Title: Nine Minutes
Author: serpentguy
Genre: Adventure/Romance
Status: WIP
Fandom: One Piece
Pairings: Luffy/Robin, Luffy/Nami, Luffy/Vivi, Zoro/Tashigi
Summary: During the final fight with Crocodile, Luffy makes a mistake and ends up dead. His heart stops beating for over nine minutes, before he is finally resuscitated. Who knew what a difference those nine minutes would make? Luffy/harem.
Link: ff.net

This is a story I've been reading recently. Its got its flaws, but there's definitely enough good in there that it deserves a recommendation.

I'll start with the flaws: firstly, it's a harem story. Yeah, I know. Luffy falls out of character damn quickly, and then girls (inexplicably) start failing for him. The romance is easily the weakest part of the story, and it fails badly on a lot of similar tropes. Still, to be fair, the author did give all the characters enough characterization, there was enough buildup and pacing in the romance that it was never drop-it-instantly bad in that respect. It was probably an attempt at writing a "realistic" harem story - it didn't succeed, but there was enough of an effort that I'm mostly willing to forgive it on that score.

Mind, there's also the good that more than makes up for that. The action scenes and the flow are absolutely brilliant. Despite the harem premise, it does keep very much to the whole One Piece feel when it comes to the villains and the fights. The whole action sequences are very detailed, well-written and frequent, and the author does a good job of imbuing emotion in a way that feels very One Piece.

It's also pretty epic length, a lot of effort has been put into it, and it's a hell of an enjoyable read once you get started. It stands at 370,000 words, and I ended up reading almost all of the story in a single day.

It's very detailed writing, pretty well written, it doesn't just brush over the plot to get to the fanservice. It expands the universe a lot, and continually diverges from canon consistently. The pace is fairly slow, but there's good character development in there, very distinct characterization for all of the cast. Luffy does lose a lot of his canon traits pretty quickly, but the reason given is that (not really a spoiler) he dies, becomes a lot more damaged and serious, and then he does start to develop as the story goes on in a way that canon Luffy couldn't really do.

Don't get me wrong, it is very easy to categorize the story as a typical fanfiction harem wank-fic, but I'd argue that it's different enough in that Luffy loses his battles a lot, he faces real challenges - it's not a god-mode character breezing through weak enemies, and the spotlight is shared between the rest of the cast and crew as well.

Overall, it's a very nice story to power through and enjoy, and a fairly epic retelling of One Piece. I've got to give it... hmm... despite fairly obvious weak areas, I've got to give it a 4.5 / 5 - I enjoyed it too much not too, and there's enough good in there that it does balance out the scales.

 

Well, here is the thing. I enjoyed this story a lot, because it does a lot of things differently than I have seen from OP fics. It deviates from the canon plot in a rather organic manner, it doesn't recycle the same battles, instead changes them by adding OCs or reshuffling the deck. It enhances canon character and explores them as people rather than NPCs. Skypia especially shows this.

The action scenes are great fun, I like the new stuff, especially the fact that we get more crew-members. It's somewhat generous with Devil Fruit powers but what the hell, I'll give it a pass on that one. Half the fun is seeing new Devil Fruits.

The scene where

Spoiler

the crew dictates what kind of ship they want to the two shipdesigers

is hilarious and I laughed really hard.

It does a lot of things right. The character interaction is great, the action scenes are fun, the crew composition is refreshing and the new take on the canon events is exiting.

However, it also does a lot of things wrong. The whole harem/love triangle bullshit is, well, bullshit. Luffy really is not really Luffy any more, Sanji banging Hina during combat was among the dumbest things I have ever read, the Tashigi Zoro romance was rushed as hell, Luffy losing his powers was an interesting concept, especially since it stuck for a while and while I was kinda looking forward to what his new fruit was going to be, it was extremely disappointing that it was a logia. Then there is the fact that that logia created something like the kyuubi in his mind, talking and threatening him. While it was better done than most kyuubi's in the Naruto fandom, it doesn't fit One Piece and Luffy at all and one could scratch it without losing anything.

I always liked that Luffy took a B-Grade power and was dangerous with it because of hard work and his own creativity. Now he has one of the stronger fruits in the series and well, while you are not exactly automatically invincible with a logia, it does make things significantly easier. That, the loss of the Straw hat and him becoming so much more serious did change too much, I find. He really wasn't Luffy any more.

Then there is the fact that, while I like the new crewmembers the main cast has become too big to sustain it, really.

Author said in a PM that he might not continue this story any more and if anything would go for a rewrite but who knows.

So, yeah, I personally enjoyed it, had a lot of fun with it, but it has some significant flaws that could, quite understandably, be dealbreakers for some.

So, if you can tolerate harem bullshit, some typos, an OOC Luffy and a few other minor things you can get a fun, slightly darker and more expanded AU one piece story with a bigger crew, harsher battles and some new paths for some characters.

Honestly, 3-3.5/5.

 

Just finished what was posted. I enjoyed it, but it's not something I'll ever do a reread of. Even if more is posted I probably won't pick it back up.

I agree with most of Nemrut's points, especially Luffy not being Luffy anymore. The author goes through a lot to make sure that Luffy's transformation into this other person has logic and reason behind it, but he simply isn't Luffy anymore. I don't mind that, but some people might.

The other main issue I did have was with the whole 'Mr. Rumble' thing. It really did come off like the author liked Kyuubi and decided to copy him over in One Piece, down to the "Pay my rent with my power" thing. If there's one thing I would axe completely from the story it would be that.

One last thing, on the subject of the harem relationship. I actually liked it more then most other stories it features. That's because it's not really a harem. It's a polygamous relationship, which really isn't the same thing. At no point here do they all have a big meeting and decide they love each other too. They're all very uncomfortable with the idea, except Luffy who just doesn't know better. And the girls have a growing sense of inadequacy that they're just not good enough to stand on their own, which definitely fits. If more Harem Fics were like this, I would probably read more of them.

I'd say 3.5/5. Definitely not average, but not the best either.