General & Others One Piece is by far one of the best pieces of literature yet
- Thread starter Blax Blah
- Start date
Ok I will be honest with you Rave is one of the first manga I ever read, probably between 2005-2007. So let's say that my memory is almost non existent. And that's precisely my point. I can recall the majority of Naruto, Death Note, Akira, D Gray Man, Claymore, Sou eater, Satan, Fairy Tail and a bit of Kyo even from these dayz, Rave left me with very little. And I was already learning about story analysis at this time.
It was cool, don't get me wrong, even entertaining (which is why I was pumped to read Fairy Tail.... at first since the guy was an assitant of Oda at first), but compared to others (not all on the list lets be honest, Rave is still better than Fairy Tail if I recall it correctly), it's really not that crazy.. A good story for me is something I wish I could reread.
Naruto, Akira, One Piece, Death Note, all are masterpieces that I know I will come back too. Rave is just not it.
As for predictability. The only predictible outcome that One Piece's holds is the lack of death of the main cast and potential happy endings. Outside of that, you will have a hard time doing it if you are not diving deep into theorizing. And if you tell me "but lately, it has been easier", yes, it's has been easier, it's normal and I predicted that 5 years ago. The reason is that we are entering the end of the story and the closer we get to the climax, the easier it will be to connect the dot.
This is not a problem of quality, it's the opposite.
Dude. You have to wake up, no matter how bad the writting of the end could be, it will always surpass the majority of what you know and read. Why ? Because the end point is only a part of the ending of a story. A good ending works through its preparation first, not only the delivering.
The One Piece could just be a Carambar joke that it would still be worth it to read the entire thing. SImply because the preparation for the ending is on an entire different scale that anything the manga industry has ever created. Let me give you an exemple:
Naruto, which is still a masterpiece, really started to prepared its "big" ending revelation 30 to 20 chapter's prior the ending. And it's in fact the exact reason why the ending of naruto and the final villain felt flat, it was introduced too late.
One Piece has been preparing the ending revelation as far as 900 chapters back! It's an understatement to say that One Piece is the King of preparation and therefore the King of endings.
No matter how bad it feels (because I know for a FACT that people here won't like the end of OP since they will not take the time to rethink their consumption of stories) it will still be an earthquake for the world and the reason hundreds of thousands of people will picked up the manga.
Once the King of manga will be dead, the Legend of its story will rise and One Piece will influence generations over generations to start crafting stories.
First I need to destroy that dream : In the real world, people don't become successfull because they work hard mate. If you are born rich, you will be rich. It's time to wake up.
As for the genetic, the best you have in One Piece are romaticized character traits like Ace not running away from a fight like Roger.
But these are INTERPRETED by other character as ressemblances, they can actually be understood within the context of the story. Ace for exemple did not inherit the CoC of his father, he forged himself the will to overcome his own condition and show his dead father that he was worth living, which pushed him to develop Coc.
This is the problem when you don't analyze One Piece deeply and contextually, people talk about genetics and stuff while ignoring the material conditions of characters. Same for the awakening of the fruit. People will ignore 1000 chapters of Luffy learning and grinding just to say "look he was just a god".
Luffy had this capacity from the FREAKING START. It didn't shock anyone when he went gear 2 thus transforming the VERY FABRIC of his body or Gear 3 when he literally managed to blow in his BONES or Gear Z when he managed to absorb a 100 zombies or G4 when he changed his own shape multiple times and creating attacks like the Snake pistol that was physically IMPOSSIBLE.
Luffy was only chosen by his FRUIT, that's all and he just happens to be the FIRST one to managed to awaken it in 800 years. Meaning that Luffy is not special, he just happens to have a lot of characteristics that would align with his role. In fact, there is a big chance that he is not the first person or even the first D to wield that fruit between Joyboy and him.
People and you have to remember that the lore of One Piece is build on a prophecy. A prophecy is not "you are the chosen one" it's "you are the one the prophecy talks about"
The subtility here means that it's not a special traits of Luffy like genetics that is the reason for his strenght, it's the existence and actions of Luffy himself that were strong enough to rippled back through timeline far enough for a prophecy to be created 800 ago !
One Piece before Nika was never normal. Luffy was never normal. A lightning literally stroke his execution to prevent him from dying in Logue Town. The kid has always been special, not chosen, special, because there was always the right people around him, because he always had the right mindset, because he always fought til the end and because he always got Lucky.
One Piece has always been the tale of a legend, not the story of a selfmade man.
Nika did not change One Piece, it revealed its roots. This is something a part of the fanbase didn't accept because a part of the fanbase never really cared to analyze correctly One Piece in the first place and projected something in the story that was never there.
It was cool, don't get me wrong, even entertaining (which is why I was pumped to read Fairy Tail.... at first since the guy was an assitant of Oda at first), but compared to others (not all on the list lets be honest, Rave is still better than Fairy Tail if I recall it correctly), it's really not that crazy.. A good story for me is something I wish I could reread.
Naruto, Akira, One Piece, Death Note, all are masterpieces that I know I will come back too. Rave is just not it.
As for predictability. The only predictible outcome that One Piece's holds is the lack of death of the main cast and potential happy endings. Outside of that, you will have a hard time doing it if you are not diving deep into theorizing. And if you tell me "but lately, it has been easier", yes, it's has been easier, it's normal and I predicted that 5 years ago. The reason is that we are entering the end of the story and the closer we get to the climax, the easier it will be to connect the dot.
This is not a problem of quality, it's the opposite.
Dude. You have to wake up, no matter how bad the writting of the end could be, it will always surpass the majority of what you know and read. Why ? Because the end point is only a part of the ending of a story. A good ending works through its preparation first, not only the delivering.
The One Piece could just be a Carambar joke that it would still be worth it to read the entire thing. SImply because the preparation for the ending is on an entire different scale that anything the manga industry has ever created. Let me give you an exemple:
Naruto, which is still a masterpiece, really started to prepared its "big" ending revelation 30 to 20 chapter's prior the ending. And it's in fact the exact reason why the ending of naruto and the final villain felt flat, it was introduced too late.
One Piece has been preparing the ending revelation as far as 900 chapters back! It's an understatement to say that One Piece is the King of preparation and therefore the King of endings.
No matter how bad it feels (because I know for a FACT that people here won't like the end of OP since they will not take the time to rethink their consumption of stories) it will still be an earthquake for the world and the reason hundreds of thousands of people will picked up the manga.
Once the King of manga will be dead, the Legend of its story will rise and One Piece will influence generations over generations to start crafting stories.
First I need to destroy that dream : In the real world, people don't become successfull because they work hard mate. If you are born rich, you will be rich. It's time to wake up.
As for the genetic, the best you have in One Piece are romaticized character traits like Ace not running away from a fight like Roger.
But these are INTERPRETED by other character as ressemblances, they can actually be understood within the context of the story. Ace for exemple did not inherit the CoC of his father, he forged himself the will to overcome his own condition and show his dead father that he was worth living, which pushed him to develop Coc.
This is the problem when you don't analyze One Piece deeply and contextually, people talk about genetics and stuff while ignoring the material conditions of characters. Same for the awakening of the fruit. People will ignore 1000 chapters of Luffy learning and grinding just to say "look he was just a god".
Luffy had this capacity from the FREAKING START. It didn't shock anyone when he went gear 2 thus transforming the VERY FABRIC of his body or Gear 3 when he literally managed to blow in his BONES or Gear Z when he managed to absorb a 100 zombies or G4 when he changed his own shape multiple times and creating attacks like the Snake pistol that was physically IMPOSSIBLE.
Luffy was only chosen by his FRUIT, that's all and he just happens to be the FIRST one to managed to awaken it in 800 years. Meaning that Luffy is not special, he just happens to have a lot of characteristics that would align with his role. In fact, there is a big chance that he is not the first person or even the first D to wield that fruit between Joyboy and him.
People and you have to remember that the lore of One Piece is build on a prophecy. A prophecy is not "you are the chosen one" it's "you are the one the prophecy talks about"
The subtility here means that it's not a special traits of Luffy like genetics that is the reason for his strenght, it's the existence and actions of Luffy himself that were strong enough to rippled back through timeline far enough for a prophecy to be created 800 ago !
One Piece before Nika was never normal. Luffy was never normal. A lightning literally stroke his execution to prevent him from dying in Logue Town. The kid has always been special, not chosen, special, because there was always the right people around him, because he always had the right mindset, because he always fought til the end and because he always got Lucky.
One Piece has always been the tale of a legend, not the story of a selfmade man.
Nika did not change One Piece, it revealed its roots. This is something a part of the fanbase didn't accept because a part of the fanbase never really cared to analyze correctly One Piece in the first place and projected something in the story that was never there.
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You made whole post about what? You think One Piece is better just because it's unfinished? Or because you spend so much time reading shitty manga and defending it?
Memory is subjective. The fact that you forgot details of Rave Master doesn't mean its structural stakes were lower. Rave Master maintained narrative consequence because actions had permanent costs. Remembering a story just because it has 1,100+ episodes of continuous hype and internet discourse is a sign of great marketing and longevity, not necessarily superior writing quality.
You argue that 900 chapters of buildup guarantee a great ending. Long buildup does not equal a good payoff. Look at Game of Thrones or Attack on Titan—decades of immaculate preparation still resulted in endings that deeply divided and alienated the fanbase.
Furthermore, introducing the "Sun God Nika" retcon in Chapter 1044 is not "900 chapters of preparation." It was a sudden recontextualization of a fruit we were told for 20 years was just rubber. If Oda had prepared this perfectly, the World Government wouldn't look completely incompetent for ignoring the single most dangerous fruit in existence while Luffy was running around crying out its name for two decades.
You say that in the real world, you only succeed if you are born rich, and that One Piece reflects this reality. But One Piece was built as a romanticized shonen manga about freedom, dreams, and overcoming impossible odds through sheer will. Turning it into a story in which "you can only win if you have the legendary god-genes and the destiny fruit" directly betrays the series' original thematic core.
Also, saying Luffy was "only chosen by his fruit" completely contradicts how Zoan fruits work in the One Piece universe. Oda explicitly stated that Zoan fruits have a mind of their own. The fruit literally evaded the World Government for 800 years and chose Luffy. Before Wano, Luffy’s Gear 2 and Gear 3 were brilliant because he was creatively pushing a mediocre, rubber body to its absolute physical limits through sheer genius and training. Rebranding those creative feats as just "the latent magical properties of a literal God Fruit" takes away Luffy’s personal merit and retroactively turns his hard work into destiny.
You claim the prophecy exists because Luffy's future actions rippled back in time. But that is circular logic. The story explicitly states that the world has been waiting for Joyboy's return for 800 years. The Sea Kings in Fishman Island literally predicted the exact timeline of his birth. Luffy didn't ripple back in time; he walked down a pre-laid track of destiny. There is a massive difference between a story about a normal boy who becomes a legend, and a story about a boy who was genetically and prophetically predestined to be the Savior of the World. Nika didn't reveal the roots of One Piece—it changed the genre from an adventure of free will into a chosen-one prophecy. In a different thread, I addressed several issues that would make the One Piece story forgettable, and I'll mention you there.
Memory is subjective. The fact that you forgot details of Rave Master doesn't mean its structural stakes were lower. Rave Master maintained narrative consequence because actions had permanent costs. Remembering a story just because it has 1,100+ episodes of continuous hype and internet discourse is a sign of great marketing and longevity, not necessarily superior writing quality.
You argue that 900 chapters of buildup guarantee a great ending. Long buildup does not equal a good payoff. Look at Game of Thrones or Attack on Titan—decades of immaculate preparation still resulted in endings that deeply divided and alienated the fanbase.
Furthermore, introducing the "Sun God Nika" retcon in Chapter 1044 is not "900 chapters of preparation." It was a sudden recontextualization of a fruit we were told for 20 years was just rubber. If Oda had prepared this perfectly, the World Government wouldn't look completely incompetent for ignoring the single most dangerous fruit in existence while Luffy was running around crying out its name for two decades.
You say that in the real world, you only succeed if you are born rich, and that One Piece reflects this reality. But One Piece was built as a romanticized shonen manga about freedom, dreams, and overcoming impossible odds through sheer will. Turning it into a story in which "you can only win if you have the legendary god-genes and the destiny fruit" directly betrays the series' original thematic core.
Also, saying Luffy was "only chosen by his fruit" completely contradicts how Zoan fruits work in the One Piece universe. Oda explicitly stated that Zoan fruits have a mind of their own. The fruit literally evaded the World Government for 800 years and chose Luffy. Before Wano, Luffy’s Gear 2 and Gear 3 were brilliant because he was creatively pushing a mediocre, rubber body to its absolute physical limits through sheer genius and training. Rebranding those creative feats as just "the latent magical properties of a literal God Fruit" takes away Luffy’s personal merit and retroactively turns his hard work into destiny.
You claim the prophecy exists because Luffy's future actions rippled back in time. But that is circular logic. The story explicitly states that the world has been waiting for Joyboy's return for 800 years. The Sea Kings in Fishman Island literally predicted the exact timeline of his birth. Luffy didn't ripple back in time; he walked down a pre-laid track of destiny. There is a massive difference between a story about a normal boy who becomes a legend, and a story about a boy who was genetically and prophetically predestined to be the Savior of the World. Nika didn't reveal the roots of One Piece—it changed the genre from an adventure of free will into a chosen-one prophecy. In a different thread, I addressed several issues that would make the One Piece story forgettable, and I'll mention you there.
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No. I believe One Piece is better because it's the story that taught me the most about creating stories once I started analyzing it and mainly because I found in One Piece things that I never find in other stories. Simple as that.
It's not a question of time or completion, it's about the quality of the work when it is as its best.
Yes. But One Piece has a particularity, the build up is not used only for ending purpose. It's used for a LOT of other things that most stories only contain to plot. One Piece goes beyond, even in the case of game of throne.
Also, there is a missconception here, in Game of Throne, it's not the end that is bad, in fact, in Naruto the end is not bad either and its probable that in AOT (alghough I dropped it early) the end is not bad either.
The problem is usually not endings, it's the preparations of the endings. You when you look at what people say, you will find out that the "bad ending" is often followed by a "bad arc" also. Mainly because in these stories, the ending is prepared in these arc mainly rather than a bigger portion of the story. It's completely possible to write game of throne with a similar ending, but with a better preparation. Same for Naruto, the problem is the delivering of antagonist which is relative to the amount of preparation and setup the author forgot or did not care to create before introducing Kaguya and the rest of the sage. The same way, Sasuke's real motivation are genuinly worthy of a LONG setup. If I was at the board of the story, I would have placed the revelation of Sasuke at least at the mid point of Shippuden right after his brother's death and before Danzo.
By creating this promise of a fight between Sasuke and Naruto, you would have transformed Sasuke into the real antagonist of the manga and created a real expectation for the end of the war. This is why preparation matters and preparation needs to be made thematically. By introducing and clarifying the development of Daenerys much earlier (around seven 3-4), you would have created a much better ending, same for the coronation of Bran.
This is exactly what One Piece does. It creates expectation, thematic expectations and goes beyond by creating storylines along the timeline to ciment these preparations into meaningfull and emotionnal road maps.
So no matter how bad the end is, it won't be bad, simply because narratively, it would demand to scrap and contradict TOO MUCH preparation. No matter its nature, the end will be emotional and coherent. That's how Oda works.
Don't get me wrong once more, most fans won't like it. I can predict that the same way I was predicting in whole cake that people wouldn't like Wano for the exact same reasons. But One Piece is not only for the fans, it's for everyone and most people who are not pressure by their consuption of One Piece or the fandom will love it as much as much as every revelations.
The end will not be esxceptionnal, it will simply be... the end. It's will most likely be sad and we will most likely laugh while crying.
Actually it is. Shanks searching for the fruit, the way the stories highlight Luffy's abilities to make friend, G2-G3-G4, the character of Luffy, the thematics of the stories, Skypiea, the philosophy of One Piece, the potential of different powers, all of these are preparation and someone with a kin eye and sense of deduction without community biases could very well wonder if Luffy's fruit is actually the GumGum or just something else entirely and the revelation of Who's who against Jinbe would be enough for people to guess the nature of the fruit itself. Even its power.
Simply because as I explained in another thread, the toony nature of Luffy's fruit was most likely created before the story itself. And was teased ever so slightly all the way to this revelation.
You thought that Oda was repetitively using smoke and a bigger and bigger celelstial like Hagoromo pattern just for the fun or what?
Gear 5, and Luffy's fruit's nature are consolidated through the entire lore. This revelation is amazing. It recontextualizes things and details that we knew already to transform them into a bigger reality. It can only strike you the bad way if you expected Luffy to become more badass instead of becoming more joyfull.
A similar revelation is this one:
It's feels so weird and so wrong yet.... it's perfectly logical contextually and reframe clues that we didn't know were important before unless you consider that it diminishes Luke's importance to be the son of the Dark Lord, he then would be.. "the son of" (if Star Wars was a manga, this is how this community would frame this revelation).
People mostly associate retcon with bad writing. But this is only because they don't understand the real power of a non-negative retcon. These two revelations delivered HISTORICAL positive shockwaves in their respective fanbase.
This is the power of a POSITIVE retcon.
Fascism is always incompetent. It's the reason why it fails.
Yes, that's the surface. But within One Piece actually lies a deeper narrative, a materialistic one where you material conditions of existence are determined by your experience and the people you meet (with a lot of spiritual determinism on top).
In One Piece both philosophy coexist to create a romantic "whole". One Piece has the best of idealism and the beginning of a real materialistic thinking. This is why you see many leftist love One Piece and you will usually see rightist eventually hate it. The first understand both, the second, believe only one layer exist and will be taken down by the deconstruction of the tropes and narrative choice of Oda.
Usually saying "It strips away the merit of Luffy"
My point exactly.
Destiny is basically a prediction into a deteministic universe. BUT, we know that the OP's universe is not entirely deterministic, in reality the future is slightly shifting. Depending how you look at it, it could mean that the One Piece universe is actually a multiverse with multiple branch slighly close to eachothers and accessible through premonitions OR there is only one timeline and characters can see probable futures. Depending on the way they "see", the future seen will be more and more distant.
As such if a character sees a "probable" future where the EXACT conditions are met for the will of D to live on and this future happens to be the one where Luffy end up with the fruit.. well they will announce this prophecy.
Basically, what happened is similar to a forecaster saying "there will be a strong hurricane in the sky of Wano on the night of the 5th"
And yes, sometimes prophecies can influence the future and be created by event in the past.. it's a form of the bootstrap paradox.
It's a loop created ex-nihilo. Basically means that the loop is a product of the universe itself, a higher conscience or physical phenomenon. Of course Oda probably didn't thought about it that way. But this is what the One Piece's universe is.
A magical occurence of a specific set of circoumstance.
So the real question is... Who really made the fifth?
It's not a question of time or completion, it's about the quality of the work when it is as its best.
Yes. But One Piece has a particularity, the build up is not used only for ending purpose. It's used for a LOT of other things that most stories only contain to plot. One Piece goes beyond, even in the case of game of throne.
Also, there is a missconception here, in Game of Throne, it's not the end that is bad, in fact, in Naruto the end is not bad either and its probable that in AOT (alghough I dropped it early) the end is not bad either.
The problem is usually not endings, it's the preparations of the endings. You when you look at what people say, you will find out that the "bad ending" is often followed by a "bad arc" also. Mainly because in these stories, the ending is prepared in these arc mainly rather than a bigger portion of the story. It's completely possible to write game of throne with a similar ending, but with a better preparation. Same for Naruto, the problem is the delivering of antagonist which is relative to the amount of preparation and setup the author forgot or did not care to create before introducing Kaguya and the rest of the sage. The same way, Sasuke's real motivation are genuinly worthy of a LONG setup. If I was at the board of the story, I would have placed the revelation of Sasuke at least at the mid point of Shippuden right after his brother's death and before Danzo.
By creating this promise of a fight between Sasuke and Naruto, you would have transformed Sasuke into the real antagonist of the manga and created a real expectation for the end of the war. This is why preparation matters and preparation needs to be made thematically. By introducing and clarifying the development of Daenerys much earlier (around seven 3-4), you would have created a much better ending, same for the coronation of Bran.
This is exactly what One Piece does. It creates expectation, thematic expectations and goes beyond by creating storylines along the timeline to ciment these preparations into meaningfull and emotionnal road maps.
So no matter how bad the end is, it won't be bad, simply because narratively, it would demand to scrap and contradict TOO MUCH preparation. No matter its nature, the end will be emotional and coherent. That's how Oda works.
Don't get me wrong once more, most fans won't like it. I can predict that the same way I was predicting in whole cake that people wouldn't like Wano for the exact same reasons. But One Piece is not only for the fans, it's for everyone and most people who are not pressure by their consuption of One Piece or the fandom will love it as much as much as every revelations.
The end will not be esxceptionnal, it will simply be... the end. It's will most likely be sad and we will most likely laugh while crying.
Actually it is. Shanks searching for the fruit, the way the stories highlight Luffy's abilities to make friend, G2-G3-G4, the character of Luffy, the thematics of the stories, Skypiea, the philosophy of One Piece, the potential of different powers, all of these are preparation and someone with a kin eye and sense of deduction without community biases could very well wonder if Luffy's fruit is actually the GumGum or just something else entirely and the revelation of Who's who against Jinbe would be enough for people to guess the nature of the fruit itself. Even its power.
Simply because as I explained in another thread, the toony nature of Luffy's fruit was most likely created before the story itself. And was teased ever so slightly all the way to this revelation.
You thought that Oda was repetitively using smoke and a bigger and bigger celelstial like Hagoromo pattern just for the fun or what?
Gear 5, and Luffy's fruit's nature are consolidated through the entire lore. This revelation is amazing. It recontextualizes things and details that we knew already to transform them into a bigger reality. It can only strike you the bad way if you expected Luffy to become more badass instead of becoming more joyfull.
A similar revelation is this one:
It's feels so weird and so wrong yet.... it's perfectly logical contextually and reframe clues that we didn't know were important before unless you consider that it diminishes Luke's importance to be the son of the Dark Lord, he then would be.. "the son of" (if Star Wars was a manga, this is how this community would frame this revelation).
People mostly associate retcon with bad writing. But this is only because they don't understand the real power of a non-negative retcon. These two revelations delivered HISTORICAL positive shockwaves in their respective fanbase.
This is the power of a POSITIVE retcon.
Fascism is always incompetent. It's the reason why it fails.
Yes, that's the surface. But within One Piece actually lies a deeper narrative, a materialistic one where you material conditions of existence are determined by your experience and the people you meet (with a lot of spiritual determinism on top).
In One Piece both philosophy coexist to create a romantic "whole". One Piece has the best of idealism and the beginning of a real materialistic thinking. This is why you see many leftist love One Piece and you will usually see rightist eventually hate it. The first understand both, the second, believe only one layer exist and will be taken down by the deconstruction of the tropes and narrative choice of Oda.
Usually saying "It strips away the merit of Luffy"
My point exactly.
Destiny is basically a prediction into a deteministic universe. BUT, we know that the OP's universe is not entirely deterministic, in reality the future is slightly shifting. Depending how you look at it, it could mean that the One Piece universe is actually a multiverse with multiple branch slighly close to eachothers and accessible through premonitions OR there is only one timeline and characters can see probable futures. Depending on the way they "see", the future seen will be more and more distant.
As such if a character sees a "probable" future where the EXACT conditions are met for the will of D to live on and this future happens to be the one where Luffy end up with the fruit.. well they will announce this prophecy.
Basically, what happened is similar to a forecaster saying "there will be a strong hurricane in the sky of Wano on the night of the 5th"
And yes, sometimes prophecies can influence the future and be created by event in the past.. it's a form of the bootstrap paradox.
It's a loop created ex-nihilo. Basically means that the loop is a product of the universe itself, a higher conscience or physical phenomenon. Of course Oda probably didn't thought about it that way. But this is what the One Piece's universe is.
A magical occurence of a specific set of circoumstance.
So the real question is... Who really made the fifth?