Yes, yes it is. It's not hard to pinpoint the chief problems either, it's a staggering combination of a few that make it hard to get attached to the arc and the struggle.
- 350~ chapters of set up for mostly lackluster fights, reveals and plotlines
- Very little establishment for the meaningful antagonists after such a long build up.
- SMILE Fruits, one of the few things Oda established long ago as Kaido's bid for dominance, are decorations for Oda's paneling.
Going into Wano we should know more about the Beast Pirates than we do, so we can either focus more on the Samurai side of things as Oda mostly did or expand on the characters of the chief Beast Pirate characters. Instead, Oda gave us a big focus on
Orochi and his goons which has little to no payoff. Not only do none of the characters have strong ties to the plot anymore, when Orochi was beheaded publicly 8~ chapters in the raid, it made all that time redundant.
It's a good shocking moment, but it's far from a good use of Oda's time. Especially when the 3 Calamites are still going chiefly off design and some scraps of personality, the Tobi Roppo were introduced 37 chapters ago and most have less than a full chapter of panel time from all that. We know virtually knowing about our enemies, Kaido included, so it's just... Tough to feel the tension or root against them (or for them).
Maybe if there was less build up or just less villains, this'd be fine. Alabasta Saga got away with introducing most of the upper crust of Baroque Works late into the game. But it just doesn't work with 5 freshly introduced antagonists, 3 we've known for 100 chapters now (almost 200 for Jack) and still have no idea what they're about.
SMILE Fruits also suck. Artificial devil fruits that have a 1/10th of working and the benefit isssss. Zlich. You become something colorful to laugh at for the reader. It started promising, Sheepshead was an unknown officer and seemed to do well against Brook. But god damn, are they useless freaks. I can't understand why Kaido wanted a full crew of these guys so badly.