Welcome back. i don’t agree with you about the Shonen that I’ve read but also respect your opinion.
fma- overall as a story it’s very well put together, but it’s much shorter and less complex altogether than op. Almost to the point where it isn’t a fair comparison.
hxh - I’m totally over it personally. Yes, it’s very well written, at times. But it takes itself too seriously and the hiatuses are absurd, leading to the body of work being way too small to compare to op. It has lots of flaws which are almost verboten to point out, it’s not this pristine piece of literature.
Naruto - not even close imho. Pre ts maybe was somewhat comparable in quality. Afterwards was a train wreck in slow mo leading to a disaster of an ending. The plot was being invented as it went, blatant retcon after retcon.
death note- tough one but it’s simply too short and too narrowly focused on a small cast of characters to be comparable. Like apples and oranges. It also lost the plot after l’s death iirc but it’s been a long time since I read and watched it. One of my personal issues with it was I found both light and l extremely unlikeable. Great characters, but it was a factor that made it tiring.
I started aot a few years ago when it was all the buzz but life got in the way so I can’t comment. The first 100 or so chapters seemed pretty good but not enough to compel me.
i have lots of issues with op and with oda. He’s not a god and frankly not even that great of a writer. And worse, he can’t help letting his degeneracy spill onto the pages. But he’s mastered the serialized manga format better than anyone else. Despite all the breaks of late, his delivery is the most consistent over a time horizon of over 25 years. Most, not all, of the toughest critics keep coming back. He retcons and pulls stuff out of his ass all the time but does both much more cleverly than any other mangaka. All of his cheesy techniques of silouhetting and stalling for big reveals work in terms of retaining and growing readership. I have no idea how he got so many fans so emotionally invested in characters like zoro, luffy and shanks, but there’s that too.