General & Others Wano was a terrible arc and Kaido was a terrible villain

T

The Shaman King

‎
#1
#1
Wano was a terrible arc although I am sure everyone knows that by now

Although not the entire reason but part of the reason it sucked was because Kaido was a terrible villain and as the popular writing expression goes a story is only as good as it's villain

He has no personality besides the fact that he is evil and strong

He is very evil and the only redeemable thing about him is that he cares about his crew?

What made Kaido so evil? King's flashback suggests he was not always like that so why did he change?

Another major problem with Kaido is that he is written extremely inconsistent

At times he respect Oden and other he calls him a weak fool

At times he says that he wants to start a massive war and other times he says he goes out of his way to prevent that like When Big Mom showed up

At times he says that he wants to die and tries to kill himself by jumping from sky islands yet he avoided fighting Big mom one of the very few people who could kill him and did not eat another fruit which would have killed him instantly

At times he is against dirty tricks and wants to fight a honourable fight like when he killed the hag for interrupting the fight between him and Oden only for him to take advantage of the situation and boil Oden

I have no idea what kind of characther Kaido is supposed to be but all I know is he sucks
 
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MonsterKaido

MonsterKaido

‎
#5
#5
The Shaman King said:
Wano was a terrible arc although I am sure everyone knows that by now

Although not the entire reason but part of the reason it sucked was because Kaido was a terrible villain and as the popular writing expression goes a story is only as good as it's villain

He has no personality besides the fact that he is evil and strong

He is very evil and the only redeemable thing about him is that he cares about his crew?

What made Kaido so evil? King's flashback suggests he was not always like that so why did he change?

Another major problem with Kaido is that he is written extremely inconsistent

At times he respect Oden and other he calls him a weak fool

At times he says that he wants to start a massive war and other times he says he goes out of his way to prevent that like When Big Mom showed up

At times he says that he wants to die and tries to kill himself by jumping from sky islands yet he avoided fighting Big mom one of the very few people who could kill him and did not eat another fruit which would have killed him instantly

At times he is against dirty tricks and wants to fight a honourable fight like when he killed the hag for interrupting the fight between him and Oden only for him to take advantage of the situation and boil Oden

I have no idea what kind of characther Kaido is supposed to be but all I know is he sucks
Click to expand...
:Monster_Kaido:
 
Impact

Impact

‎
#13
#13
Monster Zoro's Tesla Supplier said:
I never said you need to "obsess negatively"
Click to expand...
I think we both know what the agenda is.

As a sidenote, this The Shaman King fellow has posted similar threads criticizing Oda for poor quality and so on. It's fine to criticize, but we have a reputation here for being overly critical. I'm going to distance myself from that element of the fandom.

My name is Impact, and I don't want no trouble, I'm just here to do the One Piece Shuffle.

:funky:
 
Buusatan94

Buusatan94

‎
#14
#14
Wano arc is still to this day the worst arc in One Piece history, and Kaido and his Beast Pirates were wasted terribly with Kaido's personality being so contradictory, his stupid obsession with that bum Oden, his underdevelopped backstory and motivations, and above all his lack of interactions and dynamics with his crew and between the Beast Pirates as a whole.

Kaido was screwed up in terms of characterization, whereas Big Mom was handled and treated awfully in terms of fights with her being handicaped and restrained so much and many times and in the worst ways, even worse that I had imagined.

The Beast Pirates themselves were victims of having too much plot armor and handicaps going against them which made it feel like there was no real threat or stake into fighting them; and there being far too few interactions and dynamics between them and their history being so lacking.

And of course there was too much focus on the Scabbards, this clown of Oden who's perhaps the worst Creator's pet in One Piece, and Yamato and her totally ridiculous and cringeworthy worship of Oden.
 
MonsterKaido

MonsterKaido

‎
#15
#15
Impact said:
I think we both know what the agenda is.

As a sidenote, this The Shaman King fellow has posted similar threads criticizing Oda for poor quality and so on. It's fine to criticize, but we have a reputation here for being overly critical. I'm going to distance myself from that element of the fandom.

My name is Impact, and I don't want no trouble, I'm just here to do the One Piece Shuffle.

:funky:
Click to expand...
It's fine to criticize the series from time to time. I agree @The Shaman King is a bot created to increase forum activity through negativity though :ihaha:
 
King of Hearts

King of Hearts

‎
#16
#16
In retrospect, Wano feels like an overextended fever dream of someone who had a vague idea of what One Piece was about with an intense desire to sully what came before it and where the series was leading.

Earlier concepts being established in Zou had the Wano arc as a far more focused endeavor and I would say that even into the end of Act 1, we were still on the right track for the original story Oda was trying to convey.

Act 2 is where things got off the rails, with Big Mom’s amnesia plot line and then the decision to introduce multiple missions for the other Straw Hats without creating clear and consistent storylines for them.

Zoro and Onimaru’s plot line is the only storyline with enough depth that it resembles One Piece, as it gave us a glimpse into Zoro’s sense of tradition and honor as despite his being a pirate he also identifies with the values of the Wano samurai. Chopper’s storyline with Queen’s two plagues is similar but it feels more like a “bit” during both of these occurrences rather than something that Chopper is struggling to comprehend and combat. Chopper is learning nothing new by finding and providing the cures to the plagues, it’s just something that happens while he yells at Queen in a very similar way to what he did to Hogback. Of course Chopper would lambast a man who releases deadly plagues on his own soldiers for shits and giggles, but let’s see him growing a medical professional here, not just taking a moral stance.

Meanwhile, the stories of the others feel even more shallow, surface level and more tacked on than anything. Why did we not get any expansion on Robin learning to become a geisha? It’s just a thing that happened, there’s no story there, it’s just a plot device. Same with Nami being trained as a kunoichi. The infiltration during Orochi’s party should have had considerable build up, as it was essentially the “confront Robin to see if she’s really one of us or if she really betrayed us” storyline in Wano. Create a severely hostile situation that the Straw Hats must overcome even before they confront Kaido on Onigashima, make this be where Law and his crew get captured due to a mistake by the Straw Hats or something, something that ties them into the story rather than merely acting as a supporting cast to newly introduced characters that we have no due respect to yet.

Instead, the “drama” of Orochi’s banquet came from Komuraski’s sudden heel turn as a character, which we had no prior emotional connection to as Odes flashback had yet to occur. I get that it was building up to that flashback but… the order feels off.

It would have helped that when the Straw Hats were being told the story of Oden in Act 1, we received the Oden flashback at that point rather than Oda biding his time with it for no reason other than to use it as a blue balling tactic for 16 (or so) weeks before the Raid on Onigashima. A lot of the emotional stakes of Wano Act 2 hinge on the retrospect that comes from Oden’s flashback.

Even Yasiue’s death feels cheapened due to: largely being disconnected from the Straw Hats themselves as characters and the fact that we are told this man’s long suffering through dialogue rather than the “showing” that would have occurred if we were actually shown Oden’s flashback in Act 1.

Speaking of flashbacks, Kaido’s should have been more extensive and it should have occurred during the “Sunachi” chapter, as Kaido falls he reminisces on the moments of his life that he felt true pain and how he became the literal manifestation of “might makes right” who was just about to execute a literal 8 year old boy had the boys retainers not saved him, simply because of Momonosuke’s bloodline and Kaido’s views on dynastic succession. Where does this view come from? During Kaido’s military career? Could we see this, Oda? Please. What’s that? Oh, you need to invent a random character like Yamato on the spot and forcibly insert her into an already bloated cast of characters with their own motivations and backstories and then develop a wah-wah trauma porn backstory for her that does little to further the story line we already had but hints at Zoro’s lineage without actually addressing Zoro’s lineage in canon, while also sidelining a character (Hiyori) who could have fulfilled Yamato’s role had you not being burdened with the whims of a chauvinistic Japanese sexist?

We didn’t need a flashback detailing all of Kaido’s past suffering and transgressions but something besides the milquetoast montage we did receive, that felt as though it was tacked on for obligation to the “character flashback bit”. Perhaps something like Big Mom’s flashback, going over Kaido’s capture by his own kingdom (Vodka Kingdom) and the lessons he learned from being turned into a soldier as a child. Show his connection to the wars he participated in and how it dehumanized Kaido. But nope, in the end, we’re left with a lot of vague information about him and we’re left to fill in the blanks on a character who acted as the overarching antagonist for 11 years of One Piece (Punk Hazard through Wano).

Just a few of my gripes with Wano. I’ll stop here before the becomes any more of a rant than it already is….
 
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Impact

Impact

‎
#17
#17
King of Hearts said:
In retrospect, Wano feels like an overextended fever dream of someone who had a vague idea of what One Piece was about with an intense desire to sully what came before it and where the series was leading.

Earlier concepts being established in Zou had the Wano arc as a far more focused endeavor and I would say that even into the end of Act 1, we were still on the right track for the original story Oda was trying to convey.

Act 2 is where things got off the rails, with Big Mom’s amnesia plot line and then the decision to introduce multiple missions for the other Straw Hats without creating clear and consistent storylines for them.

Zoro and Onimaru’s plot line is the only storyline with enough depth that it resembles One Piece, as it gave us a glimpse into Zoro’s sense of tradition and honor as despite his being a pirate he also identifies with the values of the Wano samurai. Chopper’s storyline with Queen’s two plagues is similar but it feels more like a “bit” during both of these occurrences rather than something that Chopper is struggling to comprehend and combat. Chopper is learning nothing new by finding and providing the cures to the plagues, it’s just something that happens while he yells at Queen in a very similar way to what he did to Hogback. Of course Chopper would lambast a man who releases deadly plagues on his own soldiers for shits and giggles, but let’s see him growing a medical professional here, not just taking a moral stance.

Meanwhile, the stories of the others feel even more shallow, surface level and more tacked on than anything. Why did we not get any expansion on Robin learning to become a geisha? It’s just a thing that happened, there’s no story there, it’s just a plot device. Same with Nami being trained as a kunoichi. The infiltration during Orochi’s party should have had considerable build up, as it was essentially the “confront Robin to see if she’s really one of us or if she really betrayed us” storyline in Wano. Create a severely hostile situation that the Straw Hats must overcome even before they confront Kaido on Onigashima, make this be where Law and his crew get captured due to a mistake by the Straw Hats or something, something that ties them into the story rather than merely acting as a supporting cast to newly introduced characters that we have no due respect to yet.

Instead, the “drama” of Orochi’s banquet came from Komuraski’s sudden heel turn as a character, which we had no prior emotional connection to as Odes flashback had yet to occur. I get that it was building up to that flashback but… the order feels off.

It would have helped that when the Straw Hats were being told the story of Oden in Act 1, we received the Oden flashback at that point rather than Oda biding his time with it for no reason other than to use it as a blue balling tactic for 16 (or so) weeks before the Raid on Onigashima. A lot of the emotional stakes of Wano Act 2 hinge on the retrospect that comes from Oden’s flashback.

Even Yasiue’s death feels cheapened due to: largely being disconnected from the Straw Hats themselves as characters and the fact that we are told this man’s long suffering through dialogue rather than the “showing” that would have occurred if we were actually shown Oden’s flashback in Act 1.

Speaking of flashbacks, Kaido’s should have been more extensive and it should have occurred during the “Sunachi” chapter, as Kaido falls he reminisces on the moments of his life that he felt true pain and how he became the literal manifestation of “might makes right” who was just about to execute a literal 8 year old boy had the boys retainers not saved him.

We didn’t need a flashback detailing all of Kaido’s past suffering and transgressions but something besides the milquetoast montage we did receive, that felt as though it was tacked on for obligation to the “character flashback bit”. Perhaps something like Big Mom’s flashback, going over Kaido’s capture by his own kingdom (Vodka Kingdom) and the lessons he learned from being turned into a soldier as a child. Show his connection to the wars he participated in and how it dehumanized Kaido. But nope, in the end, we’re left with a lot of vague information about him and we’re left to fill in the blanks on a character who acted as the overarching antagonist for 11 years of One Piece (Punk Hazard through Wano).

Just a few of my gripes with Wano. I’ll stop here before the becomes any more of a rant than it already is….
Click to expand...
No, please, get it all out of your system now before we have to do this again next week.
 
King of Hearts

King of Hearts

‎
#18
#18
Impact said:
No, please, get it all out of your system now before we have to do this again next week.
Click to expand...
It’s important to critique media that you still enjoy so that you can appreciate its merits, the good and the bad. I’ve always had gripes with One Piece, but it’s still the series that changed my life and that I have spent over 15 years consuming with vigor. Also, as a comic writer, it’s important for me to pinpoint the faults of this series so that I can properly avoid them when crafting my own stories.

For years I hadn’t paid attention to many of One Piece’s faults, namely character bloat and prolonged/nearly endless mysteries without worthwhile resolution.

Having One Piece/Oda on such a high pedestal of storytelling prowess, rarely if ever critiquing the faults of the series, I began to idolize the approach and it subtly became the modus that I based my writing style on for my own series– I now see that what works for One Piece, doesn’t work for many other series as One Piece has the commercial backing to sustain some of its faults.
Had I not criticized One Piece and taken a more thorough observation of what I do and don’t like about the series, I could have never grown as a writer.

TLDR: Sometimes people critique their favorite media for more than just “hating on it”; sometimes it’s necessary for their growth either personally or professionally.
 
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