great thread, it needs to be stickied. to think someone got thruth-or-dare'd into watching one piece, how cool is that?
it was about half a year ago, i was 18.
naruto slowly turned more and more into shit, so i was looking for another anime. i heard a lot about one piece and went to check it out. i watched what at that time was the most recent episode, in the start of the impel down arc. it was the episode where hancock tries to sneak luffy into impel down. i was put off by the wierd cartoony drawing style at first (yet it also strangely compelled me, oda is a goddamn wizard i tell you). i skipped to a stupid, childish scene; the one where buggy's crew contemplates rescuing him from impel down. the joke of the lion thinking about food was funny the first one-two times but the third time i facepalmed, the crew's voices were also annoying (turns out i ended up liking the scene in the manga, because the lion gag was in the backround, e.g. more subtle (damn you, toei animation!)).
i decided never to watch one piece again. i almost gave up on one piece there. luckily i decided to read it instead, hoping that that was just one of the worst scenes or the manga was better (this was also the first time i finally tread into the mysterious world of manga). i read the whole damn thing in three months or so, one piece is looooooooong. i also watch the anime now, though it can be quite bad at times and i prefer the manga (however, sometimes the anime handles some scenes better and adds nice scenes). though there are a few parts of one piece wich are quite bad, one piece is mostly a great story with great humor, tragedy, characters and atmosphere.
i didn't like it that much at first, it was good but not great. i persevered however, hoping it'd get better; it was the world's best selling manga for a reason after all. eventually i arrived at the little garden arc, wich i really liked. it then followed up to the drum island arc wich was a masterpiece. that arc was very tragic and sad, yet so god damn funny because of wapol. i fuckin' love wapol. it took long before the quality of the drum island arc was matched, wich the water 7 arc did (didn't like it's follow-up, the enies lobby arc, very much though). the manga kept getting better as it went on, whereas naruto only got worse as time went on and bleach already lost most of its greatness as the hollow arc ended and it devolved into a DBZ knockoff.