One Piece Vol. 6: The Oath

The sixth volume of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece, published in Japan as Chikai (誓い) on 3 December 1998 and in English by VIZ Media on 1 March 2005, collects chapters 45 through 53. It brings the Baratie arc to its close: Luffy, pressed into service as a busboy aboard the floating restaurant, keeps trying to talk its sharp-tongued assistant chef Sanji into signing on as the Going Merry's cook, while Pirate Commodore Don Krieg — freshly returned in ruins from the Grand Line — sets his crew on the Baratie for a meal and then for the ship itself.

The oath of the title is more than one promise. Sanji has sworn to feed any pirate who comes to him starving, a vow that keeps putting him between Luffy and the answer he wants. Elsewhere on the water, Roronoa Zoro finally faces Dracule Mihawk, the world's greatest swordsman, and the duel goes exactly as badly as it must — Zoro's response, an oath of his own sworn to Luffy's back, is the scene the volume is named for and one of the most quoted in the series.

The final chapters turn away from the restaurant entirely and open the Arlong Park arc, following Nami home and revealing what ties her to the fish-man Arlong and his crew. Volume 6 is where One Piece's mixture settles into its lasting shape: broad comedy and food-fight slapstick sharing a page with genuine loss, and a crew that keeps growing by convincing people they already belong to it.