I honestly could not have said it better! I can't believe this is the same series, but I guess this is what happens when someone obessively tries to draw and write their immensely scaled manga series for 25 years and still going strong, only to keep upping the scales and making it far more ambitious, convoluted, confusing, oversaturated and such! To even write an arc at this point which is 4 years long and around 150 chapters too, especially so late in the game, whilst narrowly approaching 50 himself and on a weekly basis is INSANE!
I'm really glad he took that month break and is restructuring the story to streamline it down a lot from the sounds of it BUT at what cost, what will be sacrificed for that too with the story and thus for us too? Also was Oda going to really provide this kind of resolution for Wano and this treatment of Green Bull all along too? At least before the break?
These chapters after the break are making me kind of regret wishing for OP to return so badly/quickly tbh! They feel like the most disturbing, unreal, fever dream and it feels like either Oda has lost it, is trolling us or just doesn't give a fuck anymore.
Is he going to do a 180 with the giants and make them out to be corrupt too somehow? Somehow justify Carmel betraying and trafficking them too? Make Elbaf a corrupt as fuck nation too, if we actually see it in detail/visit there?
Someone else mentioned just now that the Ancient Kingdom might not be so "innocent" and me and some friends have toyed with the ideas that the Ds, Joyboy and wheoever else might not be so "innocent" either, especially in a series with so many gray areas/characters too. At this point I'm not even sure what to expect from Vegapunk, given how vasly different Green Bull has turned out to be too, from what wesaw of him at first!
This is all just so jarring and idk what Oda is trying to do here.
I already deeply hated the people of Wano and such but now its really gone full circle and double down extremely hard. I'm gonna wait for the chapter before I make final judgements ofc, I need the proper context and such with the panels and translations, I may even rely on the officials too just to be "safe" but at this point, holy fuck, what mess!
This feels so blatantly, outrightly contradictory to earlier OP and I've never had an arc in OP make my skin crawl as much as this one! There are some very strong contenders ofc but this is a whole other catastrophe! Literally several centuries of this shit and they are still doubling down on it instead of trying to change it! Guess Wano be like "if it aint broke, dont fix it lmao!" "We were right to try to slay all of the Kurozumi! Just shame we still let a few get away, thats all! We should have gotten them all!"
In before some others rage at me for this post as usual lol.
Honestly, I don't feel so upset/angry about Whitebeard not wanting to help Oden and Wano now!
This is such cynical writing from Oda, that it makes me feel like I'm reading something like Berserk or some kind of dystoptian series in general? George Orwell's One Piece? Lmao.
On a semi related note at least, this is the dystopian essay stuff I mentioned on here recently in relation to Wano too:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Piratefolk/comments/vyt1yk
They've made 20 parts at least of this!!