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((Originally posted by cnet12 cool )
The thing about One Piece is that it manages to perfectly capture the essence of shonen manga. Adventure. Comedy. Fantastic powers. Unique characters. Epic battles. The absolute value of friendship, loyalty, and big, big dreams. One Piece takes all of this and glorifies it.

It doesn't take itself too seriously. It's hard to when everything is just so plain odd. Character designs are so stylised, weird and wonderful that it may put first readers off. Special abilities are gained by eating unusual fruits (although the tried-and-tested shonen methods of just Working Really Hard or Being Badass Enough can work wonders as well). The main character is a pirate who's made of rubber, can't swim, and has about the mental capacity of a preschool child. Gags, puns and general insanity abound.

And yet somehow in the midst of all this patent ridiculosity... it manages to be cool. In that way that only shonen manga really can, it brings on the glorious spectacle and then some. Larger-than-life characters face up to one another, shouting their ambitions and ideologies for the world to hear, in glorious confrontations that are a roller-coaster ride of emotions, fists, blades and bullets. And you'd better believe they enjoy the ride.

In fact, One Piece somehow manages to both take itself deadly seriously, and refuse to take itself seriously in the slightest, at the same time, and not only make it work, but take all the best aspects of each of these two seemingly-opposing approaches and forget to bother with any of the flaws. It's fast-moving, but never too fast-moving. It's simple, but at the same time remarkably deep. It has a huge cast of secondary characters, essentially a freakshow of crazy caricatures and archetypes, and yet manages to avoid making any of them seem one-dimensional or uninteresting. It takes that oh-so-important storytelling element – the central cast, and potential additions thereto – and glorifies it by making the assembling of that cast (the protagonist's pirate crew) a major focus of the story. Potential members are chosen in pretty much exactly the way the audience would want – for being entertaining, cool, and providing something new to the mix.

And at over five hundred chapters and counting at the time of this writing, it's hard to deny that One Piece is epic. It will make you laugh like a kid at the circus. It will make tears spring to your eyes. It will keep you on the edge of your seat wanting more while still leaving you with a sense of gleeful satisfaction after every chapter. In short, One Piece nails it. If you haven't read it, then for godssakes do.