I will agree that Toei should dump more money into One Piece, considering how HUGE it is in Japan, to the point of spawning its own theme park.
OP doesn't have its own theme park. It has been granted a special exhibit corner at a series of theme parks across the country.
OP animation is not as poor as it used to be. I think there was a point from EL through TB where they were literally stick figures with flapping mouths.
But compare any given episode's animation to something from the first 65 episodes and you can't help but notice the stiffness.
Sometimes there are random cool scenes.
Robin's flying.
Sanji kicking Oars.
Rayleigh to the rescue.
Luffy delivering the final defensive blow against Magellan.
But most of the time those just serve to show how poor the rest of the episode looks.
I took some Tums and downed a carton of milk to be able to watch a portion of a Naruto episode without projectile vomiting my intestines and despite it being NARUTO it looked fuckin' beautiful. So I don't buy the whole, "It looks good for a long series.", argument.
We shouldn't even be having this conversation. There shouldn't be any question about what the animation of the highest-selling/highest initial printings/fastest-selling manga of all time looks like. But no.
In fact. Shit shouldn't be on Sunday mornings. It should be at 7:30 ON SUNDAY FREAKING NIGHT FOLLOWING SAZAE-SAN.
But no. Fuji would rather put strength into shithole shows like Yusuke Santamaria's boring quiz show and Echika no Kagami, the evolution of which over the past year from a boo-hoo tear-fest to comedian-driven generic Japanese variety program #9878969875875899999991 is pathetic.
Their handling of the One Piece animated property is embarrassing. But there's nothing we can do about it so just better to bend over and lube up.