Hang on to your bubbles!
One Piece, Fishman Island Saga
by Eiichiro Oda
Genre: Fantasy
About: The crew are finally reunited and journey down into the deepest depths of the ocean floor, to Fishman Island. But humans are no longer welcome in Fishman Island. A civil war is about to break out and the gang have enemies on all sides.
The Good
It's great to see the crew all back together and really exciting to see how much they've all gained in power during the two year break. There are plenty of scenes that showcase each of their new powers and sets up what we can expect to see from them in the New World.
I also really liked the villain in this saga. Hody is not quite as good as his idol, Arlong, but he felt believable. Oda handled the complexity of the race relationships between humans and fishpeople really well and I loved that this a theme we've touched on several times before, it's never tidied away and forgotten about but an important part of the world and has a deep impact on many prominent characters.
The Bad
There were a lot of characters I just didn't care for in this saga. The royal family in particular. While I liked the queen's backstory we never actually meet her as she's long dead (same goes for Tiger, another one I was interested in). Instead we get the King, the three princes and the princess. I felt like the three princes and the king were very bland and lacking in personality. They all pretty much exist to protect the princess and seem to have no other purpose in life. And while the princess had an interesting plot point with her powers, she was otherwise very passive. I was just not a fan of the characters overall, even Jimbei didn't do as much as I expected from him.
The Somewhat Iffy
The princess has been locked in her room for ten years because of Van Decken using his devil fruit powers to try and assassinate her. Given that the princes and the king seem to exist only to protect her, I question them not being able to hunt down and defeat Van Decken in those ten years. It was an unnecessary plot point I think to have Van Decken, especially given how easily he eventually is defeated.
Overall
I didn't enjoy this saga all that much. It could have been because the previous saga was SO GOOD than the next would always pale in comparison, but I think really it lacked interesting new characters.
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