Categories
Reviews

The Alabasta Arc of One Piece

The Alabasta Arc of One Piece sees this fine series at the top of its game, juggling dynamic character drama, explosive political upheaval and some eccentric body twisting action. Despite falling into a few classic Shounen Jump cliches (not least of all a super villain in Crocodile who unwittingly reveals his devious plans to his then captured arch enemies) the sheer scale of the Alabasta rebellion unfolding before my eyes was a spine tingling, gut wrenching sight to behold.
There was a lot that I came to love about Alabasta; from the endless sand dunes of its harsh deserts to its mythological architecture. The final battle set in Alubarna combined this giant, compelling feeling of a country at war with such a beautiful collection of rocky, warm and timeless landscapes. The animation- and particularly Luffy’s final battle with Crocodile was earth shatteringly fluid, completely encapsulating a Devil’s Fruit battle with its gravity defying, unnatural sense of power and movement.
Ultimately though, it’s the characters that really made this arc. Be it through Pell’s heroic sacrifice or Vivi’s painful cries for peace, I often felt completely immersed in it all. The tragedy, the philosophy and essentially, the friendship that wins out in the end was touching and heavily emotional.

4 replies on “The Alabasta Arc of One Piece”

eh, I thought it was really poor compared to earlier stuff in the series. look at nami or usopp’s story and there was a lot of foreshadowing, a lot of build up in the plots… this arc seemed like it told everything after the fact… like we don’t learn about kohza really late into it, which is a waste of dramatic build up to introduce key figures so late. and vivi as a character has close to no redeeming strengths compared to the rest, she just cries and wimpers a lot which overall did not make her very likeable to me.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *