My story's kind of idiotic. I started in summer of 2007 with the anime from episode 1, basically fell in love with it immediately, and spent the next two or so years catching up with it. When I had caught up with it, in 2009, I believe the anime was just starting up Thriller Bark, and the manga was already at Saboady.
I could be wrong on that though, memory's sort of hazy. Anyway when I was finally caught up with the anime, it had been a 2 year pageant of ups and downs for me. Trying to track down torrents for episodes before I found Kaizoku-fansubs site, having to download block torrents which took weeks only to find out they were the infamous H-K dubs of One Piece. Anyway, when I had finally caught up with the anime there were no more episodes for me to watch, so I tried to get into the manga, but I couldn't. It was really tough to get into something that wasn't animated, didn't have color, or voices. I also was turned off from Thriller Bark in general, though I loved Brook pretty much immediately, and what brought me back into the manga kicking and screaming was the Supernovas reveal at Saboady.
I remember printing out that chapter and reading it over and over again at school that day cause I couldn't believe how insanely awesome the Supernovas were. All of them. And the manner of their reveal back to back, just cause it was so cool to see other pirates who were essentially "heroes of another story".
At this point I still hadn't read Thriller Bark, though, and I didn't really want to. After Sabaody was finished with the Straw Hats separated I went back and read Thriller Bark since I felt guilty calling myself a One Piece fan without having read one of the main arcs. At some point in 2009 or early 2010 I actually read through the whole manga from the very first Chapter, and absolutely loved it to be able to read One Piece in its current entirety from the hands of the actual author. Art, pacing, dialogue, the whole nine yards.
Also, Rob, nice House Bolton quote in the sig.
