OP: Ace's Story (the manga)

 But like anytime I talk about One Piece on here, I keep it mostly vague since not everyone reading this has watched or read the main series.

By the way, these particular volumes were written and illustrated by Boichi, but it was overseen by the original creator, Eichiro Oda.  

Volume 1, in short, is about how Portgas D. Ace, Luffy's (the MC of One Piece) adoptive brother, kicks off his pirate journey. From meeting his closest mate Masked Deuce to eating the Flame-Flame fruit, we see him and his new crew, the Spade Pirates, travel most of the world. We also see Ace's motivations to fight the man whom he will later join, Whitebeard.

Volume 2 continues with Ace's desire to fight Whitebeard and prove his strength. In this volume we spend more time seeing Ace interact with Whitebeard's main pirate crew, as well as Ace's own insecurities. As you can imagine, he does join Whitebeard's crew, and said captain becomes his father figure. We also get a little bit of Blackbeard and his own planned treachery, which is alluded to in the main One Piece storyline. 

This was a good duology, although one big issue I had with both was that it felt that it glossed over a lot of things. There were a lot of things about Ace's life I wanted to see more of. I will say the second volume did improve in some areas. It still felt like some things were missing. So I gave volume 1 4 stars and volume 2 4.5 stars. It's a pretty solid story for One Piece fans, but don't expect to be at the same level as the main series.