Questions & Mysteries Why is Wano the most polarised one piece arc
- Thread starter Tai long
- Start date
I don't like the arc and for many reasons:
- Wano arc was incredibly long and stalling, even more than Dressrosa which I find too long. It also frequently felt like Oda was stalling the plot.
- The absence of stakes and tensions, with the plot armor and conveniences being so ridiculously strong and many. At no point during the battle of Onigashima it felt like the Beast Pirates were dominant and they felt like the underdogs instead of the Straw Hats due to how strongly he plot was against them and Big Mom.
- The secondary characters felt more boring or annoying than cool or interesting such as Momonosuke, O-Tama, the Scabbards, Oden, Yamato, etc...
- Oda's treatment of Big Mom was just as awful and schizophrenic, if not even more, than it was during WCI arc. It was incredibly cringeworthy and frustrating how Oda handicaped and held her and crew back, and how he chose to write her off in the worst way possible.
- Oden's flashback and how other characters constantly worship him and how he was put down in our throat, despite how incredibly stupid and disastrous of a character he was.
- Toki despite being from the Void century and having some potential was just reduced to Oden's wife and a time travel device.
- The subplot with Zeus, which I found dumb and cringeworthy.
- Yamato, just Yamato. I couldn't stand her and her stupid and cringe extreme fangirl antics, with imitating and calling herself Oden.
- The waterfall issue with the Big Mom Pirates which was an incredibly lazy and stupid excuse to keep the BMP out of Wano.
- And perhaps worst of all, the Nika stuff with Luffy's devil fruit being retconned to be a mythical zoan and him being the reincarnation of Nika and Joy Boy.
- Wano arc was incredibly long and stalling, even more than Dressrosa which I find too long. It also frequently felt like Oda was stalling the plot.
- The absence of stakes and tensions, with the plot armor and conveniences being so ridiculously strong and many. At no point during the battle of Onigashima it felt like the Beast Pirates were dominant and they felt like the underdogs instead of the Straw Hats due to how strongly he plot was against them and Big Mom.
- The secondary characters felt more boring or annoying than cool or interesting such as Momonosuke, O-Tama, the Scabbards, Oden, Yamato, etc...
- Oda's treatment of Big Mom was just as awful and schizophrenic, if not even more, than it was during WCI arc. It was incredibly cringeworthy and frustrating how Oda handicaped and held her and crew back, and how he chose to write her off in the worst way possible.
- Oden's flashback and how other characters constantly worship him and how he was put down in our throat, despite how incredibly stupid and disastrous of a character he was.
- Toki despite being from the Void century and having some potential was just reduced to Oden's wife and a time travel device.
- The subplot with Zeus, which I found dumb and cringeworthy.
- Yamato, just Yamato. I couldn't stand her and her stupid and cringe extreme fangirl antics, with imitating and calling herself Oden.
- The waterfall issue with the Big Mom Pirates which was an incredibly lazy and stupid excuse to keep the BMP out of Wano.
- And perhaps worst of all, the Nika stuff with Luffy's devil fruit being retconned to be a mythical zoan and him being the reincarnation of Nika and Joy Boy.
Wano is an arc that benefits from binging. All my friends whom I've introduced OP to had the privilege of reading or watching it after it was completed, and they loved it. One of my guys is just about done; he's got 3 chapters left before Luffy and co. leave the country.
I call it the "Dressrosa effect." Personally, I used to hate that arc after going through the slog of the anime, but then I reread it multiple times and have come to appreciate it. I really think highly of it now.
You could write a long research paper dissecting the highs and lows of Wano. Plenty of people have done something of that sort, and that's fine. At the end of the day, everyone had their own level of expectations, and those who were content with them being met expressed a higher level of gratitude than others.
I call it the "Dressrosa effect." Personally, I used to hate that arc after going through the slog of the anime, but then I reread it multiple times and have come to appreciate it. I really think highly of it now.
You could write a long research paper dissecting the highs and lows of Wano. Plenty of people have done something of that sort, and that's fine. At the end of the day, everyone had their own level of expectations, and those who were content with them being met expressed a higher level of gratitude than others.
Wano has small little problems of course, no stories in One Piece are pitch perfection, but its really an amazing arc.
But that's not the only reason I think.
I have theorized a long time ago that the enjoyment of One Piece was also conditionned by the readers's expectations. Especially what I called "illegitimate expectations".
To make in short, "illegitimate expectations" are expectation that are not based on ANY narrative plantings in the story. For example:
- Expecting to see Sanji have a fight in One Piece is an expectation that is based on nothing but the wishes of the readers. In reality, said expectation goes AGAINST the storytelling of the arc
- Expecting Zoro to fight Kaido is an illegitimate expectation simply because nothing was setup in the story for it to happen.
As you can see, illegitimate expectation can something be expectation of something that has or will happen. But what is important to understand is that at no point those expectations are based on the narration. A good expectation comes where there is a planting. For example, expecting Luffy to fight Kaido is legitimate because the NARRATION (NOT to be confused with the dialogues) created a situation where that fight was inevitable.
Now, we have to understand why it is a thing in the first place. And for that we need to understand that the structure and aura of One Piece is what allow those behavior to exist.
One Piece is a story that relies narratively highly on plantings (setup/ payoff / foreshadowings / hints / Clues / Prophecies etc.), not only that but the entire story AND the support is constructed as a big treasure hunt and a game of mysteries and enigme.
This created a fanbase that was highly dependant of theories. And because theories are needed, analysis started to emerge. BUT storytelling analysis is not something that is THAT easy. Its a skill that takes time to learn. And in a world where information needs to go fast, creators and posters have to give the best theories and analysis on the spot.
This results in a fanbase where most analysis and theories are... nonsense and a lot of time completely in antithesis with the narration of the story
But what happens when you think you can analyse a story perfectly and expect anything and everything ? Well...
You get disappointed.
Fan bases and "agendas" doesn't help either (and I'm responsible of that too also I'm very careful when I'm creating theories).
So you can see how the week to week reading PLUS the badly placed expectations can create disapointement. But in reality, said dissapointment is almost always proven to be a week to week fan thing.
What happens in that the week to week lecture creates a ideal place for good and bad expectations to rise and questions to cook (for too long sometimes) and when people want a fight but they have a speech instead... they will start to trashtalk. But it doesn't mean that the speech is a bad thing, people simply don't have the full point of view of the story and since Oda has a writing full of setups, it can sometimes be frustrating when you have too much time to think about it.
This is what happened in Wano (just as I expected at the time), but it happened in whole cake too, in Dressrosa, in Punk Hazard, in Fishmen Island, and even in Impel down at the time. (marineford and Zou, where so full of big revelations or overthetop fights each chapters that they didn't suffer the same fate).
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Now, how to counter that ?
In my opinion, if you have a bad appreciation of the story:
- The FIRST thing to do is to stay away from theories and the act of theorizing. You will only create expectation that risk to disapoint you later. Also, most of theories are - as explained - very bad, since most of them don't take the narration or the characterization of the character into question. Finally, we are at the end of the story, so the more we get closer to the end, the easier it will be to guess what will happen (since all the setup will be in place), so if you want to be surprised, STAY AWAY from people who theorize too much.
- The SECOND thing to do is to NEVER expect something that was not narratively setup in the story. For example, a lot of people trash on the character of Big Mom because she is played (a lot) as a joke. Well, did the story ever planted the fact that all emperor are serious charismatic and non-jokable characters ? No, never. So we must be careful not to be disgusted by the expectation that we could have in other story but are completely nonsensical in One Piece.
- THE THIRD thing to do is to take a step back, take a break and read the story block by block. Remember that chapters are supposed to be read in bunch of 10, so if you want to have a better experience, wait 10 chapters and go back to the story.
- THE FOURTH thing to do is to read the story without pausing. I see a lot of reactors pausing 5 to 20 minutes on one specific panel to think or to speak. DON'T DO THAT. (unless it doesn't change your appreciation of the story). The story is written to be read quickly and SMOOTHLY. Take your time to read and understand what you see but DO NOT cut the pacing of your reading or you will completely negate one of the core aspect of the narration.
- THE FIFTH AND LAST thing to do is to read with non lyrical music. I have been reading One Piece week to week for 19 years and NOT ONCE have I read One Piece without an OST of One Piece. The result (that might not be completely correlated to that) is that EACH chapters is now like a gift for me. In 19 years, I've not been dissapointed once and yet I have reasons to be since I have a big Carrot agenda.
The reason behind that is that IF YOU USE music CORRECTLY, it will have three effects :
> It will act as a binder of the entire narration of the chapter.
> It will give the reader a good feeling while reading the chapter.
> It will put in emphasis on each dramatic moment of the story (for that you need to understand enough the narration of One Piece to anticipate specific tone change and change the music rapidely accordingly, I have a very detailed playlist ready to go specifically to read One Piece chapters)
If you do those five things and you are still dissapointed by One Piece, it might be time for you to stop.
In One Piece, we NEED to welcome the unexpected, the campy, the goofy and the exagerated or we will get dissapointed.
Wano is an amazing arc, just like Dressrosa or Whole Cake, people just need to reread it to understand it.
The more casual consumer who's either binging the manga or watching the anime can stomach many of the problems we weekly readers had with the arc, most notably the pacing.
Vs the weekly reader who had to endure multiple chapters where either nothing happens or it's about a character you don't care about. Like the Scabbards and Tama. And of course the elephant in the room, the breaks
Breaks made an already unnecessarily long arc much longer than it needed to be lol.
Vs the weekly reader who had to endure multiple chapters where either nothing happens or it's about a character you don't care about. Like the Scabbards and Tama. And of course the elephant in the room, the breaks
Breaks made an already unnecessarily long arc much longer than it needed to be lol.
