In this latest volume of One Piece, Luffy, Vivi and co. head towards Rain Dinners, the casino run by Crocodile, the leader of a crime syndicate focused on taking over Vivi's kingdom of Alabasta. On the way, they run into trouble as the Navy Captain Smoker pursues them, and following that, the Straw Hats are captured by Crocodile himself. The volume ends with their moment of escape, and Luffy being dragged into a fight with Crocodile, allowing his crew to reach their next destination.
I'm glad to see that the current English language adapter for One Piece is wise enough to make good decisions regarding the seriousness of the dialog in the Alabasta arc. I've watched the subtitled anime for a while now, and I can say that the writer knows how to convey the emotion of One Piece with accuracy.
That is not to say that the entire volume is perfect. Viz media, for some reason still clings to what little 4kids Entertainment did in the anime two years ago, and they made the decision to call the Devil Fruit that the character Pell ate(Tori Tori no Mi: Moderu Farukon, Bird Bird Fruit: Model Falcon) to its 4kids translation of "Tweet Tweet Fruit", only with the words "Falcon Type" after it. I wish they didn't do that.
Another nitpick is that all of Luffy's outbursts against Crocodile(commonly translated as "Yeah, let's kick his a**!!), have the three-letter a-word replaced with "butt". This in itself isn't too bad, but given some of the situations in this volume where he says that, "butt" isn't the best choice of words, neither is the three-letter a-word, but that isn't the point.
The last nitpick is when Crocodile chides Luffy for saying that he can beat him, their next exchange is as follows:
Crocodile: Don't be full of yourself. Fish bait.
Luffy: What are you talking about?! You're the one who's a minnow!!
This doesn't convey the same seriousness that the rest of the volume succeeded in doing. However, as I said, these current volumes have a more mature adaptation writer, and if he were to continue translating the series, I wouldn't mind at all.
