First off , if you don't care to read till the end then no need to reply.
Yes One Piece has its fair share of inconsistencies , flaws & puke inducing moments (eg. sanji nosebleeding , "comedy scenes" that just don't click , annoying characters like "children at PH" etc) .
Background :- Most ppl started reading One Piece after having heard about the hype around MF arc. One Piece manga sales in Japan also skyrocketed at that time. Before this amongst the Big 3 , Naruto & Bleach were considered better than One Piece by most shonen fans coz most of them hadn't even read op coz it seemed too childish to them & had read Bleach & Naruto only & i remember the constant battles between naruto fans & op fans .
1)
So my point is that most of these op fans read all of these pre ts arcs in one go & not on a week to week basis. But for the post ts arcs they read them on a week to week basis. Or in some cases watched the horrendous FI,PH,Dressrosa anime (RIP them).
Basically you read pre ts arcs in 2-3 months & post ts arcs in 10 years. And this difference matters hell a lot.
2) This is my personal observation & opinion that the experience of reading an arc in one go is much better than reading it on week to week basis because while reading weekly (with breaks too) we forget a lot of things that happened even 15 chapters ago & more importantly the flow of the story is lost completely.You wont feel any emotions at all while reading a new chapter because the build up from past 10 chapters is lost coz you read them over 10 weeks.
Say a battle is going on ; then the flow of the battle will shift from protagonist's side to anatogonist's side back & forth but none of this will be visible to a weekly reader because whenever he picks it up a week later , all the tension set up by last 7 chapters is gone . (a soft reset is at play everytime you pick up the series a week later.)
3) Even if you were to reread the post ts arcs (despite of knowing all the spoilers coz we have read it already) you would in all likelihood be able to get a much better experience than when you read it weekly which would only imply that if you hadn't read them weekly initially & would have read it in one go the first time itself then your experience would have been even better.
4) The Best One Piece experience comes if you switched to One Piece manga in post ts
& read it all from FI to wano in under a month & not in 10 years.
Thats a huge difference of experience for the worse if you became a weekly reader post TS.(Most of you did from around 2011/2012).
5) Put simply there are 3 versions of you , each with different OP experience.
Version 1:- that version of you who read OP post ts arcs in just a month when you read it the first time .(in some alternate universe)
Version 2:- that version of you who read OP post ts arcs over 10 years weekly when you read it the first time. (in this universe)
Version 3:- that version of you who initially read post ts arcs weekly but later reread them in one go. (still possible for you just by rereading an arc)
Most of you are at version 2. Some of you are at version 3 & must have noticed already that version 3 is much better than version 2 implies version 3 >> version 2.
Now Version 1 >>> Version 3 >> Version 2 & if you read the arcs weekly during your first read then you will never get to experience version 1 (which would have been the best possible OP reading experience & would have been just like Pre TS) . But you can deduce logically that Version 1 is basically Version 3 minus all the spoilers you know already & thus Version 1 would have been an even better experience.
Infact Version 1 is how you read Pre TS arcs & Version 2 is how you read Post TS arcs. Version 1 >>> Version 3 >> Version 2.
Make your friend/cousin (someone you know good enough & someone who always had nearly very same reviews of other stories as you did...basically someone with very similar tastes in fiction as you) read OP from start to finish in under a month & you will see for yourself that even in their opinion Post TS is again far from flawless but overall OP has been the same from Alabasta to Wano.
6) tldr of everything i said above :-
Post TS arcs are not even on the same level playing field with Pre TS arcs for most of you all because you read Post TS arcs much more differently than Pre TS ones.
Also when reading Pre TS arcs in one go in under a month , most of you did not spent time debating to death & hyperanalyzing after every single chapter , all of which you did for Post TS arcs. Hyperanalyzing & debating something to death day in day out will only reduce your reading experience. Spending too much time talking about a subject will make it loose its appeal over time. Stay 24*7*365 with your best friend/girl friend/wife whatever & by the end of 3-4 years , things will start to feel redundant & boring if you dont mantain a healthy distance. Same with One Piece if that's where majority of your time online is going into.
7) If you dont believe all the above then simply go ahead & check Arlong Park forum posts during pre ts arcs ; During Thriller Bark for example , most people were not impressed by "nothing happened" moment & were very critical of Kuma's actions & said that his actions didnt make any sense. Another plot induced stupidity moment etc.
NOW MOVING ON TO THE "Oda is on a level with the all time fantasy greats" :-
1) I cannot post a great analysis of One Piece because it has already been done in the best possible way by
Morj (who was right about Zoro getting CoC in Wano & wrong about some other theories but when it comes to character analysis , theme analysis & other story element analysis ; he is one of the best if not the best).
JUST WATCH ANY ONE OF THE VIDEO BY HIM & YOU'LL START TO APPRECIATE THE LAYERS IN THE STORY (MOST OF WHICH YOU WOULD MISS ANYWAYS IF ALL YOU CARED ABOUT IS FIGHT SCENES & SOME "WOW" MOMENTS)
>> Why Whole Cake Island Was Underrated: The Complete Arc Analysis by Mr Morj
>> How Dressrosa Explains ALL Of One Piece by Morj (Dressrosa arc review)
>> The Deeper Themes of Wano | Complete ARC ANALYSIS by Morj (till end of Act 2)
>> The Philosophy of One Piece by Morj
^^ Just a quoting a glimpse of this last video only as in character themes of OP characters:-
World government: totalitarian divine command theory
Pirates in general: ethical egoism
Doflamingo: meta-ethical nihilism
Robin: act utilitarianism
Luffy: situational ethics
Sanji: romanticism
Zoro: stoicism / bushido
Nami: laissez-faire capitalism
I know that most of you wont watch even a single one of them but will jump straight to trashing this thread or Morj or One Piece itself & call me a Oda/One Piece/Morj fanboy ; & if you are one of them then well good luck to you , you all just want to stay shallow in your comfy eco chamber of OP bashing & i wont be wasting my time on you. After all , complaining about popular things is "cool" right kids ?!! Continue on.
For those who cared to watch even 1 video of the above , to them i would say this that there is a 25 video One Piece analysis playlist by Morj that is the best available OP analysis done by anyone i have seen so far & the 4 i mentioned above were part of that 25 video OP analysis playlist . And what you saw was just a glimpse of how well written & deeply layered (ofcourse with many flaws) the series is . You are most welcome to explore in much more depth if you liked anyone of them.
2 ) In comes 2 people -> Daniel Greene & Merphy napier :- They are not your typical manga/anime people who have the experience of reading & reviewing only animes & mangas. They are
more like booktubers & fantasy critics & they picked up OP this year & have just finished Dressrosa recently. Yes they weren't fans of PH,FI either.
So
they are coming from outside of our usual manga only echo chamber & i believe there opinion is very refreshing to watch pretty much because of their background.
But here is the thing when people (like Daniel & Merphy) who have read :-
The Lord of the Rings
The Count of Monte Cristo ,
The Gentleman Bastards ,
Witcher ,
Malazan ,
Wheel of Time ,
Mistborn ,
A song of Ice & Fire ,
The Stormlight Archive etc
& who have read authors like
Sanderson , Geroge RR Martin , JRR Tolkien , Pratchett , Jordan , Erikson etc & many others.
^^ when even these people say One Piece is their Top 2 (merphy) & Top 10 (daniel) series of all time , then yes i would agree with that 100%.
The only mangas they read so far was FMA (personally i found FMA to be very overrated & OP is much better than FMA any day in my book), Berserk , AoT & Death Note (so there manga reading experience is still not a lot) but more importantly they are comparing One Piece with not just other mangas as most of us do but instead with the best considered fantasy fiction stories & authors of all time & placing Oda & OP at the near top even after that. And i second that considering their background which is far more rich than people who stick only in the manga only eco chamber or just in the books/novels only echo chamber.
3) Yeah i know many of you will accuse these 2 people of choosing OP trying to increase their channel popularity (which was around 300K+ subscribers for Daniel before even starting Op & 250k+ for merphy before even starting OP... so already large enough for being a booktuber) but they could have said its a good series & left it at that instead of going out of their way & calling it top 2 or top 10 in their list & placing it amongst their previous favourites.
Just watch Daniel's Dressrosa review & Yes he didnt like FI or PH but
then went out of his way to call Dressrosa equivalent to Malazan-esque.
4)Here are Daniel's words on One Piece :-
"Oda is a god damn visionary & you have to look at the structure of the story that has been built up to this point because in hindsight , yes , he is telling the emotional stories & characters so well & things like that but the structure , the pacing , the planning of the story & how that is elevating the characters so much higher up until now is truly on a level with the all time fantasy greats . I am talking Tolkien, Jordan , Erikson , Sanderson. This (oda) is a guy who is clearly planning out a fantasy epic & executing a vision that has themes , so much crazy & incredible world building.
The only reason Oda is not included in the all time top 10 greatest fantasy authors of all time list is because of the medium he writes in. If he was doing this in typical novel format , he would without question be in those conversations. "
^^ (video link to his above words)
https://www.reddit.com/r/OnePiece/comments/ppep15
5)
Merphy who has placed One Piece neck & neck with The Gentleman Bastards as her top 2 series of all time is not just a booktuber (with 300k+ subs) but also a manuscript critique professionally (people who offer detailed critique to authors before they go ahead). So reviewing plot, structure, pacing, character development and motivation, narrative prose, clunky dialogue, plot holes/inconsistencies is her daily professional job basically & she is successful enough to temporarily close her bookings for critique due to being booked a year in advance.
So yes even a flat earther has the right to vote but i would attach far more weight to opinion of people who are doing critique with great amount of success on youtube as well as in the offline world with manuscript critique being her daily profession (& on top of it she has read post ts arcs in one go + has the experience of reading & reviewing tolkien, George RR Martin , Erikson ,Sanderson etc)
6) If you are reading this manga just for fights & not also for its themes , character arcs ,lores , mysteries , world building , & several other deeper layers & story elements or couldnt find them in post ts arcs then you have just made up your mind to hate no matter what . To them i would say this :-
There was this russian youtuber who started to not like OP in WCI (which is absolutely fine) & decided to quit reading it altogether .(got to know about him from another thread on this forum).
Atleast i respect him for getting his priorities straight & quitting something if he didnt like it anymore unlike the weekly complainer leeches who cant walk the talk & quit reading the series they dont like but would rather prefer to whine like bit**es every week while not even paying for reading most of the time. No one is forcing you to read it. Get your priorities straight. Do us a favor & quit. Rest assured , you wont be missed. Good riddance.
I rest my case.
