One Piece Volume 9

Episodes 206-229, may contain spoilers.

“I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be one or the other.” – Napoleon Bonaparte.

The first UK One Piece collection of 2015 launches the start of one of the longest arcs in the series: the “Water Seven” arc. However, given the contents of this collection and the story it contains, you could argue that it is a bit of filler before the “Water Seven” arc proper.

After the first episode which concludes the current filler story of the Straw Hat Pirates breaking out of a Marine base, the crew travel to Long Ring Long Land, where, as you might have gathered from the name, everything is long, from the plants to the animals. Monkey D. Luffy, Usopp and Chopper help a local islander off his incredibly tall stilts and reunite him with his beloved “hooorse” when the horse it shot and captured by the troublesome “Foxy Pirates” led by the egotistical Foxy, possessor of the “Slow-Slow Fruit” that allows him to slow down almost anything and anyone.

Foxy and his crew challenge the Straw Hats to a “Davey Back Fight”, in which rival crews combat each other in various sports. Each time one crew wins a round, they can choose either to steal a member of the opposition’s crew who must swear loyalty to them, or to take possession of their rival’s pirate flag, robbing them of their pride. Luffy rashly agrees to the contest, but Foxy is making sure that everything is stacked in his favour, often resulting in Luffy having to make some harsh choices when it comes to his fellow crew members. Contests include roller-skating (despite Luffy having no skill at skating whatsoever), a massively outnumbered dodgeball tournament, and a boxing match which sees Luffy armed with that most manly of weapons: an afro.

This story, which does come from the original manga, takes up around half the episodes in this collection. Later stories include a short filler arc in which Nico Robin has to save the crew after a mysterious boy and his seahorse shell steal the memories of the rest of the crew. After this the crew meet fearsome Marine Admiral Aokiji, who has ice-making Devil Fruit powers and seems to have a fearsome grudge towards Robin, and finally the crew enter Water Seven, the city of water akin to a gigantic Venice, where they hope to find a shipwright to make repairs on the Going Merry.

The “Foxy” storyline is one of the less impressive moments in One Piece, but it has its moments. There are moments of tension and comedy, perhaps the best being the fore-mentioned boxing match – complete with afro – that’s very important (although no-one seems to know exactly why), as well as a game which forces argumentative Zoro and Sanji to work together.

If anything, this current collection should serve as a warm-up to the much bigger “Water Seven” arc proper, which does begin in this collection in the last few episodes. It is a nice build-up, setting the ground for what to expect. However, if you want to get an even better idea of what to expect, you might want to look at the DVD cover for the next collection (Part 10), where you will see a depiction of one of more important character in the series – a certain cola-fuelled cyborg.