Yeah, if you take Bakuman into account as being sei-autobiographical, its real easy to read between the lines and see that they were heavily encouraged to stretch Death Note out for reasons… and the Reversi rout is what they wish they'd had the clout and backbone to do.
The Promised Neverland
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Nah, Pain was the absolute breaking point of the series ever being good again, but it had already been bad for years at that point. The rescue Sasuke arc before the time skip was the last half decent arc, and event hat was undermined by its ending. Everything post timeskip was wonk.
Chunin Exam was the last truly good Naruto arc.
That really seems like a fetch. I don't need a time machine to even say that rescue Sasuke arc was extremely well received. Post time skip gave Shikamaru and his entire crew one whole arc and development and is still regarded as one of the better written ones compared to everything else in part 2.
Sure part 2 can be wonky but our back and forth here is whether the end of Pain was the final touch that woosh the entire series into being mediocre and seemingly unbearable at some points. And it was, it was even the consensus here. So let's say for instance there's a privileged and elite writers guild that decided oh the end of chunin was the last truly good arc, okay so good for that circle.
But that wasn't my point of what that group of people feel, I was saying that the quality really saw a drop once Naruto started preaching hard and you can see that because it shows through the weekly reception and discussions and of course, the writing. The steep slope of quality drop happened not after chunin but more than likely after Pain. And that's similar to TPN when Emma also started to become unbearably idealistic and act almost in the same way.Luffy does that ALL THE TIME though?
Yes, the ultimate solution is for him to personally punch out the big bad, but along the way he overcome obstacles by turning hundreds of people to his side mid-arc, including enemies. His charisma and presence (and king haki I guess) and making friends and getting them to trust him are his biggest strength, this is frequently commented on. They wouldn't have made it anywhere without his ability to convince people to his side, to trust in him, almost instantly.
And that's not a recent thing, that goes as far back as Axe Hand Morgan and winning over all the marines there.
Yes but luffy doesn't preach, he doesn't walk up to someone, talks it out first and have discussions or shove his ideas down their throats. The significant villains in-story who helped him was not there to help his cause but to further their own because their motivations align.
The goods guys side characters like Iceberg, Riku, Germa, Wiper, and Smoker doesn't necessary help in luffy's fight because they believe he is a shining beacon of light or that his ideals will lead the world to a better place or that his actions will surely bring them peace but rather his actions is a part of it, but not the whole of it.
That's the difference between having characters dumbing down to follower mentality and losing their core personality and having characters that have the capability of thought.Because it ran in Shonen Jump. I know that means its going to eventually be an action manga, and Goldy Pond certainly set that in motion.
But in Jump heart and determination are going to win and save most of the people most of time, with generally only a handful of significant named losses.
I kind of thought the kids would grow up as it went and they'd be the ones doing the action, but the two year timetable kind of prevented that.
I think that would be nice.
I actually think the issue here is where the frame of reference that we are judging TPN from is. I'm basically comparing it to powerhouses like HxH, Dr.Stone (in handling of a huge cast), and Death Note.
If we seperate Grace field from the rest of the story and judge it as an adventure action series, I'm still firm on my belief that it would have easily gotten the axe.
Grace field was won through heart and determination in a sense but what made it so great was the strategy and intelligence that went into it. You don't really have to forego one for the other. And since you rate it 7/10, I'm genuinely curious is that the same meter you would rate Hunter high on and Ass class(I'm not sure if you've read it) high on too in terms of characterization? Because this could simply be a frame of reference thing.That is true of of a lot of stories though, not just shonen. Its often one of the first villains (or hero!) that's the best or the most memorable, partly because the heroes are still at their weakest and thats the one you get the most time and characterization for. Why do you think Dragonball keeps bringing back Frieza but has Buu sits on the sidelines? Why did Vegeta become a main character while Raditz and Nappa were left for dead? Why are all the good Spiderman villains the ones he had in his first 50 issues, almost 60 years ago? Why is it when you watch Doctor Who its usually the first Doctor you see that ends up being your favorite?
That's extremely common. Pointing back to One Piece, look at the most recent popularity poll. Crocodile is still in the top 20 and most of the other villains are much much lower down. The early Strawhats are all consistently in the top 10 but Franky and Brook are in the 20's. It's natural for that to happen.
That's popularity and that can at times have little to nothing to do with involvement and world building. Your character can skill tank in popularity polls but still leave an impression. Crocodile was impressionable because he was suave and cool and showed likeable traits to IRL popular media personas, but Kanjuro will likely not do well in polls but will still leave a strong impression on the fanbase.
It boils down to how terrible the character writing for the rogue gallery actually was in TPN and how incompetent most of the demons were.
Lewis was involved in Goldy Pond, the manga had several other arcs after which failed to bring in demons with that same impact. In a world setting where the demons are considered the main threat. And it's not even in a "they have to be a second copy of Lewis" it's like if in DB, after Vegeta's arc every other villain was not memorable at all. The queen was supposed to be significant enough to at least have a stronger or at least as strong a personality as Lewis, to leave an impression on us but all she did was got shafted.Id argue that he wasn't supposed to be personally. He was representing a fucked up society more than a particular individual. His family had been doing it for 1000 years, he was just the latest in line. It wasn't ABOUT him, he was just the last obstacle. Heck, he didn't even show up in person until what, the last dozen chapters? AFTER the demons had already been taken of?
You would think the representation of a centuries long fucked up society would have more of an impact and if we are going to pull that the humans are far crueler angle that HxH did, there's kind of a lot of potential to go on here that's wasted so I hope at least you can see my point.
They killed her first core, (fatal in earlier cases) overloaded her regeneration process by inflicting mass damage, (worked in earlier cases) AND poisoned her. Her system couldn't keep up. it was a legit strategy built upon what had been shown to work previously.
You could see from this what I meant that the series was tiptoeing by half-assing both. It transits into an action adventure but then backpedals on vague strategies that weren't even shown(aspects of a mind game/intelligent manga) and then tiptoe back to this large sized monster that "oh was defeated by off-screened execution 1 and off screened execution 2", that was both anti-climatic and made no sense to do it this way if we are going the action route. It just wasn't satisfying.
You can find essay long rants about how literally anything is terrible. The internet is full of such things.
Attack on Titan is complete garbage . You can easily find essay long rants on how terrible and contrived that was.
You can find one long ass essay about how bad One Piece is but that doesn't mean shit. look, I get your point but my angle was that the Norman turnabout and the Queen death was badly and terribly received.
It was a stack of long rants about how bad it was, not just one. Sure, you can find a variety of opinion about what is good and what is bad, the general consensus was that was bad.She was the lead character. From the start. The story was ALWAYS about her heart versus their brain. Otherwise just the three of them would have escaped in the third chapter and been done with it, nevermind the others.
Did it really feel like a versus to you? To me it felt more like an overwhelming win every time she speaks and convinces them. If it was an actual versus and Norman actually becomes an actual threat both ideologically and physically, would that not make for a more interesting story?
I think maybe you're right and this whole debate boils down to reading it weekly and reading it with one go knowing how it will end. I'm disappointed because every week there was a window of opportunity for what the series could become and with how Grace field and Goldy was handled, that expectation wasn't exactly baseless.
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Yeah, it sounds like you kept hoping and expecting for the series to be something it wasn't, and that's the root of a lot of your problems, while I apporached it knowing exactly how long it was and having soem inkling as to what that would ultimately mean for the pacing and scope so my expections were tempered.
Agree to disagree.
As for Naruto… people liked Rescue Sasuke arc at the time when they didn't know where the story was actually going and we thought those characters would ever do anything again. Hindsight makes it a lot weaker than it actually was since them surviving added literally nothing to the overall story after they'd had fantastic resolutions. Heck, Neji ended up dying ANYWAY after doing nothing with the 10 years inbetween.
Everything post time skip was a dud from the getgo, Pain just marked the point where all hope of a rebound was lost for good.
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