@ArmamentHero:
For me, this arc is just missing the weight of emotion and tension. There's been quite a bit of instances where there's been skipped content that once you it adds up, the arc becomes do disjointed … And that also affects my investment in the characters.
So I'm with Artemis and Daz. The meat and potatoes this arc should have just isn't there.
:sad:
Yeah, and sadly this is a trend going on for some time during post time-skip One Piece.
This is perfectly accompanied by weak conflict. As strong conflicts are the alpha and omega for storytelling I'd expect Oda to put more thoughts into his conflicts and, that's the crucial point, into delivering a compelling resolution.
However, what Oda did the last arcs was: He gave us a very strong conflict at the very beginning of the arc. That's actually great. But then he has to give us a resolution somewhen, that is, this resolution has to be believable, but also compelling. And here Oda completely failed, because he had no idea how to actually properly solve the conflict. So what did he do? He replaced the strong conflict by some weaker and therefore easier to resolve conflict.
Like Dressrosa:
The initial conflict stemmed from the fact that the villain, Doflamingo, not only was super strong, but also super popular. Everyone just loved him. As it was told us explicitly: He is nothing like the previous enemies or other Shichibukai we had dealt with before. It even got explicitly stated that he had a devilish charisma. That leads to…
Dramatic question (1): How are the Strawhats going to defeat Doflamingo whom everyone loves?
That's a compelling question we, of course, are eager to see the resolution. But then not only everyone aside from his civilians actually hates Doflamingo, but - as if that wasn't enough - there's also this sugar-coated red self-destruct button so that the remaining people can hate him too. Everybody hates Doflamingo. Which leads to...
Dramatic question (2): How are the Strawhats going to defeat Doflamingo whom everyone hates and just wants to see dead, anyway?
As you can see, this second dramatic question just is flat out weaker than the first. Because it's way easier to resolve the corresponding conflict.
Same for Totland:
The initial conflict stemmed from the fact that the villain, Big Mom, not only was super strong, but also had the capabilities to blackmail you by threatening the lifes of your friends all over the world. That leads to...
Dramatic question (1): How are the Strawhats going to overcome Big Mom who can instantly end your friends' lifes all over the world if she feels like it?
That's a compelling question we, of course, are eager to see the resolution. But then not only Big Mom is a mindless beast most of the time, she also uses her kill switch powers only under very specific circumstances which conveniently are easy enough to avoid. Which leads to...
Dramatic question (2): How are the Strawhats going to overcome Big Mom who never ever will affect your friends' lifes all over the world, anyway?
Again, this second dramatic question just is flat out weaker than the first. Because it's way easier to resolve the corresponding conflict.
But that's just a big no-go in storytelling: You cannot replace your initially stated dramatic question by some weaker question. If you cannot solve your dramatic question in a compelling and satisfying way, you cannot just switch out to an easier to solve question and don't expect the audience to feel cheated on.
This is one more reason why present day's One Piece is nothing more than mediocre garbage. Fundamental problems on the overall conception level like this are where everything including the recent Nami subplot suffers from.