Best Moment of the year
Ginny's fate and Bonney's birth. This was a visceral and dark moment, and while One Piece has always had corners of the world like this, it rarely puts them in your face and forces you to confront a character you're this endeared to being subjected to them. It was a creative risk to go this dark and this kind of dark, especially with Ginny's capture and return having to be done in the fast-paced shorthand of a flashback, one that could easily have read discordant or edgy, but it absolutely paid off.
Worst moment of the year
There's not much I truly haven't liked, so let's just go Stussy ditching her unique and appealing dress, jacket and tie combo for the same leotard look Nami and Bonney were already wearing.
Best character of the year
This was the year of Kuma. What else can you say?
Worst character of the year
There are no huge losers this year, but forced to chose, I'd say York was shafted pretty hard, even by the standards of warm-up villains. Pacing wise, cutting her survival game and whatever fight she put up was probably best for keeping up Egghead's momentum and finishing the series within my (and more pointedly Oda's) lifetime. But man, for all the build-up and the weight placed on the reveal that she was the traitor, she's given us nothing since.
Best new character of the year
Moon man Garling makes one hell of a first impression, and gives a tantalising promise of lore and backstory to come when you combine his presence with that one snippet of info from Film Red.
Worst new character of the year
Slim pickings for this one, there weren't a lot of characters introduced. Probably by default the minor members of Shanks' fleet that didn't even leave enough of an impression for me to look up if they were named in an SBS or something.
Best fight of the year
This hasn't really been a year for fights. Most of them have been really short-lived. I guess even with its abrupt ending, the visuals of Luffy and Borsalino's skirmish make it a winner.
Honourable mention to Garp basically fighting a whole island himself.
Worst fight of the year
As above, it almost doesn't feel fair nominating half the battles that happened because they were all partial, by design handed to us in snippets and flashes, emphasising story movement above trading blows.
Maybe the gang vs S-Snake, for Franky needing to catch the idiot ball to lose so badly despite Lilith's bubble gun, and the initial bad vibes surrounding S Snake's power before the SBS retcon.
Best surprise of the year
Saturn's transformed state. I was fully expecting the Elders to just be politicians, with little to nothing in the way of powers, so his demonic transformation was both visually and conceptually a great twist.
Worst surprise of the year
Every single member of CP9 making it to CP0. You'd think maybe one of them could have found a new calling while they were performing to pay Lucci's hospital bills, but nope, they're disappointingly uniform.
Quote of the year
"A saint? No, I'm nothing like that. Just a weak-willed pacifist."
I assume most people are going to shout out the nuisance line from the last chapter, which is great too, but the above is a perfect summary of Kuma's self image and story. (With the added tragic irony of it inspiring the name for a line of killing machines.)
Funniest moment of the year
The Luffy/Zoro/Lucci/Kaku teamup and all its associated banter.
Best panel/spread of the year
I absolutely adore this one for the number of characters and scenes it has going on at once, any number of which could have been their own panels, but are instead captured in one moment simultaneously using the fore, middle and backgrounds to their fullest. No one does these like Oda.
(honourable mentions include Garp smashing Pizarro in chapter 1088 and the Sea Beasts attacking the Marine fleet in chapter 1091.)
Most emotional moment of the year
The flashback as a whole has been an absolute roller coaster of emotional highs, with so much content competing for this spot. The final sequence looking back over Kuma's life is the obvious pick and a hard one to go past. The perfect ending to one of the series' best backstories.