Sword guy and Armor guy look cool. Uhhhh Sea Restaurant is a cool setting, especially for the fight. Otherwise, same as before; series feels like filler.

Key Takeaways:
-Everyone deserves food.
-To lose a fight is to lose at one's dreams. To be spared means to be given a 2nd chance (reiterated from vol. 4's Q&A). ( )

Sanji's arc is surprisingly not stereotypical. You would think that a skirt chaser in a manga would be a dolt, but when Sanji is serious he shows cunning and good fighting skills. His relationship with the head chef is amusing as well, and I'm remembering this from years after watching the anime and reading the manga to test the differences. Good fights, no-nonsense characters when you least expect them, and well-placed awkwardness courtesy of Luffy and Oda's appreciation of the ordinary odd things in life make this arc my favorite from the East Blue adventures. ( )

Zoro is fantastic. ( )

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Title: The Oath
Series: One Piece #6
Arc: East Blue Part 6
Author: Eiichiro Oda
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 200
Words: 8K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_One_Piece_chapters_(1_186)

Chapter List:

"Before the Storm"

"An Uninvited Guest"

"The Don's Offer"

"Steer Clear"

"Storm"

"A Parting of Ways"

"Zoro Overboard"

"The Oath"

"Mackerel Head"

Luffy is a kitchen assistant and waiter until the torn-up flagship of Pirate Commodore Don Krieg lays anchor next to the floating restaurant and a half-starved Krieg, leaning on Gin, staggers inside. He begs for food, which Sanji provides without hesitation. When Krieg's strength is restored he reverts to his normal self, demanding ownership of the restaurant and food for his 100 men. Nami leaves with the Merry Go, and Mihawk arrives. The master swordsman followed Krieg from the Grand Line, where he had wiped out his entire fleet. Zoro challenges him to a duel and, despite his best efforts, is defeated. After the fight, Usopp, Johnny, and Yosaku take Zoro aboard the bounty hunters' boat and set sail to follow Nami. Luffy is left behind to pay his debt to the restaurant by defeating Krieg and his men.

My Thoughts:

For whatever reason, this felt like a more “serious” volume than the previous ones. I think that comes down to the fact that we realize just how “under-powered” everyone that Luffy and Co have met so far are in comparison to the people they are going to meet on the Grand Line. We meet Mihawk Dracule, the world's greatest swordsman and my goodness, he is a veritable god of ability. He destroys a whole fleet of ships with just a sword for goodness sake.

We also get an explanation for why this arc is called East Blue. The world is divided by the Red Line and the Grand Line and various sections get called their designation. So Luffy and Co are in the East Blue quadrant, which Mihawk assures them is the easiest quadrant to live in. Zoro faces off against Mihawk and is so easily defeated that it is stunning. Mainly because we've seen how Zoro just rolls over anyone he's come up against so far. It's classic shonen but I hope that Oda can do better and tell a good story along with the shonen components. Once a series goes strictly shonen, it tends to become rather dull and uninteresting. I've experienced that with two other series, Hunter X Hunter and Reborn!.

Overall, I am glad to see something a little more serious from Oda, as it shows he has a deeper understanding of writing and has the ooomph to pull it off. Silly and Zany are good but it does need to be leavened and this volume felt just right in that regards.

★★★★☆ ( )

(Opinion on volumes 6-9)

Why I (kept) reading it: Found the first five volumes semi-pleasant but couldn't figure out why it was so popular, particularly with adults, and wanted to keep reading till I understood and confirmed it still didn't appeal to me. Heard many say the arc that starts in these volumes (involving Nami) was what really hit them in the gut and hooked them on the series.

Pros: Situation in Nami arc meant for a while the conflict involved more than just trying to overpower some evil bad guy (though it looks like it'll be going back to that in the subsequent volumes), as well as a bit of moral ambiguity. Luffy's perhaps idealist but simple and preach-free way of dealing with Nami's behavior rings true to the character and made me feel a little bit the refreshing appeal of him.

Cons: Same old story with dramatic pasts being used to develop characters rather than making their present-time behavior more complex and speak for itself. Foes still...zany and cartoonishly evil.

Conclusion: I guess I'm sort of like Luffy. I care a lot more about how I see the characters acting here and now than whatever angst-filled past someone can expound about. Only while Luffy saw something he liked in all these people, they're just too one-dimensional for me. The plot was a little more engaging here than in previous volumes, but now that this purportedly emotionally intense section fails to make me sympathize with them any more than before, I think it's time I give up and label this manga not for me. ( )