One Piece's Chopper Origin Episode Leaves First-Time Watchers in Tears

Chopper's origin episode of One Piece season 2 left us in tears, and by the end we were calling it one of our favorite episodes of the show so far. Neither of us has read the manga or watched the original anime, so going into "Reindeer Shames" all we knew was that everyone loves Chopper and that he is, as we put it, "lovable immediately" just from his design. We had already been won over by how he was used in the One Piece stunt show, and this episode gave us the full story of who he actually is.

We spent the early minutes genuinely confused about what we were watching, guessing the flashback might involve villagers going after Chopper's parents before realizing the blue-nosed creature being shot at and mistaken for a raccoon was Chopper himself. When the doctor who took him in asked if he had ever eaten a strange looking fruit, we caught ourselves saying, "Why did we not think about the devil fruit?" the moment before the show confirmed it. We also loved the small touches, like the reindeer costume this doctor sewed with holes cut for his antlers as a peace offering, and the way the story circled back to the cherry blossoms that healed the traveling merchant, which the doctor called a symbol, and which we noticed reappearing later as petals printed on the new doctor's shirt.

The hardest part to watch was the doctor sending Chopper away not once but twice, first claiming his treatment was finished so Chopper would leave, then again pretending he was healed enough to go treat the sick doctors being held at Drum Castle when he clearly was not. We debated whether he knowingly drank a poisonous cure all mushroom because he understood the skull and crossbones symbol meant lethal, and we landed on him doing it deliberately, saying he did it because he "had a soft spot" for Chopper. We are still curious whether the pink potion he was brewing was an actual working cure that his successor might finish in a future episode, since it looked close but unfinished when he died.

By the end we were both crying over a moment that was not even meant to be especially emotional. "It's not even a particularly emotional scene. I'm over here crying," we said, and it kept building from there. "This one really touched me," we admitted, adding, "It might be my favorite EP." With the season finale coming next and comments already warning us to bring tissues, we said, "I can't wait to see what the finale has in store."

Do you think the doctor's unfinished cure all potion will come back in a future episode?