Disclaimer: This post contains minor spoilers to come in Dressrosa.

The second half of the Grand Line is known throughout the world of One Piece as the “New World,” the sea that one must conquer in order to call him or herself the Pirate King. Compared to that sea, the first half of the Grand Line is considered “Paradise.” Foreshadowing for the New World was scant; for about 170 chapters, readers had only Coby’s vague introduction and Gekko Moria’s post-traumatic episode with which to speculate on what this sea might have in store for the Straw Hats. We caught our first glimpses in chapters 594 and 595, wherein the other Supernovas made their foray into the big leagues. These scenes, featuring unnatural phenomena and cold-blooded brutality, were the appetizers to the manga’s much-anticipated main course.

For all the hype, the New World has certainly lived up to its billing. Over the Straw Hat’s first week in this sea (told over what’s now approaching 200 chapters), we’ve seen them break in new abilities, form alliances, and topple the corrupt schemes of twisted megalomaniacs. The New World has featured fishmen aplenty, princesses in peril, an island beset by a terrifying survival game, not to mention the familiar faces of Hatchan, Bellamy, Sabo, Momoo, and … that’s when it began to dawn on me.

Has the New World really been all that new?

I’ll present the evidence in full before drawing my conclusion.

Arlong Park and Fishman Island

Before Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, and Sanji sailed into Paradise, they faced off against the biggest fish left in East Blue: Arlong. The ferocious fishman pirate had Nami under his thumb, unbeknownst to the others, and held her hometown of Cocoyashi Village captive. This arc was the first to introduce the fishman race, and in doing so incorporated the theme of racial supremacy, as Arlong believed humans to be his inferiors. Coincidentally or not, before the Straw Hats could emerge in the New World, they first had to submerge and visit Fishman Island, located on the seafloor. Here, Arlong’s influence on the next generation, including an impressionable Hody Jones, led to unrest and rebellion. The New Fishman Pirates aimed to settle a debate once and for all: should there be peace or war between fishmen and mankind. As in Cocoyaski Village, it was up to the Straw Hats to upend the would-be dictator and undermine their racist ideology in the process.

Captain and Vice Admiral Smoker

After departing from Fishman Island, the Straw Hats ended up on Punk Hazard, but not far behind them was the relentless chaser, Smoker. Now a Vice Admiral, Smoker corralled some of the pirates previously enslaved by the New Fishman Pirates and intercepted a distress call from Punk Hazard to the Thousand Sunny. Using this intelligence, he pursued the Straw Hat crew into the abandoned wasteland. Although he did find and engage the pirates in combat, Smoker became wrapped up in a larger scheme, complicated by the likes of Trafalgar Law, Caesar Clown, and Vergo, the latter of whom was supposed to be his superior, but in reality was an undercover pirate. Ambushed and outmatched, Smoker found himself behind bars alongside Luffy in much the same predicament he had once found himself within Rain Dinners. Case in point, Robin quips, “Seeing the two of you in the same cage really takes me back,” in episode 599. Secret intelligence also played heavily into Smoker’s strategy here, for it was his intercepting of a call between Sanji and Crocodile that led him to Alabasta. Just as his pursuit of Straw Hat in Alabasta made Smoker a problem for Crocodile, butting his nose into Vergo’s business landed him in an identical bind. In both instances, Smoker conceded that there were greater problems at hand than the Straw Hats, and did not place them under arrest.

Of Gods and Warlords

In the present arc, the parallels to Paradise have come one after another. Warlord Don Quixote Doflamingo rules over Dressrosa not with an iron fist, but in a peaceful splendor. He was welcomed as a savior in the wake of the suddenly corrupt royal incumbent, King Riku. Peacetime in this country, however, was made possible through an elaborate ruse orchestrated by Doflamingo. Only the unseated royal family and Tontatta tribe knew the truth behind this scheme, the most noteworthy among those being the young Riku family heir, Rebecca. Determined to avenge her father and restore her country, Rebecca enacts a strategy of her own: win the grand prize of the Corrida Coliseum, the Flame-Flame Fruit, and use it to dethrone Doflamingo. Presented in this way, the parallels between Doflamingo’s conquest of Dressrosa and Crocodile’s conquest of Alabasta are plain. Crocodile’s planting of dance powder in order to cast suspicion upon King Nefertari, sending the rebel army into a frenzy, and setting his plan into motion in the process. This plot was matched in deviousness when Doflamingo bribed King Riku into begging his citizens for ten billion berries, and then used his Parasite technique to propel Riku into a slaughtering spree. Even Rebecca’s plan to take matters into her own hands is not unlike Vivi’s infiltration of Baroque Works. The major difference in this case is that Doflamingo’s plan was a swift and overwhelming success that Rebecca strived to undo, whereas Vivi’s ambition was to preempt Crocodile’s strategy.

Once Sugar was defeated and the façade of his peaceful reign was exposed as a farce, a desperate Doflamingo let loose “the birdcage.” Entrapping all of Dressrosa with his String-String Fruit powers, Doflamingo reestablished control of the situation and forced all those on the island into a survival game akin to what Eneru subjected the Skypeians, Shandians, and Straw Hats to on Upper Yard. There, Eneru’s mantra, military forces, and the intimidating powers of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit allowed him similar carte blanche to dictate the terms of his game. The objective was nearly identical to Doflamingo’s: defeat Eneru, or await certain death. Of course, each villain put his unique twist on the game. Egotistical Eneru made the bold prediction that only five including himself could survive after three hours of battle, going so far as to intervene in the fray in order to make his prediction come true. Doflamingo meanwhile, placed bounties on the heads of twelve “convicts” responsible for this disaster, and proposed that their capture or demise be an alternate endgame. The biggest difference between the two games was the reasoning, for Doflamingo had no other options left. Eneru, on the other hand, treated the game like a gamble for his own amusement.

The Tragic Pasts of Nico Robin and Trafalgar Law

Finally, the advent of the birdcage was particularly distressing for Trafalgar Law. This technique’s return conjured up painful memories for the former warlord, as he was one of only two escapees when it was enacted upon Minion Island. What’s more, the escape would have been impossible without the sacrifice of his only friend, Corazon. This was not Law’s only run-in with extermination, however, as he was also the only confirmed survivor of the white lead poisoning epidemic that ravaged his homeland, Flevance. The World Government had profited off of white lead, knowing full well its inherent toxicity, and subsequently turned a blind eye to the country’s plight once the epidemic began. The loss of Corazon and the residual trauma of Flevance and Minion Island imparted on Law can only be compared to the tragedy Nico Robin witnessed right around the same age.

The Buster Call represents the Marine’s trump card: a devastating, indiscriminate display of firepower executed by five Vice Admirals using ten warships, the result being the utter elimination of a threat to the World Government. Such a threat was Ohara, a safe haven for scholars with the ability to read the poneglyphs, whose texts describe the taboo void century. The only survivor of the Buster Call that wiped Ohara off the map was Robin, thanks in part to the sacrifice of Jaguar D. Saul and the sympathy of then-Vice Admiral Aokiji. Robin lost her mother and friends in the attack, and grew up with the fear that getting too close to anyone would result in them suffering the same fate. Throughout the Water 7 and Enies Lobby arcs, the Straw Hats aim is to recover Robin, all while persuading her that she truly is one of them. Curiously, this also parallels Law, whom was captured by Doflamingo. Luffy was determined to recover him and eventually succeeded; after all, Luffy exclaims in chapter 748, “He’s on my crew now!”

Conclusion

Eiichiro Oda had a good run, but he ran out of ideas and started repurposing, even plagiarizing the best parts of his own story … may be the point you’ve guessed that I’m trying to make by pointing out all of these similarities. I promise you, that is not the case.

When I started to notice these parallels, I’ll admit that my knee-jerk reaction was to wonder whether Oda was telling the same stories without realizing it. Perhaps eight hundred chapters is too many to go without repeating oneself here or there, and maybe I shouldn’t fault him for that. However, I’ve since developed a new theory.

First of all, throw the Fishman Island parallels out of the argument, if you want; I think we all can agree the Oda always planned to revisit the history of fishmen and that visiting an island of fishmen would naturally factor into the fleshing out of said subject. I chose to include them because they are just that in either case: parallels. Every other example of a recurring plot line, however, I believe to be intentional on Oda’s part.

The central point to my argument is that the New World is essentially a grand reprise. In a Broadway show, a reprise in the second act may tie in the show-stopping numbers from the previous act. Rather than simply repeating those numbers like a refrain would, the reprise takes familiar motifs and breathes new life into them. Those motifs are applied to new situations, or are combined with other motifs, to compose profound new scenes that could not have evoked the same emotions in an audience were it not for the first act. I believe that Oda has purposefully reincorporated familiar motifs from Paradise into the New World in order to connect us to the fond moments I’ve mentioned. In doing so, we may draw associations that add new depth to the story, like the internal moral struggle Smoker feels toward Luffy, the symmetry of racial progress between fishmen and humans, or how Law’s tragic past may compare to Robin’s.

No, the New World hasn’t been all that new, but it has found new ways to add to my appreciation of One Piece.

Do you think these similarities are justified, or feel that Oda has been cutting corners with these plots? Give me your take either in the comments or on Twitter @renfield89.

Piece Out!

“Piece Out!” is a bi-weekly editorial feature that is posted every other Thursday, only at The One Piece Podcast website.