I'm sure this isn't a novel realization for others, just for me, but it's been hinted that Vivi would be the 10th crew member from way back in the day.

It's like poetry, it rhymes.

I'll 100% cop to my feelings on it being impacted by the fact that I don't love the Teach/Law fight popping up as it did. For the first time in a decade we had the SHs setting off fresh not bound to some tagalong from a previous arc (not counting Caribou because his inclusion is more like furniture and he's not directing their movement), and two chapters in we pivot away from them for half of the chapters to see what Law's up to. It just seems super odd that wasn't part of the post-arc rather being placed immediately into the new arc. I don't hate cover stories matching up with the main story in theory, it just seems to me in this case the inclusion of the novelty was at the expense of pacing the story better.

Is it that he needed a couple more chapters to set up the Pudding thing in the cover story before showing her in the chapters, so he pushed back Law/Blackbeard? Maybe but I doubt it. If that were the case again it just emphasizes how plodding cover stories are now. And it's not helped by breaks, meaning a larger ratio of chapters get color spreads, slowing cover stories down even further.

I'm sure this isn't a novel realization for others, just for me, but it's been hinted that Vivi would be the 10th crew member from way back in the day.

It's like poetry, it rhymes.

I'll 100% cop to my feelings on it being impacted by the fact that I don't love the Teach/Law fight popping up as it did. For the first time in a decade we had the SHs setting off fresh not bound to some tagalong from a previous arc (not counting Caribou because his inclusion is more like furniture and he's not directing their movement), and two chapters in we pivot away from them for half of the chapters to see what Law's up to. It just seems super odd that wasn't part of the post-arc rather being placed immediately into the new arc. I don't hate cover stories matching up with the main story in theory, it just seems to me in this case the inclusion of the novelty was at the expense of pacing the story better.

Is it that he needed a couple more chapters to set up the Pudding thing in the cover story before showing her in the chapters, so he pushed back Law/Blackbeard? Maybe but I doubt it. If that were the case again it just emphasizes how plodding cover stories are now. And it's not helped by breaks, meaning a larger ratio of chapters get color spreads, slowing cover stories down even further.

It's honestly odd to me that people are excited about the idea that the cover story and main story are converging. To me it's just another example of Oda's inconsistencies as of late. It feels like he's speeding through the story, but it still incapable of being concise with cover stories. For years they've been so much more drawn out than they've needed to, and it feels like here he realized, "oh fuck, Pudding's supposed to already have been captured, but I spent too many chapters of the cover story showing ambiguous shots and not actually moving that story forward."

If anything, I think Wano now faces the issue where people look back on experiences that end poorly as being worse than they actually were. For a good chunk of it, Wano was firing on all cylinders, and it was great. Oda really just biffed the ending. First by taking way too long, and then, seemingly reflexively, wrapping it all up way too quickly. It's pretty clear he wanted to move on the same way we did. That just came at the expense of the resolution. I know for me the end of arc lore dumps are way more exciting than the action of the climaxes, and Wano really just didn't deliver on that. It feels bad to seem so sour on the series at the moment, and I know that's just the perspective now because we're in the midst of it, but I'm hoping the mood turns around with some exciting new story arc that has Oda fresh and back to his A-game.

Dressrossa seems to be looked on more kindly today than it was at the time, again because by the end of it the week-to-week was such a slog. In a binge that isn't as noticeable. I'm hopeful this doesn't mark the beginning of Oda prioritizing wrapping up the series over fleshing out the world, but if that does become the case I think Onigashima fatigue will be viewed as that turning point.

And here I thought this thread would finally be able to experience the sweet release of death. So be it.

These are predominantly quality of life things that are simply different from the way I had gotten used to interacting with the forums over the past ten years. Just like how whenever facebook rolls out an update, everybody has their nitpicks in the first few days but has completely forgotten them two weeks in, I'm sure after a little bit of time none of these will bother me. While they're still top of mind though, I figure I'll throw them in to see if anyone else feels similarly.

• Being able to collapse the reply window without discarding the draft. I think this may go along with what Sakonosolo mentioned about things feeling zoomed in. When it's active it takes up about half the screen and doesn't allow as much space to read through threads. It's especially noteworthy when trying to add multiple quotes.
• I know you already have what I mentioned in Discord about more easily differentiating read/unread threads. I loved in the old forums having icons on the left that signified that (Caribou sticking out of a barrel in the Fishman Island theme, for example). The redesign shows the avatar of who started that thread in that space, which at least for me does not seem like particularly necessary information. Once threads get going, for the most part, there isn't really any ownership of it by whoever started it, so it seems unnecessary.
• I also haven't been able to find a way to simply mark entire subforums as read.
• As someone who is using pagination, I do miss having the button at the bottom of a screen that scrolls directly back to the top of the page. I believe the closest option is the up arrow that brings you to the top by taking you to the first post of the thread. Not a huge difference, but with some of the longer threads it takes a bit of a second. Not sure if that's something that can even be addressed because it may be counter to the default of full scroll.
• Something else brought on by pagination is that there are thread page numbers on the bottom of pages, but not the top.
• For almost entirely judgemental reasons, I wouldn't hate seeing join date when clicking on a user's avatar to get a little more information without going all the way to their user page.

Great to see this place back up and running. Stuck mostly to OPP for One Piece content in the interim, and it sounds like I didn't miss anything not bothering with Worst Gen.

Not at all story related, but it has always bothered me that Longarms have two elbows, while Longlegs just have long legs. I'd make Longlegs digitigrade, so they'd also look like they have two joints in their leg. It literally exists in nature, and somehow Oda messed that one up.

@NightGrinder:

The flashbacks were a nice idea, but in practice, it really highlighted how some of the Straw Hats have been underutilized for probably a decade.

That was definitely jarring to some extent. Franky was where I really noticed it, where the most noteworthy thing they had for him post-TS was Senior Pink. I'd probably have at least expected the brief scene of him arriving to the Sunny to find it guarded by Kuma.

I also can't help but feel Vivi was kinda left out of everything. Not necessarily the episode proper, but I'd really have expected her to get a feature in one of those splash-screens of the opening. As more or less a strawhat, it feels like she should have made the cut over either Yamato or Hancock in the pirate princess pairing.

@Robby:

I probably could have single handedly gotten Impel Down wolves to qualify if I'd really felt like it.,

No idea what the vote totals are going to be this year but one person voting for one character daily and consistently would probably be enough to get them on the list.

I'm honestly very curious about this. I exclusively voted for my boy Hoe, and was pretty shocked not to see him in this chunk of the list. I have to imagine I was among a real minority of people throwing him votes. It's either he's yet to come and a couple people could have a big pull, or he didn't make the cut of 200 and devoted voters of rando characters didn't make much of a dent.