Monster Point become a fucking joke. One of the most tragic, brutal parts of One Piece. Chopper becoming what he was afraid of becoming, like Franky and Sanji losing their humanity too. Robin having to become a demon too as the WG kept insisting she was, despite being just a child and doing nothing wrong, just existing.
If people think my opinions/takes are bad now, wait until I go full gloves off, start firing on all cylinders and really share what I think of the story and Oda.
But they'll ignore all of that and just call me a hater, say "just drop the series then hurr durr, stop reading", "why are you reading if you hate it so much", but they forget, I've invested 20 years of my life following this shit, even though its changed for the far worse, become something its truly not and never should have been, like MANY things and people do in life sooner or later, I still hold onto those memories of the series I once truly loved, that inspired me, enthralled me and I just want to see this journey to the end, regardless of how long it takes and how much I hate it, I refuse to give up on it just like I gave up on so many things in my life and regret it so much now too.
Fuck man, their echochamber mentality, their outright pedstalising of Oda, the deification of him unironically, the cult behaviour is why the series is going downhill so much too. Once someone rules at the top for too much, they get complacent, overconfident, lazy, whatever. Entitled.
We need criticism, we need challenge, we need to be surprised. We can't grow and be better if we don't let ourselves be out of our comfort zones.
Is Oda really proud of One Piece as it is? Is this really the same Oda who was writing and drawing this series pre TS? I don't think so. The series really jumped the shark for me at Sabaody, Marineford, the timeskip and especially after it and despite some major highs with some storylines post TS, some side storylines, the post TS is such a completely overbloated, messy, inconsistent, trolltastic, senstionalist, overconvoluted, pretentious, overcompensating, self indulgent shitfest, that I genuinely sad for what OP has become.
I used to be upset other series ended far too soon, got axed or w/e but honestly its a blessing for them in hindsight ironically. As the cliche saying goes, as cheesy as it is, "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
The open minded, tolerant, loving fanbase have told me and other outspoken critics of OP to go "unalive ourselves" for criticising the series before. In fact ironically, when I was new to OP, I praised SOME of the 4Kids voice actors on Youtube and got spammed with death threats and people wishing me to get cancer and off myself lmfao. What a fanbase. That was almost 20 years ago now. 2006/2007ish I think.
I loved OP for the adventure feeling, the spontaneity without it being forced/exaggerated, the chemistry of the SHs, their personalities, dreams, ambitions and it felt like Oda was REALLY into developing their dreams over the timeskip for the most part but then its all for naught, just a fucking big joke on us post TS.
Oda unironically said he made Chopper a mascot now as you said, made him cuter because its more appealing and sells more merch. He has no fucking shame or soul left anymore. Well he does have some soul left somehow but hes sold a lot of it at this point, most of it.
The SHs are flanderised, shallow cariactures of what they once were. I could type a whole giant essay on Usopp or Sanji alone or even Chopper too but this post is already long enough as it is and I'll risk reaching salt levels comparable to our most extreme users here too.
The reason I do so much of this AI writing shit is to try and desperately compensate for what Oda doesn't do for us, doesn't care to do for us, will never care to do for us and also what he's completely, utterfly fucked up and doesn't care how we feel about it.
Oda said himself, he doesnt fucking care how we think or feel before the final saga started, hes writing whatever he wants and for his own entertainment. How fucking narcissistic. He wouldnt be where is now without all the support hes been given, especially the people who actually buy the merch, manga volumes, physical anime shit and w/e.
Oda will never give us what we want to see, but he'll bait the fuck out of us, he'll mislead us, give us silhouettes, 2000 reaction faces, anything he wants plot wise, regardless of powerscaling, logic, plot induced stupidity or w/e and we're expected to "SMILE" and not say anything bad, much like the victims of the SMILE fruits or our lovely "NIKA" who apparently just wants to have fun only and laugh, much like Smile victims lmao.
The Smile fruits should have been Kaidos attempt at replicating Joyboys fruit, the Nika Zoan at least but you know, its not like King told Kaido about Joyboy decades ago or anything too....oh wait.....ZOINKS! Its not like Queen worked with VEGAPUNK, Judge and Caesar, they knew how to clone PEOPLE and devil fruits, Caesar made an artifical zoan and an AQUATIC ZOAN AT THAT but again somehow Oda never actually had Kaido making the SMILE fruits be actually related to Nika as it should have been.
One last thing is people who claim to be the biggest fans of the series DONT UNDERSTAND, is for someone to HATE something so much, its probably either out of jealousy ofc OR they love it so much, that they hate what its become, they've noticed the flaws, the cracks, the anomalies, the discrepancies and they refuse to stick their heads in the ground or cover their ears and shout LALALALA pretending there's nothing wrong.
I've admitted I'm more fond of some of the things I did hate post TS now BUT theres still a ton of plenty unforgivable, irreedeemable mistakes/choices by Oda post TS and I'm tired of him getting a free pass on them by most of the fanbase.
I really miss One Piece when it focused on the Strawhats and actual adventure, when it was about exploring this strange, gigantic, crazy, creative, wonderful, unique world with extremely memorable characters, shocking and emotional moments and it didn't worship itself so much and be worshipped by others so much constantly too.
All this heavy handed political focus, the exaggeration of the brutality/edgier/darker/emotional as well as "goofier/gag" sides of the series and the move from focusing on the SHs to pointless, arc exclusive side characters has done immeasurable, irrepairable damage to the series.
I've said before, I felt the SHs actually died at Sabaody and Oda did say they were eradicated then or w/e too. Aside from Sabaody incident, the death of Ace and Odas handling of Sanji over the TS and just after it, as well as his completely awful handling of Nami in SOME ways post TS (Tit Surgery) are some of the most egegriously jumping the shark moments ive ever seen in a series by far. Once again, One Piece excels and stands above others in a whole other league of its own, in the ironically worst ways possible here too.
