From the back cover:
Captain Kuro of the Black Cat Pirates was the most feared evil genius on the high seas… until he vanished. Most people believe he’s dead, but only his crew knows the truth: Captain Kuro has been lying low in a small seaside village, posing as a mild-mannered butler until the time for pillage is just right. Now that time has come, and the ruthless Black Cat Pirates are about to attack…
Unless, of course, Monkey D. Luffy can stop them! All Luffy has on his side are his sword-wielding first mate, Zolo; his thieving navigator, Nami; Usopp, a local kid with a knack for telling lies; and his own bizarre rubber-limbed powers. If these four amateur pirates want to stop the entire Black Cat crew, they’ll have to come up with a pretty slick plan…
Review:
There really isn’t a great deal to say about this volume. It consists almost entirely of a battle against the pirates and the attempts of the main cast (plus Usopp, lying villager boy) to protect the village from their attack. There are plenty of reversals to make things more interesting—like Luffy and Zolo getting delayed only to make a dramatic entrance later, characters nearly getting defeated only to become reinvigorated, et cetera—but in the end, it’s still just one really long fight scene. And it’s not over with this volume, either.
Sometimes extended fight scenes can be really cool, but this volume just didn’t do much for me. I think the wackiness of the One Piece villains is starting to get to me. I like it best when the opponent is someone you can be interested in as a character, like the Soul Society Captains in Bleach or the sympathetic Seta Soujirou of Rurouni Kenshin. Despite their gimmicky cat-related attacks, characters like the Meowban Brothers of this volume can never truly interest me.
I look forward to the end of this arc, which will hopefully happen in volume five. Perhaps whatever lies beyond that will be more to my liking.
I see where your coming from. The villans in One Piece are, for the most part, aside from their obvious insanity, all pretty much the same:they’re all EEEEEEEEVIL for no reason. This book is all about the fighting…which is why I like it so much. I really hope that you read on; the next arc, Sanji’s arc, is a good one, reams and reams of yummy melodama and pearl fisted badasses.
The villans in One Piece are, for the most part, aside from their obvious insanity, all pretty much the same:they’re all EEEEEEEEVIL for no reason.
Yes, that’s it exactly. 🙂
I must admit the promise of yummy melodrama is tempting. I do have volumes 5 and 6 out from the library, so will at least be reading those two.