought I had liked One Piece before, Water 7 and Enies Lobby cemented my love for it. Those arcs are still tied for my favorite of the series (that I've watched). If I recall correctly, though, the length of the Enies Lobby arc burned me out again, and after making a half-hearted start at Thriller Bark, I decided to take a break before continuing...
...and that break lasted seven years, to which I attribute the following things: 2016 being the year I got into Kingsman: The Secret Service, which became my main fandom for the next few years and therefore took up most of my time as my main hyperfixation, and the Great Acoustic Music Explosion of 2017, which changed my life forever and got me WAY more focused on bettering myself as a musician than watching some silly show, no matter how much I loved that show. Not to mention, I had over 500 episodes of said show left to watch, and the length was demoralizing to me. Plus, along the way, I kept falling into various other fandoms, and then of course real-life stuff happened, like me graduating from college and getting various jobs and just other shhhhhtuff that pushed One Piece completely off my radar. I still kept- and do still keep- a little figure of Luffy on my windowsill, and sometimes (very rarely, but still) I would wear my straw hat that looks like his. I also remained diligent in avoiding spoilers for the episodes I hadn't seen at all costs. But over the years, I began to look at One Piece as more of a "man, I remember the good ol' days when I was into that show" thing than something I was actively into.
Earlier this year, something changed. I have no idea what made my brain give me this command, but one morning as I awoke from sleep, one of the first things to pop into my head was, "You're never going to catch up in One Piece. Why don't you just read about it on Wikipedia to find out what you've been missing?" So I proceeded to do so- reading outlines of each arc up until the timeskip. Part of me regrets having done that now, because now that I've actually watched everything instead of having read it, I wish I could have not known what was coming and had the plot points hit that much harder. But at the very least, reading about all that was to come made me want very badly to start watching it again. Still I didn't bother picking it back up, until I found out (via, in a weird twist, Netflix's tie-in promotion with tumblr- if I had quit tumblr for good like I'd thought I was going to last year, I never would have found out about it) that a live-action adaptation was coming out. While I was only mildly interested at first, I ended up watching the live-action, which made me want to watch the anime again...
And, as y'all can see from all my previous posts, I finally got around to doing, and now it's been three months and I've reached the goal I set for myself a long time ago. I think Film Buddy would be proud if I could somehow reach out to him and let him know I'd gotten this far. I'm certainly proud of myself, for sure. Now, onwards to reading the manga (since I want to know what happens in the story and I feel like it'll go by a lot more quickly if I read instead of watch).
I thought that I was going to write up my actual thoughts on the series here (and BOY do I have a lot of them), but I think I still need to process everything. Still... this feels like such an achievement for me personally. I know that's a silly thing to say, it's literally just watching a (really long) show, but it's something I never thought I'd get around to doing again, and it's made me so happy (even if I do affectionately call it "the second-worst bullshit of my life"). I'm also pretty happy that reaching this point has now allowed me to use my spare time to get back to writing. Time to finish Part 4 of SF: ALS!
If you're wondering what took me so long, I guess I should explain my history with the show. I would have never started watching One Piece, or any anime really, if it wasn't for my friend I made in my freshman year of college, with whom I would frequently have movie nights where he took it upon himself to introduce me to a bunch of his favorite movies that he was surprised I had never seen. Some were better than others (the Terminator movies vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example), but we always had a good time. Then one night he said he had something he wanted to show me, but it was a surprise. When we got together to watch, he got out the box set of the first few episodes from an anime I had vaguely heard of, One Piece. I'd been excited, but once I saw what he wanted me to watch, I was skeptical. Because of its stigma as a super nerdy thing, not to mention a "lower" form of art (being a cartoon), and because I'd had enough friends over the years try to introduce me to various anime shows that I started refusing to watch anything they recommended out of spite, I had never been interested in watching a show like that. But, well, Film Buddy wanted to show it to me, and I wanted to keep an open mind and trust his taste, so I thought... what the hell. "This series is all about pirates," I remember him telling me as he popped the disc into my laptop. Hmm... well, I had always loved stories about people sailing the seven seas, whether they were pirates or not, so this could be interesting. We watched all the episodes on the first disc... and the intro caught my attention. It was so catchy, and the character designs were so fun! Then the episode actually started, and it didn't take long for my reservations to fade away into intrigue. After watching the flashback episode that introduced Red-Haired Shanks, I had become fully captivated with this squishy, stretchy weirdo of a main character. And then when the disc ended on a cliffhanger, with Buggy the Clown revealing that he and Shanks had a history together, I remember saying "That's the end?? I want more!" To which Film Buddy replied, "I told you!"
It was September 2014 when we first started watching One Piece together, and by December 2014, we had reached the beginning of the Skypeia arc, spending hours watching a disc a night. Then things went downhill between Film Buddy and I (he had a lot of growing up to do and I don't regret ending that relationship, although I am still disappointed in myself for how I handled it), and it took me a few months to decide to continue One Piece without him. I watched it sporadically throughout 2015, eventually finishing the Skypeia arc over summer break that year. Being burned out from what I considered to be a slog of an arc, I didn't pick it back up until early 2016, when I ended up binging the Long Ring Long Land, Water 7, and Enies Lobby arcs all the way through. If I thought I had liked One Piece before, Water 7 and Enies Lobby cemented my love for it. Those arcs are still tied for my favorite of the series (that I've watched). If I recall correctly, though, the length of the Enies Lobby arc burned me out again, and after making a half-hearted start at Thriller Bark, I decided to take a break before continuing...
...and that break lasted seven years, to which I attribute the following things: 2016 being the year I got into Kingsman: The Secret Service, which became my main fandom for the next few years and therefore took up most of my time as my main hyperfixation, and the Great Acoustic Music Explosion of 2017, which changed my life forever and got me WAY more focused on bettering myself as a musician than watching some silly show, no matter how much I loved that show. Not to mention, I had over 500 episodes of said show left to watch, and the length was demoralizing to me. Plus, along the way, I kept falling into various other fandoms, and then of course real-life stuff happened, like me graduating from college and getting various jobs and just other shhhhhtuff that pushed One Piece completely off my radar. I still kept- and do still keep- a little figure of Luffy on my windowsill, and sometimes (very rarely, but still) I would wear my straw hat that looks like his. I also remained diligent in avoiding spoilers for the episodes I hadn't seen at all costs. But over the years, I began to look at One Piece as more of a "man, I remember the good ol' days when I was into that show" thing than something I was actively into.
Earlier this year, something changed. I have no idea what made my brain give me this command, but one morning as I awoke from sleep, one of the first things to pop into my head was, "You're never going to catch up in One Piece. Why don't you just read about it on Wikipedia to find out what you've been missing?" So I proceeded to do so- reading outlines of each arc up until the timeskip. Part of me regrets having done that now, because now that I've actually watched everything instead of having read it, I wish I could have not known what was coming and had the plot points hit that much harder. But at the very least, reading about all that was to come made me want very badly to start watching it again. Still I didn't bother picking it back up, until I found out (via, in a weird twist, Netflix's tie-in promotion with tumblr- if I had quit tumblr for good like I'd thought I was going to last year, I never would have found out about it) that a live-action adaptation was coming out. While I was only mildly interested at first, I ended up watching the live-action, which made me want to watch the anime again...
And, as y'all can see from all my previous posts, I finally got around to doing, and now it's been three months and I've reached the goal I set for myself a long time ago. I think Film Buddy would be proud if I could somehow reach out to him and let him know I'd gotten this far. I'm certainly proud of myself, for sure. Now, onwards to reading the manga (since I want to know what happens in the story and I feel like it'll go by a lot more quickly if I read instead of watch).
I thought that I was going to write up my actual thoughts on the series here (and BOY do I have a lot of them), but I think I still need to process everything. Still... this feels like such an achievement for me personally. I know that's a silly thing to say, it's literally just watching a (really long) show, but it's something I never thought I'd get around to doing again, and it's made me so happy (even if I do affectionately call it "the second-worst bullshit of my life"). I'm also pretty happy that reaching this point has now allowed me to use my spare time to get back to writing. Time to finish Part 4 of SF: ALS!
