One Piece Revisited vol. 15 - Straight Ahead!!!

I really like this cover, the symmetry is nice. Appropriate to have Usopp on there, since he's the one who gets the most fired-up about giants. 

Having defeated Mr. 3 et al, the Straw Hats depart Little Garden. However, one of Usopp's tall tales comes true, as their path is blocked by an enormous goldfish, whose poop could be mistaken for islands. The giants kill the goldfish, carving a path for the Straw Hats to sail straight on through (hence the volume title).

Love how it rises out of the water, and isn't "The Island Eater" the most badass name or what

There's also a neat scene where Sanji, who wasn't really involved in the fracas, intercepts a call from Sir Crocodile. I've always thought this is Sanji's special ability, he's like an Archer in Fate/Stay - capable of independent actions. If left to his own devices, you can count on him to gain some info, or get the rest of the crew of a pickle.

Every great villain has a scene where they angrily crush something in their hand (usually a glass) when their plans are spoiled. Crocodile has his own twist on it, drying up the water and withering the flower.

Before they get to the next island to kick-start the next arc, there's some nice scenes of the crew just interacting. It's one of One Piece's strong suits that Oda can make his characters just as interesting and endearing whether they're doing some great heroic feat or simply bouncing their over-sized personalities off each other. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the group dynamics, when it was this small core. Not saying I don't like the latter additions to the crew, but I have to admit it gets a little cluttered when you double the number of bodies.

Chess standing on the ocean (though he's really standing on top of a submarine barely submerged) is such a surreal, classic One Piece visual. It would actually be super imposing to find someone strong enough to just walk across the ocean by themselves, no ship required, so it's kind of a waste on a fodder enemy.

Lot of things to note here: First, Wapol straight up tried to eat a human being. That's messed up. Secondly, Zoro and Sanji stone cold not giving a shit about Luffy, because they know he'll be fine. Finally, Vivi knocking that dude out with the door. 

Wapol is the first of several kings to be seen in One Piece, and I think he's meant as a foil of sorts for Vivi. He's the ultimate example of a corrupt monarch who mistreats his people and doesn't deserve his throne, standing in contrast with Vivi's selflessness for the sake of her country. It's a small sample size now, but given future arcs I think Oda is probably a fan of the idealized form of monarchy.

It's the Hiking Bear! Don't forget to bow~

That is to say, he's okay with someone ruling a country because of their birthright, as long as they're a just and proper ruler. I bring this up because it's a concept you rarely see endorsed in western media (outside of fairy tales) - usually, the moral of the story is that monarchies are inherently corrupt and democracy is the only way forward, or it might be anti-establishment altogether. Though Oda also seems to prescribe to the Mandate of Heaven theory, which justifies a rebellion against an unjust monarch, without invalidating the concept of monarchy itself.

Another point is that he clearly doesn't approve of people classifying themselves as "better" than others. They won't appear for quite a while, but the World Nobles are the aristocracy of the One Piece world and they're just awful. So maybe for him, being king doesn't mean you're better than anyone else, it just means you get to be in charge. I don't know, perhaps I'm over-analyzing his politics, and he just thinks it's cool to have palaces and be called "Your Majesty".

I don't know if Dr. Kureha ever had children, but if she did, there's a 100% chance she hit on her daughter's boyfriends. And her granddaughters' boyfriends. And her great-granddaughters' boyfriends.

Oh, we need to talk about Dr. Kureha. I think he took her name (which means crimson flower, very fitting given the cherry blossoms that will feature heavily in this arc) from Dr. Shinogi Kureha, from Grappler Baki. They're both incredibly skilled doctors, and Shinogi's introduction predates the Drum Island arc by about 10 years, so I think it's possible. Maybe not a direct shout-out, since nothing else in their design or character is similar, but I find it hard to believe Oda wouldn't have read Baki growing up, the battle manga fan that he is. It's rather obscure in the west, but it's been running almost as long as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (and like that series, is still going) so it shouldn't be too surprising to see references.

Pictured: My experience crossing that one rooftop bridge in Anor Londo in Dark Souls.

A few volumes ago I proclaimed this as a "low point" in One Piece, and I stand by that Little Garden is easily one of the weakest arcs. But I didn't have a very high opinion of Drum Island either, and I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable this volume was! As I recall, the villain and fights aren't very good, but there's one of the best lines in the whole series coming up, so I'm ready to change my tune if I need to. Oh, and Dalton survived that, by the way. Because of course he did.

Favorite Pages:

Again, I'm cheating. But this sequence is just too much fun. If you have a good friend, you can bring up some half-remembered Weird Factoid like "I heard there's an octopus that learned how to use scissors" and they'll call it bullshit, but won't actually try and prove you wrong. They'll just come back with their own bullshit.

This page alone tells you volumes about Luffy's character. Specifically, his IQ.

Shades of Monty Python's killer rabbit? 

The way they ignore it until Sanji suddenly snaps cracks me up.

The Lapins look like vintage Toriyama monster design. And check out the little baby pointing out the bullies who were mean to it!

One Piece Revisited vol. 14 - Instinct

Something looks weird about Luffy's proportions here, but I'm into the way Mr. 3 and Ms. Goldenweek are drawn in all-green.

We're still on Little Garden, dealing with the giants and their duel. Despite being critically injured by the explosive booze, Dorry goes back out there as if nothing was wrong. And after further interference from Mr. 3 seals the deal, Broggy defeats him.

But see, Broggy knew that something was up with Dorry. However, he also knew that since Dorry was forcing himself to fight, he couldn't dishonor that by pointing it out, or holding back in any way. Dorry wouldn't want to be given pity. Unlike some of the other "muh honor" things in the series, this makes perfect sense to me and I like it a lot.

Really not sure how to feel about Vivi pulling her spinning-knife things out of her nipples, especially when talking about rubbing one out.

Reminds me of Ping Pong the Animation, when Smile and Peco have their climactic match. Peco is supposedly suffering from a knee injury, and before the match Smile is asked if he'll target it or not, can he bring himself to do that to a friend, go after his weak point? Smile responds. "Heroes don't have weak points." It's a great line, full of weight that you'll have to watch the series to understand, but basically he means that Peco is so talented, even if Smile exploits the injury, it won't matter. But if Peco loses because of it, it means he has a weakness, and he isn't a hero. So Smile will play his hardest, just like always, because he's so confident that Peco can rise above the injury and prove himself a "hero".

That's a lot of words about something that isn't One Piece, but I think you get my drift.

This one always made me wince - the knives are going through his hands the hard way, cutting every tendon and bone! He'll be crippled for life! Or at least if this was real life. But since this is One Piece, he'll be wielding a weapon as if nothing was wrong in a few chapters.

However, the fight against the four Baroque Works agents is kind of a mess. Only Luffy and Usopp are mobile (and I remain steadfast in my commitment to not give a crap about Karoo), so they have to deal with multiple opponents while also saving the rest from the death trap. Which is pointlessly complex, btw - Mr. 3 could just encase them in wax straight-up, no need to do this elaborate cake/candelabra setup. I guess it's more sadistic this way?

Based Zoro.

But then you also have Ms. Goldenweek, who has ridiculously broken abilities. It's not even explained if it's a devil fruit or what, but she can just paint on people and change their emotions to the point of making Luffy too apathetic to save his friends, or laugh too hard to do anything. They say it's something like hypnosis, but then how does it work when she just paints it on his back and he doesn't even see it?

I just like the way Mr. 5 provides support, chomping bullets out of the air. Underrated speed and precision there, besides the way he's invulnerable to them.

In the end, it doesn't matter, since Ms. Goldenweek doesn't really try very hard herself, Mr. 3 is a loser hiding behind a strong ability, Mr. 5 is inexplicably weak, and Ms. Valentine is an outright liability. But while it's mostly a gag fight, it still shows the hallmarks of the series. Mr. 5's ability to eat bombs is displayed, and Usopp uses that against him to trick him into swallowing a spicy pellet instead (he's weak to spice, but not explosives? Devil Fruit rules, I guess.) Meanwhile, Ms. Goldenweek's paint is defeated by burning off the clothes it was painted on, and fire also proves to be a counter to Mr. 3's wax. The point is, the fight isn't won simply because the good guys "had more friendship and willpower", they won because they found and exploited the weaknesses of the bad guy's powers.

[Through the Fire and Flames intensifies]

And of course, once Zoro and the others were freed, it's game over. There's a scene where Mr. 3 lure Luffy into the jungle, where he tries to trick him with a bunch of  clones, but Luffy just picks out the real one on the first try, saying it was "instinct" (hence the volume title). Years later we might point this out as a form of Haki, or maybe it's just a throwaway gag. I think it can sort of be both, because the whole point is that Haki isn't like a secret technique that's impossible to replicate until you learn it, it's just a natural evolution of a top-class fighter's abilities. Sure, some hone it to an unnatural degree, but I like to think any time someone gets "in the zone" and anticipates their opponent's movements, that's a mild form of Haki.

Favorite Page:

I think there's actually a lot of emotion in this face and line. Broggy knows he should revel in the glory of victory, finally settling a century-old grudge, but he just killed his best friend, and lost his purpose for living. Also, that's about 2 fights a day by my math.

One Piece Revisited vol. 13 - It's Okay!!!

The only thing interesting about this cover is the way it's set up in panels, instead of the characters just crowding around. But why am I reminded of the Brady Bunch?

Finally, we reach what I'd consider an early "low point" in One Piece. That's not to say it's bad or anything, but compared to the tight, character-oriented arcs before, Whiskey Peak and Little Garden just don't grip me. Maybe it's because we aren't picking up new crew members at the same pace, so the arcs lack that emotional connection that comes with solving a problem for the new member and learning their backstory.

This is an extremely sweet lariat, I must admit. Mr. 5 has a cool ability, but spends most of his time firing booger-bombs. 

But I think it also has to do with the fact that these low-level Baroque Works agents aren't very good villains. Remember what I was talking about last time, the booking? It's hard to take Mr. 5 and Ms. Valentine seriously when all they do is get beat accidentally by Luffy and Zoro, and take out people that Zoro already mopped the floor with. And then Mr. 8 and Ms. Wednesday aren't even villains at all, they're undercover agents. Which brings me to another question - what sort of evil activities do the Frontier Agents of Baroque Works do?

We saw they were trying to kill Laboon, but they talked like it would be food for the village. Is that true? Or did they just want to sell him? I guess they routinely trick pirates into staying at their town and then kill them, but let's be honest - Luffy's crew are an exception among the usual piratical rogues. So it doesn't seem like they do stuff that's that bad, which is good I guess, because otherwise Inngram and Vivi would be kinda morally compromised to have aided their enemy, even if they were doing it to gain information on Crocodile.

Love that ninja-esque way Zoro just zoops into place to split the bullet. Could have been drawn just cutting it with a single straight forward slash, but instead it's this cool pose.

Also in this volume, we're introduced to Ms. All-Sunday, who we'll later know and love as Nico Robin. And unlike Vivi, she does have blood on her hands, which actually does gets properly addressed later. But for now, she's just the sexy mysterious lady who blew up a ship and rides around on a sea turtle. (question - does she actually ride the turtle from island to island? Or is it just like a mini-ship, and her actual vessel is docked around the other side of the island?)

I remember thinking for sure her power was telekinesis or something, but actually it's the ability to sprout hands all over the place. So flipping Luffy's hat off his head is totally possible to do with both, but it's nicely ambiguous thanks to the paneling.

One thing that stands out to me is that after the log poses were introduced, they immediately became about as rare as air molecules. They broke one at the lighthouse and took Crocus' pose instead, Ingram left on his suicide mission with an Eternal Pose to Alabasta, and Ms. All-Sunday offers them another Eternal Pose which Luffy smashes. I don't think I dislike this, there's no reason not create artificial scarcity of items in the world when you don't need to, but it's just a little funny how nobody mentioned them before, but now they're all over the place. I guess you just don't use them at all outside the Grand Line, is the thing.

Scary lighting, with insane eyes.

Dorry and Broggy are a fun duo, and for once someone's unreasonably extravagant sense of honor actually makes total sense. It's like some Valhalla-level biz to be stuck in an unending, evenly-matched duel for 100 years. Also, note that Oda loves vikings, so no wonder he gives that motif to the most honorable, most badass, most fearsome race in the world.

One thing I will say about this arc is that it's certainly not some filler. Several hundred chapters from now, Usopp's admiration for and friendship with these giants will pay off in a big way, and of course Mr. 3 makes a critical re-appearance as well.

Favorite Page:

It's a nice Jurassic jungle, but really I only picked this for the top panel. I don't know whether it's better that Zoro isn't scared of the triceratops, or whether he honestly doesn't know what it is. Maybe he never read Dinotopia, like every other 8 year old boy.

One Piece Revisited vol. 12 - The Legend Has Begun

Very fun and dynamic cover, and check out all that treasure. Appropriate, since as the title suggests, this is where the journey REALLY begins. But what the heck is Usopp doing, para-trooping directly into the camera!?

Thanks to the timely arrival of a storm, Luffy & co. are able to escape Buggy and Smoker and enter the Grand Line. Of course, the storm was almost certainly summoned by that mysterious stranger who appeared, and it's weird reading it with the foresight I have now. I mean, yeah it's Luffy's dad and also the leader of the Revolutionaries, and you certainly don't get that feeling. At most, he appears like another Shanks or Mihawk, who takes an interest in young up-and-comers. I think I somehow already knew about Luffy's parentage when I first read this, so it never made much of a mysterious impression on me.

Is "re-affirming your goals while swearing loyalty to each other by putting your feet up on a barrel" a thing? In any culture? It's cool, I want to do it. Check out that awesome bottom panel, too.

Well actually, before they can even reach the Grand Line, they drift into the Calm Belt, and we get some more geographical exposition. Really, this world is so clever - you can't just sail into the major equatorial current because it's surrounded by a dead area on each side, thanks to the currents of the larger oceans moving counter-productively and canceling it out. And to make it worse, this area is inhabited by enormous Sea Kings.

this spread says "you're a small, powerless speck in the ocean. Don't get too full of yourself." and I love it.

So with that potential-future-plot-hole filled, Crocus establishes the new rules for how the voyage will be conducted: You can't just sail straight on ahead, because the weather and currents are too rough. So you have to go island-to-island, and this is done with special composes that point to a specific island. You stay at one, and after a while it registers the next one, and so on. So my question is - why hasn't someone made a proper video game with this progression? There's been quite a few One Piece games, mostly fightan, and some that follow the story, but none that put you in the world and let you plot your own course.

Actually, the world's kinda structured like a MOBA if you think about it - the Grand Line is the central Lane, and the Calm Belt acts as the Jungle. Could play Pirates vs Marines, one side trying to push to Raftel, the others to push everybody back to Roguetown.

So I have issues with Laboon. Setting aside the Japanese' continued willingness to butcher whales, which puts Luffy's decision to pick a fight with Laboon by brutally jamming the mast into one of his open wounds in a strange light, it's a fine on an emotional level. Laboon was abandoned, and is essentially pining away. Luffy gives him something promise to believe in! And when we bring it all back with Brook in like a couple hundred chapters... but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm mainly concerned with the logistics.

oh jeez Luffy how did nobody help you correct that, it's like 5 football fields wide, surely someone had to say something about those lines

First off, was Laboon just blocking the path for every vessel in the last 50 years? How many just freaking die right here, from either crashing into him or getting eaten? You'd think that sort of thing would get around. But Nami didn't even know about Reverse Mountain, so. Another issue is that Luffy's little "fight" with Laboon couldn't have caused that much damage, right? Which makes me feel better about hurting the poor guy, but how is it enough for Laboon to even notice, or consider "a draw"? Finally, that's an absolutely absurd amount of paint required for that jolly roger. Laboon being so huge is neat, but it messes with the scale of everything else. I mean, look at the surface area - that's the lighthouse down there! Think how many buckets of paint it takes to paint your house. Now imagine how big your house is compared to a lighthouse. Now imagine that, but 50 times over. How many days did it even take?

There's no way this isn't a Kame House shout-out.

If there's one thing Oda gets, it's how to book characters properly (I'm using the term in an unorthodox way, but stay with me here). See, "booking" is what it's called in Pro Wrestling when they decide who's gonna win, and in what manner. It's also used to describe an overall plan - for example, you might say a wrestler is being "booked to look strong" when she wins match after match, establishing herself as a dominant force. The most basic booking is when you build up a Heel (villain), for the sake of eventually letting a Face (hero) beat them. In order to establish the Face as a legitimate contender, they need to run over a few jobbers, and establish their likable personality (see Luffy against Alvida and Morgan). Similarly, the Heel has to do something to be worth of hatred, and beating up crowd favorite Faces works well (see Arlong making short work of Zoro and Sanji). This also makes them look powerful, which sets up a larger payoff for their loss. The crowd ostensibly loves to see the Face win, but as I've said before, it doesn't mean anything if there's no sense of overcoming a challenge.

Well, let me run that back - you book a match for a variety of reasons, after all. Sometimes, your characters take too many losses, and they loose credibility. Unless the purpose is to move them into a more comic-relief sort of role, this is bad for everybody; with their stock de-valued, nobody cares when they lose, making them worthless for building up other characters. And continual losses make it hard to ever believe they can pull out a victory, which just gets frustrating. You can only run an underdog angle so long before people lose faith.

So, the easiest way to combat that is to simply give them some wins! Remind the audience that, yes, Zoro did just lose to Mihawk, and ran away from Smoker, and honestly would've lost to Arlong if Luffy hadn't saved him, but he's still a badass. Zoro defeats Tashigi almost entirely off-screen, which isn't very helpful. But then when he takes out 100 bounty hunters at Whiskey Peak - DAMN.

Speaking of wrestling, "Red = Money" has been the old adage, and it's true. Here, it's used to cast Zoro as the sort of badass who doesn't give a damn about his wounds, he licks the blood and smiles, 'bring it on' he says.

Zoro looks great here, in an excellently choreographed action scene. He's faster, smarter, stronger, and more skilled than anyone there. He kicks their asses up and down the street, and reminds everyone why he's the 1st mate. Not for the first time, people confuse him for the captain. He's got the power to lead his own crew, if he wanted. Luffy's very lucky to have someone like that under him. This issue is pushed even further in the next volume... but that's next volume. :^)

Here's another scale issue - tombstone-cacti is a cool idea, but are we supposed to believe they've killed like several thousand people? and buried them into the sides and undersides of that mountainous cactus? How did they even get up there?

See, good booking is something you don't really notice until it's done poorly. Remember how everyone who wasn't Goku or Vegeta sort of fell off the map in Dragon Ball? And how disappointing it was when Gohan went through all that training, only to act like an idiot and lose to Buu? That's bad booking. When you've so thoroughly thrown your cast under the bus that there's only two characters anyone expects to be able to do anything, that's a problem. Sure, not everyone needs to be capable of beating the Big Bad, but it's sad to see Piccolo wasting away on the sidelines, because there's nobody for him to even be a close match against. And again, it doesn't do much to help Buu for him to kick Yamcha's ass, because who hasn't kicked Yamcha's ass at this point?

I use Dragon Ball as an example, but you can find it in many long-running series. Katekyo Hitman Reborn was another that pissed me off. Gokudera just stopping winning fights after a while, but we were expected to keep treating him like a powerful ally. Meanwhile, Hibari won all the time, but somehow never got to fight anyone of significant strength. It even seemed like he was stronger than Tsuna, but there was no payoff. Didn't help that he was such a directionless, flat character, but still. It's poor booking!

Favorite Page(s):

There are three very excellent shots of the moon near the end of this volume, and I like them so much, I just decided to pick all of them.

Oda knows that the moon can look cool, even when it isn't 100% full or a thin sickle.

I will never not be into the visual of the moon reflected in the water.

I feel like this is analogous to that famous image of Batman leaping in front of the lightning, from the cover of The Dark Knight Returns. Badass silhouette against the sky.

One Piece Revisited vol. 11 - The Meanest Man in the East

"The Meanest Man in the East" is a great epithet, though it fits someone like Arlong more than Luffy (the Marines are the ones ascribing it to him). Also, those outfits were costumes in the Grand Battle game!

The bulk of this volume is Luffy's fight against Arlong. There's shark-jaws being used as handheld bear-traps, a giant saw, a lot of blood, Arlong makes like a living harpoon, Luffy trashes a room, it's good stuff. Luffy does some clever stuff with his fingers, spreading them to make a net. But even as he makes up new techniques, you can see Luffy building a repertoire of signature and finishing moves. He finishes Arlong off with the Gum Gum Battle-axe, which was previously used to great destructive effect at the Baratie, so you know it's gonna be strong, but he's never used it against a person before, so there's the interest.

I love it when Oda remembers Luffy's entire body is stretchy, and someone slings him around like a rubber chicken.

In the end, Luffy defeats Arlong, along with the room where Nami was forced to work - like the tattoo earlier, destroying symbols of oppression is liberating. Then we get yet another iconic moment (this arc is full of 'em) where Luffy declares that Nami is "one of us now". Or at least, that's what he says in the Viz translation. In the actual Japanese, he's declaring her his nakama. That word means "comrade", essentially - closer than friends, arguably as close as family, usually connected due to a shared working experience. Soldiers in the same unit would definitely consider each other nakama. Crewmates on a ship might, as well. And that word used to be the source of major tension in the One Piece fandom.

damn, Arlong looks jacked up.

See, some people wanted to keep it untranslated, as if the concept was too quintessentially Japanese to be butchered into an English word like "crewmate" or "friend" or "comrade". I disagree, but as with much of translation, it comes down to context. Luffy's line here is perfect - it sounds natural, yet more emphatic than saying "we're shipmates!" or something. The problem is coming up with a term someone would actually use to describe their own close friends, which in English is neither "comrades" nor nakama (I've suggested "homie" in the past, to mixed reception). Further complicating things is that this particular line is delivered from a man to a woman, and English is lacking in ways to describe inter-gender platonic relationships.

Nami's cup size famously fluctuates through the early volumes, until Oda just decided on making her full Barbie-mode. Here she is looking particularly cartoonish - remember how she looked just a few volumes earlier? Maybe that tanktop is a corset of some sort.

In any case, the debate of To Translate or Not To Translate is eternal. I find myself on both sides of the line - I like Shichibukai instead of "7 Warlords of the Sea", and haki instead of "ambition", but "seastone" instead of kairoseki, and "Straw Hats" instead of Mugiwara. I admit much of my bias just comes from which translations I read first, but in general I think I'm in favor of translating, when it will help clarity. We don't need any more "all according to keikaku" lines.

Also, maybe you noticed how I treat the Japanese words in italics, and quote the English ones. I don't know why I do that, but it makes sense to me. Too many quotation marks looks messy, and italicizing English words as if they're special vocab items seems wrong.

Every arc ends with a party. I like the mood of the top panel, you can feel the warm tropical night and clear sky, the dark waves gently lapping...

In Roguetown (which clearly inspired the town of Rogueport in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door) the Straw Hats each go off and wander around town, spending money and/or getting into trouble. It speaks to the strength of their characters that they can operate just fine without the rest of the crew around to bounce off of. Then we're introduced to a few Marines who aren't corrupt and evil for once! Tashigi is a little weird, and raises some questions of why "girls can't be strong swordsmen" in a world where clearly the powerlevel spectrum an individual is capable of attaining greatly outclasses any biological differences. I mean, sure, maybe Kuina would get overtaken by Zoro, but she'd be able to get far stronger than the average man. Also, there's Smoker, who is a total badass and chomps on TWO cigars because he's just that tough, but is also nice to little kids and would probably make a great dad.

d'awww~

But the most important thing is that Buggy and Alvida (slim mode, since she ate a Devil Fruit) show up again, proving that the cover page storylines are indeed canon and it's a mystery why Toei never animated them when they needed filler. They try to execute Luffy on the same spot that Gold Roger was killed, and to complete the symbolism, Luffy smiles at his own death, just like Roger did. This is something Luffy's pretty consistent about - he doesn't put any value in his own life or safety, if he dies in pursuit of his dreams then so be it. It's other people's lives he cares about, as evidenced above by the thrashing he gave Arlong.

Is it ironic that Buggy, of all people, has come the closest to actually killing Luffy?

Favorite Page:

There's a two-page spread of Arlong Park collapsing, but I like this one better, how you can see the impact spread downwards, as Luffy smashes Arlong through each floor.

One Piece Revisited vol. 10 - OK, Let's Stand Up!

There's the obligatory shot of all the arc's villains (even poor Moomoo). and check out how hard Luffy is pulling his hat down over his head, dang.

For some reason, this is a super memorable title to me, even though it's not actually a line uttered in the volume. It reminds me of that iconic Wolverine panel in spirit. I often say it to myself after losing the first round in any fighting game - "OK, let's stand up".

Don't tell me One Piece's character designs are too silly to take seriously when Wolverine dresses like this.

I think that's an important quality of a hero, and what makes for a great fight - the good guy needs to get knocked down, smacked around a little, before turning the tables. They don't always have to make miraculous comebacks from the brink of defeat, and in fact that can get annoying if done repeatedly, but a good fight involved back and forth. If you never show your heroes struggle, then their victories don't appear earned. The volume does include two great pages showing Zoro and Sanji standing up after initial knock-downs.

dig the harsh shading

I don't support smoking, but damn if Sanji doesn't make it look cool, lighting up while he's laid out on his back like it's nbd. Also the second best usage of the "martial arts degree comparison" cliche I've ever seen.

This arc sets up a template for nearly every arc following it: first, the Straw Hats arrive in a village. They discover some bad guy is making everyone miserable, and they all get split up and have various run-ins with villains and new allies. Eventually, everyone pairs off against their counterpart - Zoro fights the enemy swordsman (and usually the 2nd strongest villain), Sanji fights the 3rd strongest, and often the rest of the crew gets a fight, too. Meanwhile, there's something preventing Luffy from actually arriving to fight the big bad, or maybe he suffers an early setback and is removed from play for a while, but finally after the other fights have been settled he finishes things off by defeating the enemy leader. Then there's a big party.

There's some crazy lung capacity on display in this volume, plus underwater visibility. I can't hardly open my eyes underwater, let alone see anything! Not the mention the water-pressure issues...

It's a formula that works well, because it gives each character time to shine. This is a battle manga, after all, and fights are a core part of that. There's some people who consider themselves so intellectual that anything besides revealing plot twists or dramatic character developments are a waste of time, but miss me with that noise. There's art and entertainment in action, and in my mind there's no better action than a one-on-one fight. Chaotic set-pieces with lots of things exploding and crashing down are cool, and chase scenes are exhilarating, and shoot-outs are dramatic, but give me some good ol' hand-to-hand combat any day of the week.

Zoro and Sanji have had specific fights before, but this is Usopp's first time. And he's scared, because he knows he's weak.

He plans to lie his way out of it, like he does with everything, but isn't able to lie to himself. 

Maybe it comes from my love of martial arts films, and pro wrestling, but I admire a well-constructed fight. I talked at length about Luffy v. Kreig a few weeks ago, so I'll spare you the play-by-play this time, but trust me: these are good fights, Brent. Zoro fulfills his promise to never lose again, defeating Hachi while seriously injured and with two borrowed swords. Sanji gets his first actual victory, using some clever thinking to force Kuroobi to fight on land and then demolishing him. Oh, and Usopp is even able to defeat Chuu, thanks to some expert sniping and repeated application of a hammer to the head.

Zoro keeps that scar, by the way. One of the few examples of such in One Piece. Luffy takes quite a few wounds, but somehow always heals without a scar. Well, mostly.

And now that the lieutenants are defeated, Luffy is able to get back in action and fight Arlong. Of course he can't just step in and help Hachi or Kuroobi out, that wouldn't be sporting! It's the unwritten rule of being a villain - you only get to attack the hero one at a time, unless you're a fodder mook, in which case you're gonna get wiped out by the dozen. Though you could argue it's part of Arlong's personality, he trusts his crew to be able to handle puny humans, because he can't believe any human could be strong enough to stand up to a fishman. This racism angle will get interesting later when they visit fishman island, but for now it's just misplaced arrogance.

Withdrew Zoro! Send out Luffy!

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Oda doesn't often do pages like this, it looks like something out of Bleach in terms of composition. It's a shame this was never referenced in any of the openings, it would work well for that sort of thing. Note how the crew are identified with the numbers in the order that they joined, Oda loves to do this in color spreads.