General & Others When and why did the manga go downhill?

[BlackLegFring]

There have been problems with quality since the time skip, but I personally started to lose my prior level of enjoyment with the 2nd half of WCI (also the point I switched over wholly to the manga. Dressrosa tempted me, but WCI sealed the deal.)

Prior to that you could have labelled me a One Piece fanatic. I even rewatched the series like when it first came out on Crunchyroll, but the Nika stuff is what truly killed my prior love of the series.

I’m in for the long haul, but my former level of love & enthusiasm is simply gone.

 

[DenifClock]

There have been problems with quality since the time skip, but I personally started to lose my prior level of enjoyment with the 2nd half of WCI (also the point I switched over wholly to the manga. Dressrosa tempted me, but WCI sealed the deal.)

Prior to that you could have labelled me a One Piece fanatic. I even rewatched the series like when it first came out on Crunchyroll, but the Nika stuff is what truly killed my prior love of the series.

I’m in for the long haul, but my former level of love & enthusiasm is simply gone.

Okay, that's cool, but why are you talking about the anime, when the title is "when and why did the manga go downhill"

 

[BoaHancocksHusband]

Okay, that's cool, but why are you talking about the anime, when the title is "when and why did the manga go downhill"

Bro the Katakuri fight broke the camels back in my opinion
everything on paper he should have smoked Gear 4 Luffy

Katakuri's stats[/B]
Attack 3/10
Defense 5/10
Speed 7/10
Obs Haki 9/10
Arm Haki 4/10
Conq Haki 3/10

[B]Awakening Stats[/B]
Attack 5/10
Defense 7/10
Speed 9/10
Obs 10/10
Arm 6/10
Conq 4/10

 

[Sparda]

Whole Cake Island


Our MC against a fucking Yonko crew, a real danger, only for Oda to reveal that they're a bunch of incompetent with no real threats. Like really, Big Mom's crew, the real danger was only Katakuri who got nerfed in the end, and Perospero, the rest are useless as fuck. And after that, Kaido's crew, bunch of dangerous looking opponents, but Oda decided to "I want you all to focus on Luffy and Luffy only" and rush everything except Luffy's fight who got dragged out like shit. aside from Zoro, no further Haki development for the others, their fight was cut short. Their opponents, again, provides no real danger because they're are all a bunch of incompetent.

 

[BlackLegFring]

Okay, that's cool, but why are you talking about the anime, when the title is "when and why did the manga go downhill"

Because it’s the same content in question, duh!

 

[Jackteo]

The Amazon Lily - Impel Down - Marineford saga is the breaking point. Sadly the One Piece popularity boom happened during those strawhats-less chapter and that made CL²⁴Oda think that focusing on Luffy would have been good enough. He neglected the crew, kept adding more and more important secondary characters (Law above all, Kid, Sabo, Koby) and ultimately sidelined the strawhats journey. Now he seems to be repeating the same mistake by highlighting only Zoro and Luffy's deeds. It won't work

I actually don't think that One Piece has gone downhill. But, I do think it's shifted it's focus from where it used to be.

Every arc used to be more character focused. And we used to be almost guaranteed to get a new crewmember every arc, because that's the formula that got established. I think this is partially why so many people keep expecting characters like Carrot and Yamato to join the crew. In the past, if a character got a major focus, they would join the crew. That's just how the formula worked back then.

But, nowadays, I think the story is less character focused and more plot focused. Oda is more interested in writing about the larger world and the larger themes of the story. He's more focused on the bigger picture, rather than the details and the character moments we used to get.

You could even make the case that the story is more villain focused. Because, I do think that the "modern" One Piece villains are usually written as being more complex and layered than the "classic" One Piece villains. Most of the "modern" villains have a sympathetic backstory, and Oda goes out of the way to show how their original dreams were actually pretty understandable. The villain's dream's just got corrupted over time.

Instead of being focused on the Strawhats, the story is now focused on the larger plot going on all around the world. It's more interested in the various factors and events that lead into how the World became like this, rather than on the adventures and desires of the Strawhats, themselves.

There's definitely been trade offs to this. Before, we would get more time with our main characters, and more chances for them to interact together. But, the story was much more similar to other shonen action manga. Nowadays, I think the story is a lot more complex and layered. There's a lot more ideas to unpack and explore in each arc. The villains have more complex and nuanced motivations. But, we've kind of lost that character focus and interactions that made the first part of the story so charming, and that's a shame.



A lot of people are going to say this happened post-timeskip. And that's actually fair enough. It's the most obvious place to point out how the story changed. A lot of other stuff changed around that same time, so it's just very easy and "clean" to say that it all changed during the timeskip. Some people might even say this kicked into high gear around the time of the Nika reveal in Wano.

But, I actually think the change happened earlier than that.

This video goes into more detail about the idea, if you want to give it a watch.

They actually make a fair argument that the change from being character-focused to plot-focused originally happened during Thriller Bark. And even nails down the very scene where the entire story changed focus.

"Nothing happened."

Now, this is a all-time great scene, don't get me wrong. But, it does show a change in how Oda approaches the story. Before this point, you could make a argument that ALL the Strawhat's dreams were equally important. They ALL mattered and had to be seen through to completion.

But, during this scene, Zoro is basically willing to sacrifice his dream to save Luffy. He's willing to die, to make sure Luffy survives in order to see his dream come true. Narratively, this makes Luffy's dream the most important dream of them all. The story is no longer about ALL the Strawhats achieving their dreams together. It's now about all the Strawhats working together to make sure Luffy's dream can come true.

And it's kind of telling that almost immediately after Thriller Bark, the Strawhats are all separated, and the manga becomes the Luffy Show for a few arcs, basically until after the timeskip. This is no longer a ensemble story, really. This story is now about Luffy. Luffy is our main character, and everyone else is a member of his supporting cast.



So, I'm not totally convinced there's been a change for the worse. But, I do think there's been a noticeable change. I think we've traded character complexity for plot and world-building complexity. And I'm pretty sure that change has it's roots ALL the way back in Thriller Bark.

I do agree with this. The "Nothing happened" moment being the turning point (for the worst) would also be so ironic

 

[LolonoisZolo]

I actually don't think that One Piece has gone downhill. But, I do think it's shifted it's focus from where it used to be.

Every arc used to be more character focused. And we used to be almost guaranteed to get a new crewmember every arc, because that's the formula that got established. I think this is partially why so many people keep expecting characters like Carrot and Yamato to join the crew. In the past, if a character got a major focus, they would join the crew. That's just how the formula worked back then.

But, nowadays, I think the story is less character focused and more plot focused. Oda is more interested in writing about the larger world and the larger themes of the story. He's more focused on the bigger picture, rather than the details and the character moments we used to get.

You could even make the case that the story is more villain focused. Because, I do think that the "modern" One Piece villains are usually written as being more complex and layered than the "classic" One Piece villains. Most of the "modern" villains have a sympathetic backstory, and Oda goes out of the way to show how their original dreams were actually pretty understandable. The villain's dream's just got corrupted over time.

Instead of being focused on the Strawhats, the story is now focused on the larger plot going on all around the world. It's more interested in the various factors and events that lead into how the World became like this, rather than on the adventures and desires of the Strawhats, themselves.

There's definitely been trade offs to this. Before, we would get more time with our main characters, and more chances for them to interact together. But, the story was much more similar to other shonen action manga. Nowadays, I think the story is a lot more complex and layered. There's a lot more ideas to unpack and explore in each arc. The villains have more complex and nuanced motivations. But, we've kind of lost that character focus and interactions that made the first part of the story so charming, and that's a shame.



A lot of people are going to say this happened post-timeskip. And that's actually fair enough. It's the most obvious place to point out how the story changed. A lot of other stuff changed around that same time, so it's just very easy and "clean" to say that it all changed during the timeskip. Some people might even say this kicked into high gear around the time of the Nika reveal in Wano.

But, I actually think the change happened earlier than that.

This video goes into more detail about the idea, if you want to give it a watch.

They actually make a fair argument that the change from being character-focused to plot-focused originally happened during Thriller Bark. And even nails down the very scene where the entire story changed focus.

"Nothing happened."

Now, this is a all-time great scene, don't get me wrong. But, it does show a change in how Oda approaches the story. Before this point, you could make a argument that ALL the Strawhat's dreams were equally important. They ALL mattered and had to be seen through to completion.

But, during this scene, Zoro is basically willing to sacrifice his dream to save Luffy. He's willing to die, to make sure Luffy survives in order to see his dream come true. Narratively, this makes Luffy's dream the most important dream of them all. The story is no longer about ALL the Strawhats achieving their dreams together. It's now about all the Strawhats working together to make sure Luffy's dream can come true.

And it's kind of telling that almost immediately after Thriller Bark, the Strawhats are all separated, and the manga becomes the Luffy Show for a few arcs, basically until after the timeskip. This is no longer a ensemble story, really. This story is now about Luffy. Luffy is our main character, and everyone else is a member of his supporting cast.



So, I'm not totally convinced there's been a change for the worse. But, I do think there's been a noticeable change. I think we've traded character complexity for plot and world-building complexity. And I'm pretty sure that change has it's roots ALL the way back in Thriller Bark.

This makes a lot of sense tbh
''Nothing happened'' shifted the focus drastically eventhough the effets were felt only after a while, it is undeniably the ''turning point''.

 

[ImmaIvanoM]

SHOCKING CONFESSION INCOMING

I didn’t like the Marineford Saga.

Sabaody was hype, but afterwards I didn’t like the Strawhats being separated. Amazon lily sucked IMO. Like the arc itself is genuinely lame.

Impel down is an entire arc of run piece where Luffy fails and gets very little done outside of the cameo fest. Literally the best part was just collecting old characters.

Marineford is… good… not great. It’s good. The art peaked for a bit here. Again, I just didn’t like the strawhats not being involved

then Post time skip is what it is. Everyone has said everything that needs to be said about it.

So to me, the Marineford Saga was like the beginning of the end for me. It was good overall but all the problems that got worse started from the Marineford Saga.

like This is when Haki started affecting fights and intentionally being vague in its application (as we have seen, this has been horrendous since)… The strawhats being completely written out set the table for the post time skip just fully ignoring their existences… the power scaling issues since then have become worse… Skirmish and clash piece started in Marineford since Oda realised he can just build hype from clashes instead of full fights like Ace vs Blackbeard. And now almost everything is clashes… The art was good, no complains here. The Art drop off into Post time skip was just as shocking to me since there was no signs of how bad it was going to get in Marineford itself.

 

[MonsterKaido]

Oda changed the way he handle SHs. He chose to focus on bigger world and on bigger cast of side characters.

This increase the scope and world building of OP but SHs who are the heart of OP suffer a lot.

It took wano arc for Zoro to get much needed screentime and relevance back and even then oda gave other characters like law , Yamato , midd comparable relevance to Zoro.

Sanji is not that different. Oda did him dirty in WCI. He should have defeated cracker at least.

Mid trio like robin , Franky , brook and chopper are neglected.

Usopp only got some relevance in dressrossa. He was meh through out post skip outside of dressrossa.

Nami was comparatively handled better.

Luffy became less of a character and more of caricature.

And due to huge side cast , oda has to divide focus on each making it harder to relate to all of them.

 

[L o g i a]

G5 has a much larger effect on the story though. This isnt a simple powerup, it completely changes Luffys fruit, and potentially Luffys entire character/goal. Luffy went from having a silly paramecia to the fruit that the government fears most ¨choosing him¨ like it had a mind of its own.

It does, but people were SHOOK by G2 in the same way, saying it's asspull bullshit and shouldn't exist, changes his fruit, bla bla bla. Now in retrospect it's seen as a very creative power up.

What differs is it's almost necessary from a storytelling POV. It is what was needed to bring Luffy into direct conflict with the World Government. It's existence created new enemies for him and aligned his interests with those of Dragon and Sabo. The story in its current state would actually be more disjointed without it. Oda had teased it many times before; it's not like it came out of nowhere. We all knew Luffy would awaken his fruit at some point too. I'd agree with the concerns if it wasn;t a powerup that was EARNED, or if this is how things were from chapter 1, but that simply isn't the case.

This is the knee jerk reaction, and when people have more story content to digest, they will reframe it in a different light. It happened with all the other gears before in the exact same way.

 

[Djordje]

I noticed that after east blue saga so at beggining of Alabasta arc manga was getting more and more dialogue heavy , each east blue volume could be read within 1 hour - 1 hour and 10 minutes while later it takes almost full 2 hourse to read a volume. I kinda like simplicity of those first 11 volumes of one piece , no bullshit just straight to the point.

Apart from this I cant say manga went downhill Dressrosa and Whole cake island are my 2 favorite arcs we will see how Elbaf will play out it certainly has great potential but so far I am not very impressed.

Oda talks a lot in Elbaf yet reveals nothing :

- did not even see Loki power
- revealed mural without giving anything important
- did not even see third layer of Elbaf

 

[Sir Yasheen]

I noticed that after east blue saga so at beggining of Alabasta arc manga was getting more and more dialogue heavy , each east blue volume could be read within 1 hour - 1 hour and 10 minutes while later it takes almost full 2 hourse to read a volume. I kinda like simplicity of those first 11 volumes of one piece , no bullshit just straight to the point.

Apart from this I cant say manga went downhill Dressrosa and Whole cake island are my 2 favorite arcs we will see how Elbaf will play out it certainly has great potential but so far I am not very impressed.

Oda talks a lot in Elbaf yet reveals nothing :

- did not even see Loki power
- revealed mural without giving anything important
- did not even see third layer of Elbaf

Tbh alabasta was the first major island that had major lore connections and oda handled it really well at the time.

All exposition was clear and concise, it introduced the warlord system, the ancient weapons, and the void century. And none of it felt like fluff. Compare this to Vegapunk speech which was a lot of fluff and had little substance. The big thing was oda was still using show don’t tell back then and now a days oda would rather just say stuff instead of showing it because it’s easier.

 

[Chrono]

Post timeskip was just bad, but it went to shite at Whole Cake Island.

 

[LolonoisZolo]

It does, but people were SHOOK by G2 in the same way, saying it's asspull bullshit and shouldn't exist, changes his fruit, bla bla bla. Now in retrospect it's seen as a very creative power up.

I have never, ever, ever and EVER seen anyone say that G2 was bad etc...
It is objectively a good power up with a great explanation on how it works and how he learned it (it was maybe a tad too quick to learn but this is shonen).
If anything Ashura looked more like ''magic'' than G2.

 

[trav]

When Akainu was pushed behind a desk

Which ironically gave him more relevance and screentime than ever before.

 

[Luffy is the mc]

People think that it's because Oda focuses more on Luffy but that isn't the case. He's done that throughout the whole manga.

It's the side characters, especially the supernova that took the panel time of the other straw hats.

When the side characters are good it's kind of ok but when it's Kidd, Killer, Drake, Hawkins, Koby, scabbards (not all of them were bad), etc, that's when the story goes downhill.

And that's what is funny to me, because people want these bums to shine and when they logically fail because in a story of more than a 1000 chapters, you can't give bums too many wins otherwise you have to drag your story even more.

As much as I think Kaido was much more impressive and stronger than Luffy, he still had to lose in Wano after 200 hundreds chapters. But yet people wanted him and BM to win, it is not a story about the Yonko, the admirals nor the supernova.

It's about a young man and his crew going after the OP.

Now what I would criticize is the panel time of useless bums and the lack of adventures like pre TS times. Now it always feel the same, with a country or an island that is oppressed and Luffy comes in as the savior. And Oda had the stupidity to even add the Nika god worship into it.

 

[L o g i a]

I have never, ever, ever and EVER seen anyone say that G2 was bad etc...
It is objectively a good power up with a great explanation on how it works and how he learned it (it was maybe a tad too quick to learn but this is shonen).
If anything Ashura looked more like ''magic'' than G2.

Probably because that happened in 2005 mate. How have you managed to miss that pretty damn important piece of context. Like I said, "at the time" does not equate to now or recently. I am struggling to see where the dots cannot be drawn.

And that's just it. Posterity, when people grow up and look past agendas and "it's not how I imagined the story going" and see the significance, importance, and why it narratively is both appropriate and makes sense, will have the masses say that G5 is "objectively a good power up" as well. No point parroting what I've already said back at me regarding G2.

Please make sure you've read what someone's commented at least twice before replying...

 

[LolonoisZolo]

Probably because that happened in 2005 mate. How have you managed to miss that pretty damn important piece of context. Like I said, "at the time" does not equate to now or recently. I am struggling to see where the dots cannot be drawn.

And that's just it. Posterity, when people grow up and look past agendas and "it's not how I imagined the story going" and see the significance, importance, and why it narratively is both appropriate and makes sense, will have the masses say that G5 is "objectively a good power up" as well. No point parroting what I've already said back at me regarding G2.

Please make sure you've read what someone's commented at least twice before replying...

I have been following One Piece since the end of EL (around 2006 more or less) and have been in One Piece forums since very long (at least 10 years) and all I saw was people praising G2 and how it was handeled so I did indeed read your post and put it in its context.
Now compare how G2 and G5 were handeled and tell me it is the same level of writing ?

 

[haxxor]

Too many unimportant characters post-ts

 

[kekaro]

I actually don't think that One Piece has gone downhill. But, I do think it's shifted it's focus from where it used to be.

Every arc used to be more character focused. And we used to be almost guaranteed to get a new crewmember every arc, because that's the formula that got established. I think this is partially why so many people keep expecting characters like Carrot and Yamato to join the crew. In the past, if a character got a major focus, they would join the crew. That's just how the formula worked back then.

But, nowadays, I think the story is less character focused and more plot focused. Oda is more interested in writing about the larger world and the larger themes of the story. He's more focused on the bigger picture, rather than the details and the character moments we used to get.

You could even make the case that the story is more villain focused. Because, I do think that the "modern" One Piece villains are usually written as being more complex and layered than the "classic" One Piece villains. Most of the "modern" villains have a sympathetic backstory, and Oda goes out of the way to show how their original dreams were actually pretty understandable. The villain's dream's just got corrupted over time.

Instead of being focused on the Strawhats, the story is now focused on the larger plot going on all around the world. It's more interested in the various factors and events that lead into how the World became like this, rather than on the adventures and desires of the Strawhats, themselves.

There's definitely been trade offs to this. Before, we would get more time with our main characters, and more chances for them to interact together. But, the story was much more similar to other shonen action manga. Nowadays, I think the story is a lot more complex and layered. There's a lot more ideas to unpack and explore in each arc. The villains have more complex and nuanced motivations. But, we've kind of lost that character focus and interactions that made the first part of the story so charming, and that's a shame.



A lot of people are going to say this happened post-timeskip. And that's actually fair enough. It's the most obvious place to point out how the story changed. A lot of other stuff changed around that same time, so it's just very easy and "clean" to say that it all changed during the timeskip. Some people might even say this kicked into high gear around the time of the Nika reveal in Wano.

But, I actually think the change happened earlier than that.

This video goes into more detail about the idea, if you want to give it a watch.

They actually make a fair argument that the change from being character-focused to plot-focused originally happened during Thriller Bark. And even nails down the very scene where the entire story changed focus.

"Nothing happened."

Now, this is a all-time great scene, don't get me wrong. But, it does show a change in how Oda approaches the story. Before this point, you could make a argument that ALL the Strawhat's dreams were equally important. They ALL mattered and had to be seen through to completion.

But, during this scene, Zoro is basically willing to sacrifice his dream to save Luffy. He's willing to die, to make sure Luffy survives in order to see his dream come true. Narratively, this makes Luffy's dream the most important dream of them all. The story is no longer about ALL the Strawhats achieving their dreams together. It's now about all the Strawhats working together to make sure Luffy's dream can come true.

And it's kind of telling that almost immediately after Thriller Bark, the Strawhats are all separated, and the manga becomes the Luffy Show for a few arcs, basically until after the timeskip. This is no longer a ensemble story, really. This story is now about Luffy. Luffy is our main character, and everyone else is a member of his supporting cast.



So, I'm not totally convinced there's been a change for the worse. But, I do think there's been a noticeable change. I think we've traded character complexity for plot and world-building complexity. And I'm pretty sure that change has it's roots ALL the way back in Thriller Bark.

Quality post