When they started publishing Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece in Finnish I was a reader right from the beginning, but when the manga reached Vol. 80 I dropped the series. Why? The main reason was money. I didn’t just drop One Piece, I stopped buying/reading other series as well, like Attack on Titan for example. Heck, I stopped buying all manga except for the Ginga series.
Secondary reason was fatigue, I guess. After the Dressrosa arc finished, I felt overwhelmed with all the new characters to keep track of. The new arc that started, introduced a whole cast of new characters of course, by that point I had already exhausted all my attention span and needed a break from the series. The chapter of the new Zou arc failed to peak my interest, so that’s when I decided to stop reading One Piece.
Now the roles have reversed. I was at the local store looking at the manga shelves and I was glancing through the newly published first volume of Ginga Densetsu Noah. The previous Ginga Last Wars ended on such a low note, I found myself having zero interest in the new series. I was debating myself if I should buy the Noah 1 when I laid my eyes upon the newest One Piece 97 volume right there next to Noah. I noticed my favorite character on the cover, that’s a good sign. I peeked inside the album and was immediately more interested in what was going on in the world of One Piece than what Noah had to offer. I bought the One Piece instead and left Noah at the store, no regrets.
I read a few pages here and there, but then decided I wanted the whole context of the story to be clear and so began the hunt for the missing 16 albums I was missing between 80 and 97. It was a short hunt. I compared the prices between 3 websites before placing my order and I was lucky to get them all from one place at once. I spent the days waiting for my order to arrive by refreshing my memory by re-reading the previous volumes of One Piece.
When my box of OP manga finally arrived, I read through 4 volumes in one evening, and the next day I read 7 in one sitting! Probably a personal record for me. I loved it so much it was hard to stop. It took me about four days to read through all 17 books, probably would have taken me longer if I had to go to work, but I was on vacation at the time, thank goodness. I could stay up late and read as much as I wanted! And now I’m sad that I burned through them so fast, it’s going to take forever for the next volume to come out.
Also, I really shouldn’t be allowed to visit any webshops at my peak hype on a series. I might have ordered some OP figures in my high…. ;D
