You can’t beat a good LEGO ship — especially a pirate ship! I was really excited to be asked to review the LEGO Going Merry for Brickcentral. Huge thanks to @brickcentral and @lego for gifting me this set. For anyone unfamiliar, the Going Merry is the Straw Hat Pirates’ first ship in One Piece — a vessel filled with iconic early-series moments.
The Build:
The build is genuinely fun from start to finish. LEGO uses some clever techniques to shape the hull and capture the ship’s curves (with some great SNOT work), and the overall look feels very accurate to the anime or the Netflix version if that’s your preference.
The model includes a small interior: a kitchen at the back for Sanji, a tiny cabin at the front, and a central storage area for equipment and the wanted posters. The kitchen becomes accessible by removing the rear section of the ship, made possible by some smart engineering.
Details around the deck, especially the railings, really help bring the Going Merry to life.
I’m a bit torn on the plastic sails. The printing is super clean, but they still feel slightly less premium than the cloth sails used on other LEGO pirate ships.
My only other real complaint is the size. The finished model feels a bit small, especially if you’re used to larger sets like Barracuda Bay Pirate ship. For the piece count, I wish it had a bit more presence.
The Minifigures:
The set includes five great minifigures: Luffy (with a fantastic printed hat piece), Zoro, Nami, Usopp, and Sanji. All feature strong printing and look faithful to the anime.
The Photography:
I shot a mix of interior and exterior images for the review. For the exterior, I used a large TV as a digital background and layered blue plastic sheets to create waves — after all, a ship needs to be at sea! The smaller scale actually made these shots easier.
The interior, however, was more challenging. The tight spaces clearly weren’t designed with photography in mind, and I had to dismantle parts of the model to position my lens correctly. For the kitchen shot, I switched to my probe lens to fit into the narrow space. There aren’t many openings for light in the kitchen or cabin, so more dismantling was needed to light things the way I wanted.
Conclusion:
The Going Merry is a great-looking set that One Piece fans will love building and displaying. It’s faithful to both the anime and TV adaptations, even if it does feel a little small. The price feels slightly high for the size, but at 1,300 pieces you still get a detailed and accurate final model.
From a photography standpoint, the ship looks fantastic from the outside. The interior isn’t designed for easy shooting, but with some tactical disassembly you can recreate scenes from the show.