One Piece: Ace's Story: Not too bad for a very inessential side story
A spinoff/prequel by someone other than the original creator? Normally I wouldn't be interested, but this is at least passably enjoyable.
One Piece: Ace’s Story, volume 1
Art by Boichi
Storyboards by Ryo Ishiyama
Adapted from a novel by Sho Hinata and Tatsuya Hamazaki
2024 (first published in Japan in 2020)
It seems like manga series often stem from a singular vision. I’m sure many of them involve a team of collaborators and heavy editorial vision, not to mention an army of assistants working to back up the main artist, but there’s often one person identified as the creator and primary guiding force behind a series. That definitely seems to be true with One Piece, with Eiichiro Oda being the writer and artist who has done the lion’s share of the work for nearly 25 years.
So, for someone who is a fan, is it worth reading a spinoff short story by a completely different creator? I might not have bothered until I opened up the front cover of this book and unfolded a poster featuring an image of Luffy (the main character of One Piece, for those who may not be familiar) holding his brother Ace at the moment of the latter’s death:
That was one of the most devastating moments of the original series, coming at the climax of an arc in which Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates had raced to save his brother from being executed by oppressive government forces, causing them to get involved in a massive battle involving hundreds of superpowered pirates and members of the Navy. The horrible emotional toll of this battle, as well as the injuries Luffy suffered in his tragic failed quest to save his brother at all costs, led to a two-year time skip in which all the characters leveled up their powers significantly before embarking on newer and more dangerous adventures.
That poster image manages to capture so much emotion, from Ace’s exhausted acceptance of death to Luffy’s shock and horror at his failure to save him, and it’s presented as a stark, quiet moment in the midst of a scene of destruction. It’s a great bit of fan art that’s given an official imprimatur by being published in a book that’s apparently part of the One Piece canon. It was striking enough that I figured I might as well check out the book and see how well it followed up on that impressive preview.
Unfortunately, the book doesn’t really live up to that promise. It’s enjoyable enough, but it’s very inessential, filling in a little bit of Ace’s backstory without adding anything we didn’t already know. The story opens with Ace as a young, inexperienced adventurer being stranded on a barren island with a masked guy who seems to have a goal of being a writer covering piratical exploits. The two of them work together to build a boat, fight off a giant bird, and discover a chest with a funny-looking fruit inside that Ace agrees to split with his friend, but since he takes the first bite, he gets firey Devil Fruit powers that allow them to escape the island.
And while you would think this would be the beginning of a series of adventures as we see Ace assemble a crew of pirates, the book skips past all that, jumping forward to a point in which they’ve already had a bunch of adventures, and he’s decided to go to the New World (a milieu familiar to One Piece fans) and challenge one of the Four Emperors of the Sea. Since long-time readers will know that he ends up as part of the crew of Whitebeard, one of those Emperors, there’s not a whole lot of intrigue regarding what’s going to happen here.
There seems to be a little bit of effort to differentiate Ace from Luffy, whose goal since the beginning of One Piece has been to be the “king of the pirates.” Instead, Ace says he’s going to surpass the king of the pirates. However, as long-time readers know, Ace is the secret son of Gold Roger (or, more properly, Gol D. Roger), the previous king of the pirates who obtained the eponymous treasure that all other pirates are seeking. This makes his stated goal seem like he’s just straining against an absent father that he resents, and he apparently replaced that father figure with Whitebeard and settled into a role as a member of somebody else’s army rather than continuing to strive for greatness.
Extensive character exploration or anything that’s at all revelatory is probably too much to hope for with something like this. It’s more focused on giving us cool-looking moments and having Ace interact with other people we know. He gets to meet and hang out with Luffy’s mentor Shanks, who starts out seeming intimidating (he is another Emperor of the Sea after all) but ends up being friendly. And then, as Ace continues to seek out and confront Whitebeard, he gets to have a pretty epic battle with Jimbei, the fish-man pirate who ends up being a future ally of Luffy’s. He does finally come face to face with Whitebeard, professing a desire to show how strong he is and how he’s not afraid to die. It does look like there will be more of this in a second volume, which will likely delve into Ace’s relationship with Whitebeard, for those who absolutely have to know what happened to build up to that bit of the main One Piece story.
The volume does feature some cool action, but as mentioned, it all seems to be there mostly to give readers some recognizable imagery involving familiar characters. In fact, that might have been the entire impetus behind this. A short note at the back of the volume from the artist noted that Eiichiro Oda wanted to see him draw various One Piece characters in his style. So that seemed to be the primary goal here rather than to flesh out the One Piece world or provide any new information. It also explains why this volume contains a bonus story that’s basically just a straight retelling of a story from way back in volume 5 of the main series in which the crew’s swordsman Zolo fights Dracule Mihawk, the world’s greatest swordfighter.
Artwise, Boichi (who mostly seems to be known for the series Dr. Stone) provides plenty of nice-looking imagery. He has a style that’s much more detailed than Oda’s, with thousands of tiny lines delineating every detail possible. He gives Ace musculature of the sort that is surely impossible in real life:
He also conveys a sense of scale pretty well, which fits well in the One Piece world, although it makes one wonder about the strength levels of the characters. In an early bit, Ace and the guy he’s stranded with (who is eventually given the name Masked Deuce) come across the wreckage of a giant ship with a dragon figurehead and a huge sword stuck in its deck. When they get attacked by the giant bird, Ace is somehow able to use that sword to strike a blow, which I guess means he had super-strength even before he ate the Devil Fruit:
It doesn’t really matter; it fits into the series’ emphasis on awesomeness, and while Boichi doesn’t exactly manage the balance between cool images and heartfelt emotion as well as Oda does, few cartoonists can. For an inessential side story that’s basically just a delivery device for epic imagery, this book works well enough. It’s probably only interesting to One Piece fans who want a little bit of extra stimulation as they wait for the next volume of the series to come out. If you’re looking for the really good stuff, start with One Piece volume 1 and get ready to take a fun, hilarious, exciting, and heartbreaking journey.