Controversial Problem With One Piece

[HerreraIsBack]

Agree with somethings. Disagree with others. Overall you are right.

 

[Aldarion]

And yet another "I can't stand One Piece since the last 500 arcs, it only holds me from the balls through its main storyline driven mystery at this point" victim

Personally, I only keep up with One Piece because my mother's reading it LOL. I did read Vegapunk chapters for the hidden history... and it gave some good answers TBF... but Wano I mostly skipped and I've started skipping Elbaf when I realized what is happening.

My focus right now is D.Gray Man and World Trigger.

 

[Logiko]

I've started skipping

 

[BlackLegFring]

I've said it before and will do so again: Nostalgia is an author's best friend.

If something like the shattered Going Merry, possessed by a spirit, sailed through the Buster Call to save the Straw Hats happened today? Oh, lordy, people here would be throwing temper tantrums about how Oda is cooked, washed, etc.

The problem is that nowadays we’d first get a silhouette of a ship in the distance with some random fodder saying “could it be THAT?!”
Then 5 chapters later with not much happening in between, we see a ship that looks like the Merry but has moose antlers instead saying “it’s me, the brother ship to Merry, my name is Jerry!”

It would turn out that it wasn’t Sanji who sabotaged the Gates of Justice but instead Jerry actually used a haki projection to do so. The Strawhats meanwhile had been hiding while granny Kokoro, Chimney and Gonbe were fighting off the marines.

“I’m so glad that I could save you Nika!” Jerry exclaims as they sail off. Robin is asleep the entire time.

 

[Johnny B. Decent]

The problem is that nowadays we’d first get a silhouette of a ship in the distance with some random fodder saying “could it be THAT?!”
Then 5 chapters later with not much happening in between, we see a ship that looks like the Merry but has moose antlers instead saying “it’s me, the brother ship to Merry, my name is Jerry!”

It would turn out that it wasn’t Sanji who sabotaged the Gates of Justice but instead Jerry actually used a haki projection to do so. The Strawhats meanwhile had been hiding while granny Kokoro, Chimney and Gonbe were fighting off the marines.

“I’m so glad that I could save you Nika!” Jerry exclaims as they sail off. Robin is asleep the entire time.

Oh, please, you're overexaggerating and you know it. The Sunny sailing in while the Five Vice-Admirals sat around doing nothing was a total Deus Ex Machina, but over half the people here didn't even read the pre-time skip stuff while it happened, in addition to a love of just whining about everything in general.

 

[Konstantis]

So I noticed I have gotten more and more tired of One Piece ever since Marineford... if it weren't for Oda dangling these sweet Void Century mysteries in front of us ever since Egghead, I am honestly not sure I'd be reading it any more.

And this basically sums it up:

One Piece is formulaic and repetitive. You have a problem > Luffy punches problem in the face > problem solved. And during all of this you have tons of unnecessary filler. Marineford was so refreshing because during the entirety of the Impel Down and Marineford itself, Luffy couldn't just punch the problem in the face. In fact, I'd say that the Sabaody - Impel Down - Marineford arc was probably the best One Piece has ever been (though the Arlong Park arc remains my personal favorite). And then there are endless gags, constant repetition of the "Race Against The Clock" trope, and so on.

All of this would be fine if One Piece had lasted about as long as originally envisioned (5 years / 260 chapters). But much like e.g. Tokyo Revengers, it got extended. Now, Oda is excellent at worldbuilding - as I said, the whole Void Century thing, Imu and so on, these things are truly extremely interesting and keep me coming back to the series. Yet the story itself... is a slog.

Just as bad as the formulaic nature is that Luffy never... really fails. Last time he has had an actual failure that I remember was when he failed to save Ace (which is another reason why Marineford arc was so good). Ever since then... it has been a success after success. Some successes were qualified, some were not, but fact is that any and all losses Luffy had suffered were temporary. This is fine in some manga which don't focus on fighting so much (though I will note that D.Gray Man, in spite of not being a technically combat manga, actually handles this a lot better - Allen fails to save Suman - with massive personal consequences, fails to exorcise Noah from Tyki, fails to save the Third Exorcists, fails to... you get the idea. Point is, all of these failures are permanent.). But for One Piece, it is a disaster that repeats time and time again. And instead of actual loss, we get endless fakeout deaths, a pattern that had started long before the timeskip with Merry the Butler himself, and then continued with a character after character... Gin, Mr.9, Miss Monday, Igaram, Pell (which is when it became obvious), Mr.2, Gaia, Jaguar D. Bloody Saul, Spandam, Dr. Hogback, Lacuba, Vanderdeckenniner, Mocha, Brownbeard, Charlotte Moscato, Bloody Pekoms, Pound, Giant Wano Boar, Warden Babanuki, Bloody Kinemon, Orochi, Kanjuro, Dr. Vegapunk... Literally the only fakeout death here that makes sense is Vegapunk, and even then Oda managed to make it annoying since basically all of the satellites had survived, not just Lilith. This is another reason why the Marineford arc was the best One Piece had ever been - Whitebeard and Ace actually die. And these are the only genuine deaths in the series (and even then, Ace's death is undermined by appearance of Sabo who is functionally Ace 2.0). Sure, some other characters do die... but all these deaths happen in flashbacks. And flashbacks have a different problem - literally every one of them has a death. These deaths are safe, they don't matter... their only purpose is to provide (frankly fake) emotional tension, even if the only person who had died is a ripoff Mickey Mouse. But again, they are repetitive and formulaic. And again, lack of tension may have been fine if One Piece had been shorter (a lot shorter - even Fairy Tail with its 545 chapters frankly overstayed its welcome)... but the series is so long. By this point, if you don't see a character dying, they are not dead. If you see a character about to die, they will not die. If you see a character actually dying... they will magically resurrect. An occasional fakeout death is fine... fakeout deaths being a pattern is not. Right now, character "dying" is merely a way for Oda to emotionally manipulate the audience without ever providing any real payoff or stakes. Now, characters not dying is in fact frequent in manga, as readers can get quite upset if their favorite character dies... but again, lack of deaths is not an issue, fake deaths are. If characters don't die, you just accept it as part of the nature of manga. But fakeout deaths make all the stakes cheaper, hollow out the story emotionally speaking, and just reduce the emotional investment the reader feels. The only characters that die are basically irrelevant ones - Higuma, Ashura Doji, Pedro, Absalom, Saturn... and even one death that was not irrelevant (Izo), death itself makes zero sense.

Or rather, none of this would be an issue if One Piece could just pick a lane and commit to it. But Oda apparently cannot decide whether he wants it to be a Looney Tunes comedy, an adventure series, or a serious political drama / commentary. And again, combining these is not inherently bad... but there needs to be a balance. Gags are fine, but when your Looney Toonines starts infecting the underworks of the series itself, that is an issue. Sure, D.Gray Man can be goofy as well - but that goofiness is a surface level, and never affects the story itself. Not so with One Piece.

And post-timeskip, One Piece just basically ignores many of the Straw Hats. Except for Dressrosa (the best post-timeskip arc by far), Usopp, Franky and others are basically irrelevant. Fighting system itself also basically shifted from a highly tactical rock-paper-scissors to essentially "who has the biggest hammer haki". Ironically, Usopp, Franky and Chopper getting a million new gadgets was a bad thing, since right now all they do is pull out a new weapon from hammerspace... no innovation, no tension in their fights. And new post-timeskip characters are basically forgettable. They have nothing worth connecting with, no character development, and there are too many of them.

And villains are even worse. Except for Doflamingo, who is a GOAT, every other villain introduced post-timeskip is boring. Kaido has a few OK moments, but that's literally it. Wapol is a far better villain than literally any post-timeskip opponent other than Doflamingo (even Caesar, as fun of a character as he is, is a terrible villain). Kaido and especially Big Mom are terrible villains, as... yeah, they do have goals - but these goals basically don't matter. They are not focused on, they are not expanded on, both Emperors could have been replaced by inanimate punching bags for all the character impact they have. Kaido allegedly wants to die in battle, but we don't actually see it from his actions. He doesn't even fight Oden one on one, FFS.

And character designs post-timeskip are trash. Just a general downgrade across the board, except maybe Luffy. Maybe. Page design and panelling are also terrible.

Overall, the worst pre-timeskip arc is far better than the best post-timeskip arc. All and all there is simply too much going on, but characters are simply not deep enough to support that.

And don't get me started on the anime.

You should just accept One Piece as it is. Like I did. But I will be honest with you, the only reason why I returned was Egghead Island. If Elbaf will not be able to exceed my readers expectations I will drop this manga once and for all. I don't want to set up emotions based on nothing. There are a lot of manga works that I could read instead and get something more real than another flaw explaned by another plot device.

But I will discuss D.Gray Man here. Because here it's much easier to post theories about this series.

 

[BlackLegFring]

Oh, please, you're overexaggerating and you know it. The Sunny sailing in while the Five Vice-Admirals sat around doing nothing was a total Deus Ex Machina, but over half the people here didn't even read the pre-time skip stuff while it happened, in addition to a love of just whining about everything in general.

I wish I were. No matter how you feel about Ennies Lobby it is incomparable to things like Emeth with Joyboy’s Haki. I barely just switched the situation to make it resemble Egghead and you thought it was so bad that it’s over exaggerating.
Say what you want about Merry but at least we had set up with the Klabauterman 2/3 entire arcs prior, and it was always treated as a member of the crew too.

Sure One Piece has always had things like the Vice Admirals not acting, but that has always been the least of the complaints that people have about current writing.
Issues like pacing, tired tropes, Strawhats being neglected, Haki being a mess etc are what always come up, and that’s reflected in the example I gave.

 

[Zenos7]

D.Gray Man

Is it still ongoing?

Havent looked into it for ages

 

[Aldarion]

Is it still ongoing?

Havent looked into it for ages

It is. One chapter every three months.

You should just accept One Piece as it is. Like I did. But I will be honest with you, the only reason why I returned was Egghead Island. If Elbaf will not be able to exceed my readers expectations I will drop this manga once and for all. I don't want to set up emotions based on nothing. There are a lot of manga works that I could read instead and get something more real than another flaw explaned by another plot device.

But I will discuss D.Gray Man here. Because here it's much easier to post theories about this series.

True.

 

[FutureWarrior123]

Overall, the worst pre-timeskip arc is far better than the best post-timeskip

I don't know about that one gang.