@taboo:
what I mean to say is that the emotions his characters have aren't particularly authentic or realistic, but more cartoony and generalized. His characters all act a certain way and they'll never act any other way, and have fucking anyerisims contemplating acting any other way. Just look at sanji and his inability to fight women.
One Piece isn't an intellectual drama, it's all 100% about the physical drama
like I said, there's never any real intrigue because the characters are all so face value. Watching a show like Breaking Bad for instance, you never know what exactly th characters are going to come up with or what choice they're going o make or in who's best interest it will be. We see them struggling and we feel the panic, which doesn't happen that often in OP. It's not a bad thing, just a predictable thing.
"shonen" is just an excuse. Oda is a writer, and of an incredibly long series. You don't need "romance" to build a romance, just good solid character chemistry and interaction. The readers fill in the blanks themselves.
-I will give you that. The characters are fairly one note though in general for the most part and fulfilling particular archetypes in doing so. Hardly do characters show a wide ray of emotions brewing within themselves aside from strictly ONE emotion rather than a wide array of them (though I will toss up that one recent Bellamy panel as a possible exception to this) and SOME Robin moments in Water 7. However, I don't think it is appropiate to completely dismiss One Piece as a completely physical drama as there are some emotions (albiet simple but still emotion based). Once again, Water 7 being one with the idea of having emotional connections to "objects" and what they represent to differing persons. The way the characters expressed this emotion was simple BUT the emotion behind it is certainly not simple. Same goes for Robin's in the same arc. Her emotions were pretty flat and straight forward, but it's about the idea behind the emotion such as in the want for survival, ties with the strawhats and so on. Same goes for Thriller Bark (Brook and Laboon, Moria, Zoro), Sabaody, etc… There are a lot of emotionally driven moments that are REMARKABLY simple in presentation but fairly effective due to the ideas behind them. So overall, I think it would be wrong to strictly say that it is 100% physical drama.
-So do you mean the characters are remarkably predictable? I guess that makes sense. The protagonists are REMARKABLY predictable in that you know they're always going to do good (for the most part) and make things better for people in the end. Likewise, the arc villains are generally villains that you wouldn't expect to have a sudden change in doing "good" DURING the arc so they're pretty much going to be beaten in the end. So essentially the major protagonists and the current arc villains end up being pretty predictable. However, I would say the intrigue mostly lies with the secondary characters rather than the primary in that case (even then, these guys are predictable as well. For example, it is pretty much safe to assume Bellamy will side with Luffy in the end).
-Shonen is an excuse, but one can't fault Oda if he wants to strictly avoid romance in order to focus on other things (like adventure and action). But doesn't he develop fairly good character chemistry? It's not profound in any way, but it is still very effective. When he wants to show camaraderie, he does. When he wants to show conflict, he does and it is fairly easy to follow. I don't think anyone can fault him for making his character interactions easy for anyone to follow along (though...if this forum is a testament to anything, folks STILL get it wrong). But with romance, I fear he would do the same thing and make it VERY simple (which in itself would be...kinda bad?). Good romance (for the most part) has some interesting twists and turns that make it difficult to predict (like "Oh who is he/she in love with?" "Will they get together in the end?") but Oda isn't really like that with his characters (for the most part) which leads me to think he wouldn't be good with romance in the first place.