One Piece: Vol 1 Discussion (Chapters 1-8)

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One Piece: Vol 1 Discussion (Chapters 1-8)

Current Chapter: 1

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Reading Schedule

Start Date Reading
September 2 Chapter 1 (pg 5 - 25)
September 9 Chapter 1 (pg 25 - 57)
September 16 Chapter 2
January 6 Chapter 3
September 30 Chapter 4
October 7 Chapter 5
October 14 Chapter 6
October 21 Chapter 7
October 28 Chapter 8

Free Chapters

The first three chapters are available for free online via Shounen Jump Plus: [第1話]ONE PIECE - 尾田栄一郎 | 少年ジャンプ+

Reminders for Discussion

  1. Please blur/hide any major events in the current week’s pages (however early they occur) or any events that happen in future chapters, like so: [spoiler]texthere[/spoiler]
  2. Feel free to discuss grammar, vocabulary, comprehension questions, as well as interesting plot details
  3. Include references (page, panel, character speech bubble, etc.) so that others can help you
  4. Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. We’re all here to learn and read together, so share your thoughts and ask questions! :smiley:

Vocabulary List Spreadsheet

Reading Along?

  • Yes!!
  • Maybe later…
  • Already finished :100:
  • Nope, but I like clicking things!

0 voters

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Chapter 1 discussion starts here! Opening this a bit late for certain timezones and a bit early for others. :laughing: I also filled in a few things on the vocab sheet really quickly just to make sure we would have some entries. Please feel free to correct if they are wrong.

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Yay! I appreciate your organized and informative top post. I don’t know if you decided not to do a poll, but if not, some of us (cough) are fond of clicking the ‘reading along’ option. However, I can click it in my heart and get started reading, so either way is good. :smiley:

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I’ll add one! :smiley:

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Gonna start reading some as a I get my car’s oil changed and tire’s rotated here in about an hour. Can’t wait!

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Completely missed that people would be reading One Piece! I will be keeping my eyes on the thread and reading along at my own speed (already have my hands quite full with some other books :stuck_out_tongue: ) But really looking forward to it, I’ve watched the first 50 or so episodes of the anime up to now as practice, so looking forward to the manga :smile_cat:

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Has quite some useful vocab that I haven’t learned yet. Surprising actually, thought it would be far less dialog heavy somehow. Also thought there would be even more 棟梁 and 頭 words and stuff than there is (even if there’s a good amount of obscure language)

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This is your conscience speaking: Don’t!

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I have the book and I want to read it, but this really crept up on me! I don’t know if I have the time at all now!

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You are not wrong. And yet!!

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Reading it now after my last attempt feels way smoother somehow. I guess the vocab sheet helps a lot.

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I only just started, but have plenty of questions already :sweat_smile:.

On page 5, Shanks asks 何する気だ (what are you doing?) and then, on the next page, he uses the same verb 何する (to do) again, but without 気. Thus, my question’d be: what is the difference btw 何する気だ and 何するか (what are you doing - without 気).

Besides, か in Shanks sentence on page 6 is not a question marker, or is it? Can someone help me :pleading_face:?

I’m not sure i’m at the exact same page as you. But the first one with 気 has a more “indirekt” tone asking for his intention/motivation. So a bit like “What are you planning (to do)?”. It is not as common as the “normal” 何する? question which is REALLY common.
何する is not “to do” by the way. する is “to do” and 何 is “what”. But from your text I think you already know this.
The second sentence is an embedded question. So the か is actually the question marker as you thought.
「何するか」知らないがな! → But I don’t know “what do you do?”. Combined with the sentence before it which roughly translates as “Ou! Try (doing) it!” you problably get the gist of the sentence as “Though I don’t know what your doing”.
You would probably never translate it as stiff as I did just there because the japanese tone is very informal and kinda joking.

Hope you can follow my thoughts roughly.

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@downtimes already gave a great explanation, but I’ll just shamelessly post what I had been writing up, in the hopes of either being correct or even better, being corrected :slightly_smiling_face:

First in regards to your question about the 気 in the first speech bubble (何する気だ). According to a topic on HiNative that I found (【「気」はなんの意味ですか?「何をする気だ」】 を使った例文を教えて下さい。 | HiNative), the 気 here acts to signify intention . So, we could read the speech bubble as “What are you trying to do?”; “What are you up to?” or “What is your intention?”

Exact HiNative Quote : “気” means “intention” here, so “何をする気だ?” means “What are you going to do?” or “What are you trying to do?”

When we look at the second sentence, we notice it’s a lot longer. The entire sentence reads “何するか知らねエがな!”So, we have a few important addendums. The か is, as you have noted a signifier of the question, we could add some characters to make the sentence structure clearer and make the grammar less informal :

「何するか」知らないがな! So, “What are you trying to do” - Don’t know- and then the がな can be used in three different ways. It can either be:

  • Emphatic sentence ending (I believe it to be the case here)

  • Used to indicate the speaker’s hope, desire, wish, …

  • Add uncertainty

When we combine all these factors, I think the panel can be (loosely!) translated as I don’t know what you’re trying to do.

When you combine it with the previous bubbles やってみる*(see edit)!You can translate the entire thing as : I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but let’s see you do it!

Edit :As pointed out by @downtimes in the post below, the last part, which I had written as やてみる should be やってみる!

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Small pedantic correction. The bubble is やってみろ! so it is an imperative and you forgot the small tsu.

runs away and hides in shame because he is being an internet nitpicker

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Absolutely correct, completely missed that! Thanks for picking my nit! :smile_cat:

Thanks a lot @downtimes and @anon3564849!

I was thinking that 何するか知らねエがな would be translated as “I don’t know what to do”, but the way you translated do fit better.

Besides 何する, I really thought that the question marker か would only appear in the end, but I truly have to take in consideration that all conversations will be really informal in One Piece as a whole, so it might not be “usual Japanese”.

Moreover, thanks a lot about the がな particle. I was using Japanese particles - Wikipedia and https://bunpro.jp as reference, but neither had it.

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It’s derived from もがな. Imabi covers it a bit briefly in this:

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Is nobody gonna put further updates on the vocab sheet? Feels just kinda weird for it to end right in the middle of page 9.

I’ve got a couple of noob onomatopoeia questions if you don’t mind:

  1. ザン coming from Gold Rodger on 1st page. At first I thought it some sort of shortening of ザブン which means splash/plop sound but then I found weirdly appropriate word 斬 which means beheading and pronounced as ざん in dictionary is this a correct guess?
  2. むきっ over Luffy on page 4. I found ムキムキ which means muscular/brawny, does this mean that Luffy is sort of showing off his muscles on this frame or something?