General & Others Overall How much has One Piece series Declined if at all over the timeskip?

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I started reading One Piece weekly during Thriller Bark. By far the biggest difference is the sense of scale. There were less characters, less chapters per arc, we didn't know as much, and I think that ties a lot into the enjoyment. Pre-timeskip spent a lot of time focusing on the Strawhats, whereas post-timeskip has spent I'd say the majority of the time on side characters, and this is all fine and good, but there's A LOT of side characters Oda introduces in these post timeskip arcs. When you need to write half of the Strawhats out of an arc because of how bloated it is, that's a hint you need to cut down on the significance of certain side characters. There were also less chapters per arc, which I think really helped with the flow of pre-timeskip. The Strawhats were always on the move, discovering new places. That's been driven to the side as the stakes have risen, and the antagonists have grown more powerful. I personally don't mind the super long arcs as long as the story is interesting, but I know some get "arc fatigue" very easily.

We also didn't know as much pre-timeskip everything was still a mystery. I remember several "How can you possibly defeat Logias?" threads in the AP forums back in the day. As more questions are answered the mystery aspect of One Piece that drew some fans in loses it's appeal. There's also the fact that some of these reveals have been disappointing for some fans.

Overall though, there isn't a huge difference between post and pre-timeskip One Piece. Pre-timeskip had it's share of pacing issues, the characters are still the same characters. The humor hasn't really changed all that much. It still feels like One Piece to me.

 

[Red Haired Beast]

Whenever oda wants to drag on, he brings back Kanjuro.
Really man, is that guy immortal or something.
Also now he is just experimenting with wano with that looney toons shit. Ruined the whole mood for me.
Hope we will get a good conclusion for wano.

 

[BlackLegFring]

Yes, it’s declined.

The main reasons for that decline can actually be traced back to pre-skip and Saobody, where Oda
-introduced a ton of new characters
-split up the Strawhats

And that was really successful. Fans loved it. I think that made two problems for Oda. Or more accurately, for future readers.

-it made him think he can introduce a bunch of new characters all at once and it can replicate the success of the Supernovas. The Coliseum Gladiators being the main example here. And they were really not that successful, for the most part in Dressrosa people thought it was a waste of time focusing on them and the eventual Grand Fleet coming together… it wasn’t really received that well. More of a “oh, that’s what they’re for. Okay” than “HOLY FUCK IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!”

-he felt that Luffy could carry the series basically alone and the Strawhats weren’t really needed. I think this, combined with the above, resulted in the two big crew splits, which were unsuccesful.

So, the problems now. Tons and tons of characters. Pre-skip arcs were usually pretty tight, you had Strawhats, a corresponding number in the enemy group, native allies and maybe a wild card or two (Smoker, Kuma, Aokiji, folk like that).

Now we’ve got the Strawhats- but sometimes half of them aren’t even in the arc. If they are in the arc, not all of them are getting anything to do. The enemy groups are bigger and bigger. There was fourteen Donquioxtes in Dressrosa for some reason, plus Bellamy and Quin and Burgess. And the Yonko crews have been even bigger.

(They’ve actually been slightly better managed in that although there’s been more, Oda hasn’t focused on them all. To the detriment of some, like the TR).

Meanwhile the biggest enemy groups pre-skip was CP9 in EL with eight. Obvious big difference there.

And with EL, the supporting characters were the old Tom’s Workers members, the Franky Family and the shipwrights. But Oda got the balance right there. Tom’s Workers all fitted in to Franky’s plot. He gave Pauli a bit of focus in W7 to make him a red herring then pretty much dropped him. The others were all, for the most part, comic relief. Once it got to the meat of the action in EL they were essentially off-screened.

If EL was taking place now we’d have big flashbacks for Pauli and Zambia and Oda would be trying to invent more enemies for them to get a fight with.

Now on Wano what do we have? Nine Scabbards. Red flag right there- nine characters? Plus Momo, Hiyori, Kanjuro and Yamato? And Oden and Toki in the flashback? We’re at fifteen for one group alone, that’s far too many. There were barely fifteen important characters in all of Alabasta.

Then there’s Hyogoro and the Yakuza- at least the Yakuza are properly just shunted to the side. There’s the Minks. There’s Marco. There’s Tama. And there’s half the Supernovas. All (Kanjuro swapling around) on the side of the heroes.

Who are now, with ten Strawhats, the biggest they’ve ever been.

It’s patently obvious that’s too many characters to properly deal with. That’s not even including the villains! Instead of relegating these supporting characters to Franky Family and Galley La shipwright levels of importance, he’s trying to give nearly all of them paneltime. It simply can’t be done.

And with the lack of Strawhats, really, a lot of the heart has been taken out of the arc. And even when he does use them, he’s going through the motions.

WCI summed this up for me. Where he attempted to recapture the feeling of Arlong Park and EL but botched it entirely. There was next to no buildup for Sanji running away (certainly not compared to Nami and Robin). His second flashback was shit. Does anyone care about the saintly Sora compared to Zeff or Bellemere or Hiriluk? Of course not, she was barely a character. As bad as Usopp’s mother, but there Oda had the excuse of only having being a professional for a year. We expect better by now. The fact that Reiju gave Sanji near enough the exact same message as Saul gave Robin was awful. So was Sanji’s entire dilemma really- at this stage, twenty years in, everyone knew he’d be back. A “will he leave” just doesn’t work anymore like it did with Usopp and Robin.

And half the crew weren’t even there to see it. Even the ones on WCI- only Luffy and Nami actually got involved in Sanji. Brook and Chopper were off exploring another part of the island. Imagine “save me Luffy” happening but Sanji and Usopp are off doing something entirely different. The CP9 facedown with only three Strawhats. Awful.

So this rant is a bit dijointed but yeah, that’s my current thoughts on why One Piece isn’t as good as it was.

You described my thoughts on the 2nd Sanji flashback very well.
Sanji is my favourite character, and it’s atrocious that such a supposedly important flashback for the character failed to resonate or move me much because it was a song and dance already done before, and not particularly well in this instance either.

 

[Finalbeta]

I feel like Prime Piece has yet to come, the next 2-3 arcs will hopefully prove the best ones ever, except perhaps for Elbaf. :cheers: