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Title: Tears
Series: One
Piece #9
Arc: East
Blue Part 9
Author: Eiichiro Oda
Rating:
5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages:
207
Words: 8K
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Synopsis: |
From Wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_One_Piece_chapters_(1_186)
"Proper Living"
"Monsters of the Grand Line"
"Business"
"Of Maps and Fish-Men"
"Sleep"
"The First Step Toward a Dream"
"Belle-Mère"
"To Live"
"A Thief is a Thief"
"Tears"
To save the life of the villager Genzo, Usopp angers Arlong by shooting at him. Zoro (freed by Nami and told to run away while he still can) defeats Arlong's low-ranking crews at Arlong Park and meets gullible octopus fish-man Hatchan, who brings him to Nami's hometown. Usopp is captured and brought to Arlong Park, where Nami is accused of hiring Zoro to kill Arlong. To increase the crew's mistrust and save Usopp's life, she apparently kills him and kicks his body into the sea. Luffy and Sanji arrive; although they want to help, Nami turns them away. In a flashback, Arlong's crew arrives and extorts protection money from the island's inhabitants. Nami and Nojiko's foster mother, Bellemere, who cannot pay for all three of them, gives up her life to save her daughters. Nami joins Arlong's crew as their cartographer, and they agree on a price for which she can buy her village back. In the present Arlong breaks the agreement, and Nami accepts Luffy's help.
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My Thoughts: |
This had ALL THE FEELZ, just as the manga-ka intended. A huge part of the book is Nami's backstory and the revelations about her past, her interactions with her adopted mom and adopted sister, how the village was everything to her but most of all, how she became the completely self-reliant woman we have seen so far. It was pretty good stuff but it setup the scene perfectly for when she asks for Luffy's help. Below is that one page scene.
I think part of why it is so moving to me is that it reveals someone beyond the end of their rope. Nami has been betrayed by Arlong the pirate in a way she never saw coming and realizes she's in perpetual slavery to him and her plan to buy the village is an impossible hope. So she's lost all hope but she realizes there IS somebody who can help her. And she reaches out to ask for that help, revealing all her own weaknesses and inability to deal with the situation. It is a moment of complete vulnerability. That type of thing always gets me.
On the flipside of the emotional coin is Arlong the fishman pirate. Ohhhh, he's bad. He's the kind of badguy you just want to see turned into clam chowder. He's the kind of badguy who is so tough that you EXPECT him to be a badguy and he fulfills those expectations 100%. He goes on about the superiority of the fishman race and how humans only deserve to be enslaved, etc. It's really uncomfortable stuff. So the book ending with Luffy getting ready to do battle with him is splendiferous!
★★★★★
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