Brin's Reviews > One Piece: Ace's Story, Vol. 1

You know, I ended up liking this way more than I expected.

I largely picked up Ace's Story on impulse because a) I was doing a pirate themed reading challenge, b) I'm a huge weeb and c) Portgas D. Ace. I've read published tie in novels and spin off mangas and the like before and found them middling if not outright bad, and in terms of plot Ace's Story does fit the former description, but I was impressed by how well it captured the spirit of what makes One Piece so engaging and downright loveable. I think that's something that's especially surprising because when I think of One Piece, I'd definitely foremost consider its style and how it looks, so managing to translate it to prose form strikes me as a feat.

Ace's Story is told from the perspective of 'Deuce', a man stranded on a deserted island who bumps into Ace under the same predicament. He takes a while to come around to him, but eventually forms a close enough bond with Ace to become the first member of Ace's original pirate crew; The Spade Pirates. An aspiring writer, Deuce takes it upon himself to chronicle his adventures under Ace's flag, starring Ace as the main protagonist (though Deuce perhaps wouldn't admit that) and the rest of the book takes us through a couple of different scenarios of things that happened to the Spade Pirates; a fight scene to introduce us to the rest of the crew, and the things they got up to in Sabaody.

I would have liked more of an overarching plot to the book - it kind of had one in the form of a navy officer who was tailing them, but quite a lot with her was implied to have happened off page - but it was still a fun, easy on the brain read that I easily whizzed through in one day. Even though little was actually happening in the narrative, I did find myself still itching to read on. The characters were fun, fitting into Oda's usual style of camp eccentricity with a more subtle undercurrent of something sadder or darker. Ace was portrayed well, coming across largely as his oddly polite, admitted himbo self, but the narrative did also hint at his (semi-mild one piece spoilers) own anxiety, and his fear of being unlovable. We see how he reacts to rejection a very different way from One Piece's protagonist, Luffy, Ace accepting it but internalising a lot and immediately believing it's a reflection on his own worth. My only criticism of him is that I felt he gave Deuce bits of his life story that, in One Piece, it's implied he tends to hide a bit too willingly. Deuce was a good, grouchy narrator who as narrator still offered up his own personality, and the rest of the crew appeared less but were none-the-less vivid characters you could easily imagine in the main One Piece canon. I also really liked that the volume included sketches of the characters appearances and a time line of Ace's life that covered the tidbits of new information the story gave us too, such as how he found the mera mera no mi.

It's not the kind of book that's going to blow you out of the water, but it is one I think any fan would get at least a kick out of, and it serves a great reminder of just how expansive the One Piece universe is and how you can believe every character, even minor ones, has their own life and history that led them to cross into the main story, however briefly. All in all, loses a star because the more I think about it the more I realise very little actually happened, but eh. Whatever. I still enjoyed reading it.