User blog:Kaido King of the Beasts/Cover Mini-Review: Solo Journey of Jinbe, Knight of the Sea

While Nova does his movie reviews (or will he really?) and Joekido does his arc reviews (or will he really?), I will review another integral part of One Piece literature, none other than our very own Cover Stories!

To kick us off, I will not review Buggy after the Battle, because that would be lame. Instead, I'll review the cover story most fresh on our minds, ...didn't you read the title?

I'm sure we were all hyped to get a Jinbe cover story, given that the guy was once a Shichibukai who took a lava fist through the shoulder and yeah, he's pretty strong. However, I am even more sure that we were all disappointed when we saw what actually happened.

Knight of the Sea, or KotS as I'll call it, starred very very few characters which were actually important to the story line. And other than Jinbe himself, I'm sure you'll forget every single one of them. There's the Sea Kitty, who does nothing except cry when she's sad and smile when she's happy, so basically a cat version of Kim Kardashian. Then there's the Sea Dog, who basically represents your typical sitcom police officer. Finally, there's the "villain" of the entire thing, that bloated guy from Fishman Island, uh...Wad Tsunami? Good enough. Unlike most villains, he has no malevolent intent whatsoever this time, and is defeated by...scolding. At least his comedy made him somewhat likeable.

The story itself is incredibly simple. Sea Town gets thrown out of the water, Jinbe puts it back in the water, scolding the perpetrators whose motives were explained longer than basically anything else here. Oh yeah, there was a sinking ship too. The main trouble was that Jinbe's greatest opponent here was idiocy. If you can't make the Cover Story work as a comedy, which Oda did not succeed at, at least have the main character kick some ass. Most of the better cover stories have both. But other than some Wadatsumi moments, this lacked both. I would probably have given this an extra point on my scale if Jinbe had kicked some sea monster ass for a chapter or two. But nope, some strong Talk no Jutsu is all he needs, since it's what Shonen Jump is all about.

http://i1292.photobucket.com/albums/b573/amateragi/talk20no20jutsu_zpsulogkpzr.jpg

An annoying thing about this cover series was the fact that it focused entirely on one scene (which was often boring) for three or four chapters before dramatically changing the subject. Case in point, Jinbe, Sea Kitty, and Doggy Wilson spent about 5 chapters looking at the disappeared village, and then in the next chapter it's like "Oh look there's a sinking ship!" It just felt very weird.

The ONE interesting part, which you all know, was the Poneglyph. That will be the only thing that actually matters when we see Jinbe in the future. But of course, we only got to see it for one chapter. Other than that and some Wadatsumi moments, the only good thing about this cover story was the fact that it was short. And so, even though some faint compassionate impulse inside me wants to give this a higher score, I have reached my verdict.

KAIDO'S RATING: 4.5/10

So what did you guys think of this cover story?