After Luffy learned about Sky Island, an island in the clouds, he could only think of one thing, going to the sky. Of course, going to the sky is no easy thing. No one has done it, and few people know how. One man did say he went to the sky, but he went down in history as a liar. Nolan the liar he is called, and his most famous story was turned in to a child's fairy tale. One of the men that knows how to get to sky island is Nolan’s great-great-great-great-great-grandson. This man is Mont Black Cricket, and all he wants to do is to prove that Nolan was no liar.  Since one of Nolan’s “lies” was going to the sky, Cricket is more than happy to help the Straw Hat Crew get there. The only way to get to the sky is to ride the Knock Up Stream, a ocean current that shoots straight up. There is a problem, the stream only shoots up 5 times a month and it moves every time. One more problem, Sky Island is on a giant cloud, so the only way to actually get there is to ride the Knock Up Stream while the cloud is over it, and the only time to do that is the next day at noon. With the Straw Hat Crew’s ship, the Marry, currently in shambles, it would be blown to smithereens by the Knock Up Stream, so the crew better get cracking, or actually fixing cracks.

Hightlights

The Knock Up Stream will be appearing directly south of where the Straw Hat Crew is. There is one problem with going south in the Grand Line, the magnetic interference messes up normal compasses and grand line compasses can only tell you how to get from one island to another. There is one way to go south, in the near-by forests there lives a bird called the South Bird, because it always points south. Of course the thing that seams the easiest, might be one of hardest things. The bugs in the forest are deadly, but not by using poison. A few of the creepy crawlies that you might find include centipedes the size of two men and praying mantises that cut down a tree in one swipe of their mighty claw. If the bugs didn’t make it hard enough, the South Bird is very intelligent and does things like dropping bee hives on peoples’ heads.

Overall

This manga is the start of an epic adventure to the sky. This also shows the way to other adventures. Red Hair Shank, the man that owns Luffy’s hat, appears in this volume, I’m not entirely sure why he is here, but it is so cool that he appeared. Sadly, this is also the end of the adventure of “Hachi Walk on the Sea Floor”, but it opens up the next sub story. This also keeps true to the One Piece story themes, after one adventure is over, Luffy finds some other random adventure. This volume is jam packed with awesomeness and no one will want to miss it.   

ComicsOnline Gives One Piece, Volume 25, 4 out of 5 epic quests