You may be asking yourself, what is this chick’s problem? Why does she have a whole section about someone else’s work on her author site?

Well, let me tell you, friend. You may not have talked to me enough yet to realize my love for this series, but soon it shall become clear.

Anyone who knows me for a minute knows that I adore One Piece, a Japanese manga series created/drawn by Eiichiro Oda. I have followed this series religiously (really, the only religion you could jokingly say I have) for 15 years. Let’s all take a moment to realize how freaking weird that is o_O

There are many, many reasons I love One Piece, and I often find it difficult to parse that down to a sentence or two to truly explain to others why I love it and the impact it’s had on me. So, since this is my site this means I can talk about what’s important to me. And, since I personally believe Eiichiro Oda is the best storyteller I’ve seen anywhere in any medium, and I aspire to be half as good of a storyteller as he is, I feel that it’s appropriate to have this on my author site.

This is my manifesto.

This is why I think you should read One Piece, why I think you should love it, but even in the acknowledgment that you may dislike or not care about it, I want you to understand the reason why it has an impact on me. I have discovered many very interesting and valid conversations people can have about much larger topics and events through plots introduced in One Piece. So that’s what I do here.

Because it’s such an important topic to me, and because there’s so much to say, I’ve broken it into pieces. I’ve also done my best to be cognizant of the spoiler level of each piece, and have tried to be very clear about when you can read that part without having any major (or, hopefully, even minor) spoilers.