@The:
Marineford and Fishmen Island are complete abominations in the anime.
I didn't go to film school, but I'm sure in them they have courses where they teach people that, in order to make a good movie/video media, you have to avoid doing EVERY SINGLE THING Toei did in those arcs. You can show those arcs there and tell the students to avoid doing that, and whatever movie they'll make will be good.
Little example:
Let's say Luffy is face to face with, let's say villain A. The manga panel they'll adapt would be Luffy saying "I'm gonna kill you", and villain A answering "oh really". Here's how the anime will do it.
FIrst you start the episode with a 5 minutes recap. Then, you'll put the camera a hundred kilometers away from where Luffy is, and we'll have random dudes talking about shit no one cares about. Then there will be a scrolling to where Luffy is. With super cheap animation of course. Then, by the 9 minutes mark, we'll reach Luffy's spot.
Then, the camera will zoom on every single character present on the scene, especially the fodder and nameless people, all making dumb "extatic faces". Then we'll zoom on Luffy's face, then on his mouth, then the VA will speak as slowly as possible "I…aaaaammmm...goooooonnnnnaaa...killlll...youuuuuuu". The boom, zoom on everyone's shocked faces, and then half episode break.Back from the break, there'll be a recap of the whole first half of the episode, then again "I'm...gonna...kill...youuuu", then once again, the crowd. My God Toei loves crowds. 5 minutes of dialogue like: "OMG, did he just say he's gonna kill him?"..."He did, he totally did."..."By killing, you mean the action of taking someone else's life?"..."Wow, Monkey D. Luffy, the son of Dragon, and grandson of Garp the hero, the man from east blue, who came through reverse mountain and foiled Crocodile's plans and went against CP9...that man said he's gonna kill Villain A, the son of villain B and brother to villain C. Damn!"..."I hear he went to Skypiea too"..."Yeah, they sell some good dials there"..."I need to buy some dials to redecorate my living room"... etc etc.
Then zoom on villain A's face, and him making "ngkkgkgggkkkghhgghgkkkkk" noises for 2 minutes, then, flashback to every single time since episode 1 where Luffy said "I'm gonna kill you" to someone.
And to end the episode, a little echo through villain A's mind. "I'm gonna kill you...nna kill you...ill you...ouuuuuu..." And boom, episode ends.How to make a 20 minutes episode out of less than a manga panel, by Toei animation.
I swear to God, I am barely exaggerating.
Someone should teach Toei about a certain something called "show don't tell".Drum, G8 and Water 7 were enjoyable in anime though.
That is the most accurate thing I've seen in my whole life. I'm watching through Marineford for the first time, which I've avoided so long for this very reason. Also, I never even read through all of Fishman Island, let alone watched it, because of the horrible things I hear about it (I'll get to it….eventually).
Favorite arc is definitely Enies Lobby, followed very closely by the Sabaody and Arlong arcs. Punk Hazard looks to be good, too