While I consider One Piece to be 99% near perfect series and almost never have issues or complaints, Wano has been leaving me with more negative feelings than any other arc ever has. While I should have every faith it'll all work out and be better by the end, it's a definite standout for me at the moment. So forgive me if I complain a little and vent some of my Wano worries.
This is definitely the first arc ever that I'm not particularly interested in the "save the country/island" side of the arc. Unlike with the usual arc-lead characters, I still haven't grown to like Momo, and Kinemon is forgettable after Punk Hazard. I should've really liked these guys already before this arc started (given how long they've been around), which should've led to me being completely supportive of everything and everyone in Wano. Instead I kinda just find most of the new Wano characters to be pretty boring to annoying. Tama's really the only Wano-citizen character I think I like so far. A more negative way to phrase this would be, "I don't care about Momo, Wano, or any new Samurai characters you keep introducing, I'm only here to see Luffy and the Strawhats pushed to their limits and beat Kaido and his crew."
I'm sure the Beast Pirates will get their moments in the following acts, but it really feels painful to slug through them being made fools of time and time again. It feels a little sad thinking that the Big Mom pirates might be needed just to make enough named threats to fight later. Granted, now we have a problem of needing to make sure Big Mom's forces don't just completely outshine Kaido's once/if they ever do finally become threatening. Also I won't count Hawkins, Drake, or Apoo among Kaido's forces until they're literally laying defeated. There's almost no doubt in my mind that they're waiting to betray.
I really don't like the scabbards being so strong (or at least implied). It's making me question why any of the non-monster trio Strawhats would fight anyone higher up before a scabbard would. I don't think anyone should want a Strawhat's big fight to be against someone at Holdem's level just because some of the Scabbards needed to fight the Calamities or the Flying Six. I was hoping for this arc to be the new "Alabasta or Enies Lobby," but if too many of them miss out, we'll at best get "Dressrosa" again (which only works so well cause half the strawhats leave and it's used to create the Grand Fleet). In the worst universe, we're getting something close to the "4th Great Shinobi War" and just gonna see tons of stupid battles between new characters with some of the strawhats just on crowd control. I would personally say only 1 or 2 Scabbards should get fights, and the rest plus all the minks (Carrot maybe excluded) and anyone else added to the alliance army should be on crowd control.