One Piece, Vol. 62

One Piece volume 62 contains chapters 604 to 614.It is rated T for teen (13+) due to fantasy violence and tobacco usage.The crew are on their way to Fishman Island! But it's proving to be a difficult journey, although that's expected if you're diving 30,000 feet underwater! There are a lot of new characters to meet in this volume and a couple of returning characters! This is the build up to what hopefully will be another exciting arc!I took a star off due to the quality of the book. A few pages are a bit faded and uneven which seems to be a problem with the first batch as others have complained about it too. For the amount we pay for these books, they should do thorough checks but I should give up hoping that VIZ Media will improve their manga quality.

Fish-men Island has been on One Piece as one of the famous spots in Grand Line since long time ago, but the Straw Hat pirates didn’t get there easily. Finally, they made it in this volume, and you can see the world of Fish-men, mermaid and merman. You can see a lot of beautiful mermaids relaxing on the inlet with corals, water roads and fishes. It’s like a scene out of a fairy tale!!! And its detailed setting makes the world much more interesting, how they live, how their life platform’s set, what kind of problem they have now…and so on. Besides those creatures, other legendary ones like Kuraken and sea spirit(Wadatsumi-the name’s derived from Japanese sea god) take you to the adventures of the underwater, and the thing I want you read and feel is that Luffy’s really enjoying with it even if other crews are being scared of. I can say that in this volume, you can know the fact “LUFFY IS BACK!!!”. Sanji have a problem with his naughty thought, and he looks really funny with it. Though what Sanji did makes us fun, but it has to do with the theme of Fish-men arc in a sense, so you might realize it’s not just funny while you read it.In the second half, main characters of this arc appear one after another. King Neptune, his three sons, Neptune Brothers and mermaid princess, Shirahoshi as the royal family of Ryugu Kingdom. They invite the Straw Hat pirates for a banquet in return for saving Shirahoshi’s dearest friend, Megalo, but it doesn’t go easily. Fortune teller, Madam Sharley foresees the pirate with the straw will bring ruin to Fish-Men Island. At Noah, Fish-man District, something sinister is going on. Two captains of New Fish-Man Pirates, Hody Jones and Flying Pirates, Vander Decken '¥ shake hands with a FISHY SMILE. Now you and Luffy’s adventure on Fish-Man Island’s started!!

There is not much else to say; One Piece rarely disappoints.

There appear so many characters and I do not know the background of each character any longer, but for some reason, I followed the plot.Luffy was not down-to-earth in the first half, pursing his interests only, but after he met the princess, he was the old Luffy again.I feel like I am reading One Piece through inertia, but as I have come all the way to this stage, I will see it through.

A counterpoint to the rather crushing reviews some others gave to this volume.One Piece is about adventure first and foremost, and a lot of people seem to have the notion that if there isn't any fighting going on, then it somehow becomes "boring".You can't have a payoff without the buildup, and you can't have a conflict without introducing and familiarizing the reader with the players and how they relate to one another.Volumes covering Jaya and Skypiea seem to have suffered some ire from the same public, despite the fact that they are top-notch adventures, but have a somewhat long buildup to the eventual conflict that plays out.This volume is the same way, and serves as a long buildup, during which the adventure part is happening. There will be plenty of fighting later, I promise.The reason I took one star off is due to the fact that the volume I received had some issue with the print, and some of the text and panels around it were printed lightly and unevenly. It's only a dozen pages or so that are affected, readable but slightly annoying.From what I hear this is a common problem with the first batch of this volume.