@stephen:
No, actually I was referring to the seemingly ironclad pattern of non-canon One Piece anime material, particularly the movies and TV specials, of having a little kid (or kids) with big dreams who Luffy always sticks up for to beat the bad guy. Not only does it happen in every single one of them, it's handled in about the sappiest and cheesiest way possible, like an after-school special or something. You don't see those kinds of situations in Oda's manga because he expresses emotions and drama a million times better and more convincingly. Coby was the only case of this that appeared in the manga, right at the very beginning of the story when Oda was a novice storyteller and OP was really no different from any other fledgling series in Jump. But the people who write the filler anime material are seemingly stuck at this stage of Oda's development and refuse to (or simply can't because they're a bunch of hacks) create anything better. Oda has even gone back to the original pattern of "Crew meets person in trouble - Luffy sympathizes and helps them out - Crew moves on to new adventure" a few times since [Gaimon, Laboon, Tonjit] but has clearly improved and elaborated on the formula each time (notice none of those guys are cheeky little kids?) so that they remain fresh and interesting. But every time I get a new movie or TV special from K-F, I kind of watch it with a grimace and my fingers crossed, just waiting with baited breath for the spunky kid-of-the-week to mention the word "dream" before I give up and delete it.
I so agree with you Stephen. When Oda frist did his series most of his storytelling was "bleh", untie Arlong arc he sure started to improve; by the Baroque Work saga he has improved a lot, by Water 7 arc he was a great storyteller. Yet Oda always like to try out different things even if they don't fit the pirate world.
Yet the olny beef I had with One Piece is they have to travel in the Grand Line and not on three other blues. But Oda made sure his story is fun, trilling and quriky and if it was not for his intersting plot twist and creativey then I would quit One Piece due to striegthfowarding.
About Coby, he was the olny kid in the series to get all annoy and had a big dreams only to have Luffy "babysitting" him; Onion, Pepper, and Carrot are a differant story: They olny shout there dreams to Usopp but they are not annoy like Coby.
After them we see differant kinds of problems not invoving kids, Chabo was hit on the head by Nojiko not Luffy but Chabo don't have dreams: he wanted to advange his father thus showing that Oda want to give each children differant story and personally and not just chasing dreams. Most of the people Luffy helps out are teenagers and adult and animals, yet none of them are filler kids.
I also find it intersting if the Water 7 arc artstyle is the same as chapter 1 artstyle, I like to see a brigthed up verision of Spandam, Lucchi and other Water 7 characters.
The cannon kids I like is Miss Goldenweek, Chimney, Aisa and Kappa, they are not annoy as filler kids. Great job, Oda