Ok, before I start commenting, I dont think you
re a troll, seeing as you give valid reasons for your opinions, but please, please dont generalize. You thinking One Piece is at a very mediocre point rright now and even people agreeing with that doesn
t make it an absolute truth. I think its kinda presumptuous to assume who disagress with your criticism is a blind, biased fanboy who can
t see blatant flaws in their story and will just defend it to death without reason. Of course, on a fanboard you will find people that like the show. That doesnt mean that their opinions count less, because most usually have a **good reason** to like it. I can see flaws in One Piece
s story….I think there are small flaws in almost every arc Oda wrote so far, because its pretty much impossible to write a perfect story without a single flaw. Thing is, I take so much enjoyment from this show, and I feel the good outweighs the bad by so, so much that it just doesn
t bother me very much. Well, long, boring introduction aside, I think I`ll start to discuss your actual criticism now xD
@FelRes:
And the fact is that the way this message board sees One Piece is, well, vastly different than pretty much everywhere else I see OP talk. That doesn't include Onemanga. God forbid.
In case you guys didn't know, this is what people think of One Piece after the timeskip, as of like… last week when I asked a really active general board what the general consensus was:
Notice most people aren't pleased. Also, if you ask about Sanji, you will usually get expletives in the vain of "f*cking awful". Essentially, criticism is more openly talked about.
Ok, again, please dont do that. What are you trying to prove? That people who aren
t One Piece fans dont like the show as much? Uhm, duh. That
s probably why they arent logged in here xD You know, most people I know don
t read mangas or even know One Piece exist. Hey, I guess that means One Piece and manga in general arent as good as I thought then, seeing as their opinions are completely unbiased and stuff.:tongue:I also want to add that I don
t get the impression that people around here generally never criticize anything and defend everything to death. I`m not an avid poster in the manga section, but I usually read the first five to ten pages in the new chapter thread, before everybody starts developing his crazy, weird theories, and these 4 things I learned from reading that:
1. Fishman Island was Odas worst arc ever, it was too slow and too fast at the same time somehow and nobody liked it.
2. Sanjis character got annoying as hell, he`s just a pervert now, he totally lost his coolness and is Odas bitch, stupid Sanji.
3. Nosebleed gags suck.
4. Every new character that appears is a viable possible new crewmember.
One thing that most notably is off since the timeskip is the pacing of the story. I think everyone agrees that Fishman Island was weird about that, and it seems like everyone has their own opinion on pretty much every section of that arc. At that, not enough people are realizing that Punk Hazard is no better in this regard. Punk Hazard lured people in by starting off as the first island of the New World. We saw the ocean on fire, we saw the Straw Hats explore a chaotic island for a few chapters. Indeed, it was very exciting. That fast paced excitement died around the time Franky's group ran into the marines and ran back inside. At that point onward, chapters were getting slower. It feels like Oda himself is stretching chapters just for the sole purpose of ending on some cliffhanger. I find this unnecessary. This isn't the war anymore. PH seems like it shoulda been finished like 5-10 chapters ago, but… it just keeps going and going with no end in sight. Why does this worry me? It's been two years since the timeskip and we're only in the second arc, excluding the quick reunion, and the third arc doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon. Is the rest of the manga going to be full of 30-50 chapter arcs? I don't see how the hell OP will end in about a decade if every arc takes like a year or more to tell. I don't want to see chapters where a group of Straw Hats move from one room to the next, I want to see them get shit done. It's just so consistently slow. Key word: consistent. People will say there's been slow parts before, but really, stuff used to get done and it was never slow for two years.
Now, first I want to agree with you on one point: Fishman Islands pacing was somehow off. Problem is, everybody disagrees in which way. You are saying it was too slow; I respectfully disagree and say it was to rushed….the adventuring fell short (and thats always one of the best parts of every new island they explore for me :sad:), the supporting characters werent fleshed out enough mostly or didn
t add enough to the story and the fights of the Strawhats, except Luffys felt like "They walk in, couple of panels for everyones fight, they win with a big finisher" Usually, a normal fight for one of the main characters lasts atleast 1 1/2 chapters. I can swallow that Oda didn`t give their fights much screentime, because it was basically a way to show of their new strength, but how in the hell was it too slow?
And Punk Hazard, no. That pacing is fine. Sorry, for "not realizing" how bad it is, but you cant first say that the beginning of Punk Hazard was really good and wellpaced and quick and then follow with "oh pacings been consistently bad for the last two years". I can say for two parts of this arc that they slowd it down a bit: The Cool Bros. fight and the chapters were they are running from one room to the next. The fight was necessary at this point in the story, as this is a Shonen manga and this arc was lacking fights up to that point. And, the running from one room to the next, uhm, first you need transitional chapters to build momentum in a story, and second, uhm, suspense?? The Strawhats almost all died in that chapter when they were running from the poison gas and ony barely made it to the next room. It also added emotional substance to the arc when some of the G-5 soldiers died (I too hope they won
t be resurrected) AND it expanded the threat level of Ceasar as a villain.
Also, longer arcs dont mean more boring, slower arcs, but more complex, better detailed stories. Just look at Skypiea or Water Seven, these arcs take their time, too, and go on for really long, because it sometimes needs time to tell such a complex, emotional story. Punk Hazard can go in a million directions right now, it
s almost impossible to tell where the story is going right now, so how can you judge that it should have ended five to ten chapters ago?
Another noticeable problem is character interaction. We have 9 Straw Hats. In most arcs, there's usually some companion characters interacting with the crew - Johnny/Yosaku, Vivi/Carue, Conis/Gun Fall, Kokoro/Chimney/Gonbe, Camie/Pappug/Hatchan. And many, many more that also require attention. As the story goes on, it feels like Oda is handling this worse and worse. At this point, the main characters themselves have shallow interactions. How so? Robin will make a creepy remark. Sanji will do a perverted thing. Usopp will freak out. Franky will do a "cool" cyborg thing. Luffy will be a doofus. Some of these characters are becoming more and more one-dimensional. While they do have some good moments, it really has been watered down as a whole. It just feels like I'm watching a bunch of weird, overpowered, douches go on some boat ride now.
Eh, I half agree, atleast with some characters like Franky and Sanji, who I feel have been reduced a bit too much to their quirky personality traits pretty much after their joining arcs. I feel like Oda is still able to give them great, deep character moments (Sanji was awesome in Water Seven for example), but as you said, hes juggling so many characters, it seems he has to ration more when he is giving what character a great scene. But you should also consider, this is just after the crewmembers have been separated for so long and a lot of them have been out of the story for almost ten volumes, so maybe Oda is just trying to reintroduce their personality traits for new readers. All in all, I don
t see this as a big problem, because I simply trust Oda in this case. Many readers were complaining around the time of Enies Lobby that Zoro was becoming very one dimensional, and then boom, he has that great sacrifice scene in Thriller Bark. Also, I dont know how you get from "they
re becoming one-dimensional" to "a bunch of weird, overpowered douches on a boat ride".
Character development is nearly non-existent now. Luffy is a Mary Sue. That's it. He's some goody guy who can barely be scratched, pulls out random moves, never has a real challenge, pretty much everyone in-story likes him, and he always wins. I don't like this. He has no real flaws that aren't just there for cheap laughs. Sure, there's his super amazing ability to drown, but that's rarely ever relevant now. Give the other characters a chance to shine in the hero spot light - and I mean for more than a couple of pages. And let's see them develop their personalities a bit more. Only person with any real development is Chopper. He's no longer just the team mascot. He actually became brave over the timeskip, as opposed to Usopp who still chickens out. Chopper can fight and has accepted himself as a monster. He does his crew job more often, and had a really good moment when he discovered the PH kids were being fed addicting drugs. Yet he's easily one of the most overlooked characters. I'd go so far as to say he's the most well-written character at this point in the story, with Brook and Nami following behind him. Which brings me to the worst…
And sorry, thats just bullshit in my eyes. The war just happened, Luffy lost battle after battle, his crew was separated from him, his brother, whom he tried to save, died because Luffy was defenseless and Luffy cried out that he is too weak to become Pirate King. He has literally just gone through the biggest character developement in the whole show and now you are complaining that he just beats everybody?? The hell?. Whom did he beat? Hody. Thats one…...aaaaaaaaaaaand? That fight was tough enough that he needed a blood transfusion afterwards. He lost to Ceasar Clown, because he was reckless, and he was scolded for that by Zoro. He still has flaws, you even complained that he hasnt learned enough during the time skip and is still so reckless and goofy! Luffy doesn
t need major character developement every arc, he never had that. He had it in what, Water Seven and Enies Lobby....after he lost to Crocodile maybe....when he bowed down in Drum.....and when he didn`t fight Bellamy in that bar for a meaningless reason. Everything else, same old goofy, strong-willed Luffy.
Sanji. Sanji, Sanji, Sanji. This is the only site where I've seen such blind and defensive love for a character. There were already signs that his character was going in a bad direction when he fought Absolom over the invisibility fruit. It wasn't bad then and it seemed like just a one-off perv gag. Then the timeskip happened. Oh boy. First off, he's reintroduced as being really inconsiderate to the Okama guys(though being portrayed so awfully, it's hard to blame him). He has to do rehabilitation with Chopper on the way down to Fishman Island. This was annoying. I didn't mind it when he saw Hancock. I felt it was played out by the time he saw Shirahoshi. But there was that moment with the mermaids when he was pressed up against poor Ishilly. That really freaking stupid as hell nosebleed. That was it for most people outside of this forum. He had officially jumped the shark. His pervertedness had gotten out of hand and has become astronomically annoying. Surely this would end eventua-oh, Law put him in Nami's body. Yeah. Great. This coulda been lulzy if he didn't have a bad history since the timeskip, but, well, he did have a bad history since the timeskip. The whole self-molesting Nami thing was… too much. It lowers his character and it lowers my expectations of how he will act in the future. Most people I have talked to agree that he is an absolutely terrible character and should just go away forever. And while we're on him, what is it with his new moves having to have a mention of his time on his timeskip island? Hops around in water - REMEMBER THAT HORRIBLE TIME. Pulls off some CP9 shiz? GOD THAT HORRIBLE TIME ON THAT ISLAND. When the other Straw Hats show off a new move, we don't get some banter like that. The guy needs some character development, and soon. The white knighting needs to die, too. He refused to hurt Kalifa pre-timeskip and Nami had to fight her after fending off Kumadori. There was a point where Sanji pointed a gun at Robin when she was an antagonist. So it can be said that he's been getting worse for the entirety of the manga. Also, his new facial hair is douchey. Really, I'm having a very hard time seeing what people enjoy about his character now.
This is the only site where I have seen so much blind hate and rage against this character….but its not like I cared enough to look elsewhere xD Sanjis always been hit and miss with me. I loved him and his interaction with Usopp in Water Seven and Enies Lobby, he was awesome in the Sea Train especially, I think he has the potential to be very cool and very funny (he was hilarious during the Davy Back Fight in the Groggy Ring). But, I just get tired of his love sickness. It
s weird, other funny character traits, like Zoro getting lost and Nami being money hungry still manage to amuse me after all this time. Maybe its because Sanjis behaviour in his love mode is so over the top, and as some have said, obnoxious. It can be sometimes funny, when Oda is being a bit more creative than just having be all love eyes, swirling around, like when Nami and the others were kidnapped in Skypiea and he was all "Oh no!......Nami put on a shirt!!" xD He was getting on my nerves abit in Thriller Bark, but in retrospect, I find his fight with Absalom pretty funny. I don
t go "Oh god, hes a pervert creep, I hate him" I think it
s funny acts all chivalrous and is such a pervert inside. I mean, Brook is too, and so is Muten-Roshi, where is all the complaining about them xD
I disliked the nosebleed gag, didnt find it funny at all and Oda spent too much time on it. It
s hard to come back form that, but I don`t think Oda is doing a bad job in Punk Hazard. Sanji in Namis body could have been disastrous, but it was handled well; I saw a lot of fans falling in love with this badass, chain-smoking version of Nami. And him accidentally grabbing her chest and getting a power boost from that is, in my eyes, funny, especially with Zoro commenting what kind of bullshit power up that is.
Also, there was a point in time when Sanji held a gun to Robin head, then saw her face and immediately got heart eyes and swooned over her.
There's an over-abundance of characters. This one is pretty self-explanatory. We get characters introduced who really don't do much. Did Ryuboshi and Manboshi do anything relevant aside from making Shirahoshi stop crying in the flashback? Sure, it made for a nice tear jerker, but then we got those two just sitting around doing nothing interesting for the present. And we're shown way too many characters that we're supposed to hype over. I somehow doubt even half of those New World captains will ever have an actual role. Though I pray to death Whitey bay comes back. That's one girl I can hype all day erry day. But in all seriousness, I don't care anymore for having a million character designs thrown at us. First we got a bunch of cool but then-unimportant Supernovas. And a then we saw a ton of New World pirates. And Whitebeard's crew itself. That was like what, 14 or so commanders or whatever? Then we get Big Mom's crew, and Doflamingo's crew, all of which are getting hype. It's neat at first, but it just feels like a "throw it in" thing to keep us interested. Which is actually smart thinking on Oda's part. PH was getting very dry, but Doflamingo's crew being shown was neat. Also, don't care for throw-away characters like the Cool Brothers. Say what you like, they were pretty much pointless.
Always been that way and Oda handles it usually pretty well. The Prince siblings suffered from rushed story telling, but since you already thought that arc was slow, I dont know how he could handle their characters better without writing them out completely. And that would have been pointless, it
s not like they distracted much and atleast they had that nice moment in the backstory….so, better a little than nothing, right? And what over-abundance of characters do we have right now in Punk Hazard? The only villains were having right now are Ceasar, Monet and Vergo, the Cool Brothers are already defeated (I didn
t like them that much either, but as I said: Shonen). Supporting characters, we have Law, Smoker, Tashigi, Kinemon, the G-5 marines and the children. That may seem like a lot, but compare it to arcs like Sykpiea, Alabasta, Water 7 etc., its nothing special, and all characters are treated well by the story so far. Showing us DoFlamingos and Big Moms crews is called set-up. Both are being set-up as major villains in the foreseeable future, just like characters like Kidd are being set-up for future roles. If you really think they won
t play a role in the story, then you should think again. Thats like saying that Blackbeard or Buggy will ever play roles in the story after their first appearance.
And who cares if these New World captains will have a role to play? That wasn`t the reason to have them there, it was to show Whitebeards power and influence, to show how many powerful and interesting figures are willing to fight for him. The War was supposed to be clash of a lot of majorly strong figures, thats why it was sof rantic and chaotic and why Luffy felt like an ant in comparison. Would it really have been impressive if Whitebeard showed up alone against the Shichibukai, the three admirals and the whole Marine force? We needed to see that he had an army of his own.
Fighting is boring now. The Straw Hats win. Never a real challenge outside of Caesar these days. They just owned on Fishman Island. Yeah, it was to show off how strong they are, but really, maybe they got too strong. There's also like no personal conflicts with the crew members right now, so having dull fights doesn't distract from that. Then we get them owning in the New World. C'mon. Tired of this. Usopp was doing ass-pulls for a while there. It wasn't always like that. The non-combat challenges are near non-existent too. None of the Straw Hats looked to be in any real danger in Punk Hazard. They used to actually be put in danger - Usopp getting his ass handed to him by the Franky Family, Robin being in the hands of CP9, Nami getting sick after leaving Little Garden. There's just no real danger aspect anymore. And no, Sanji's nosebleed doesn't count.
Also, Haki. This was the worst thing to be introduced to One Piece for me. We go like 10ish years into the manga and then suddenly half the characters have it. It was more fun watching everyone rely on raw power and abilities rather than use physics-defying reflexes and the power to make people foam at your awesomeness. It should be way more limited so that it's less h4x and less common. It's too cheap and makes for even more boring fights.
Come on. Oh, so they didnt have a challenge outside of Ceasar (and Vergo might I add. Heck, even Monet is pulling her weight) so far? So, out of the **two** arcs we had so far since the timeskip, you
re really just complaining about one, which you admit had the purpose of showing their new fighting strength? Thats ridiculous. How did they get too strong?? Because they curbstomped some stupid fishman noobs who were on the level of, lets say, Baroque Works, and thought they were all that? What do you expect? There will never be such a big power boost for these characters again. Sure, they will still grow like they did before, but they have to be able to hold their own with very strong foes now. How will they ever defeat people, like, Akainu, if they can
t hold their own against Vice Admirals now? Sorry, but your expectations are both unrealistic and unreasonable.
No non-combat challenges in PH? What about the killer gas they´ve been running away from that much and very nearly reached some of them a couple of times? That doesn´t count?
Also, I don`t care about Haki much, I agree.
Hmm, yeah, not much too say about the rest, pretty much agree on the whole "everybody can be the new nakama" bullshit. I dont agree with your viewpoint that this forum idolizes One Piece and Odas storytelling too much, every week I see people bitching here, bitching there, too much fighting in this chapter, too little fighting in this one, blablabla. If these people are right, I
m ok with being wrong