Reading One Piece expecting powerscaling, tension and deaths
is like watching MCU movies expecting carefully written scripts about the Human Condition
You're looking for the wrong thing
I've thought about this a lot back in the break
Why i enjoyed One Piece so much better during Pre-TS and when i started it
And i think it was because my only expectation for it was a goofy fun pirate story
So when Oda got serious in some moments, it hit hard, because he was "playing" the reader, giving us something and then changing it
Because he did that for so many years, now we go into arcs expecting always having the serious moments, the fights, the deaths and the big "I wanna live" moments
But that's not how Oda writes
It's usually 80~90% fun and goofyness, and then he hits you with those 10% of seriousness and tension
Now, we've read Wano with 150 chapters constantly waiting for those big emotional, serious and full of tension moments, because we like those from previous arcs
and when they happened, they just could've live up to the hype we built up for ourselves over years of following this shit weekly
Btw, i'm not saying it's the readers fault at all
It's on Oda for setting those expectations and not meeting them
But hey, better to find something to enjoy about this series than to keep hating weekly, better to drop in that case