Over the years I've been dissapointed with the anime and mostly avoided it, save for a few filler arcs (cause I can't get enough of the series and I really need something to pass the time, damn it) even though most of it… kind of sucks?
For example. I tried to go through the Impel Down arc and the pacing was driving me insane. The whole arc was on a countdown and in the manga you can really feel how they're trying to get down to Ace as quickly as possible but in the anime they're just standing around, talking as though they have all the time in the world.
I did like the G-8 arc, it was fun. It cold probably have been compressed a bit but overal it was nice. The filler arcs in Albasta was... not good at all. The story was bad, the pacing worse and the animation was horrible. The Ceasar retrieval arc was just... a big no?
One arc surprised me a lot, though. Luffys flashback was very good, the animation was nice, no one was standing around for too long, it was intresting, nothing felt too forced, even the tiger hunt was ok. I want to see more of that.