This is like my millionth attempt at writing this, so let’s see if this one sticks.
I wanted to set the record fucking straight for those who were once like me who are genuinely curious about whether or not the series is worth your time, but I also understand that if you’re a huge fan of One Piece you might be curious what somebody who more recently just got through reading it thinks about it.
I know I’m already wasting your time with this giant post, so I’ll do my best to keep what I say to general thoughts for the most part while keeping spoilers as light as possible. I... might absolutely fail at doing so...
If you want me to give you the short answer up front, yes, I did think it was worth it but that also comes with some huge caveats, so your mileage may vary. I've seen One Piece hyped up as this "modern odyssey" online and... oh boy, absolutely not. And it’s not like it was a free and easy process.
I would like to make this super clear up front, but don’t bother watching the anime. One Piece is excruciatingly long as it is, but the Toei adaptation drags it out even further and it’s filler is actually some of the worst goddamn shit I’ve ever fucking seen. To say it has pacing issues is putting it lightly.
The are fan projects like One Pace you can use to accelerate the process and there is a new adaptation produced by Wit Studio coming out, but neither one is finished yet and there’s no guarantee that ether one will be any good, so quite honestly, there is no shortcut, you’ll just have to read the manga.
It’s just gonna take you a while. If you wanna see what all the hubbub is about you’re just gonna have to put the time in and while I felt my time was personally well spent, for reasons we’ll discuss eventually, you may not end up feeling the same way.
I will say if nothing else, One Piece is a lot of fun to talk to people about it. I’m really glad to be caught up with it for the most part because I think the discourse surrounding One Piece is actually pretty awesome. There’s so much to discuss with One Piece, even the parts I didn’t particularly enjoy, it introduced some of my favourite points of conversation with folks online.
If you have somebody who’s willing to start One Piece with you, I can recommend doing it that way.
Before we move on though, I want to make another thing super clear and it’s the simple fact that this was not a consistent experience.
If we’re comparing it to “the big three”, Bleach is fucking awful. No, I’m sorry, it just fucking is, there’s no getting around it. Bleach should stay in the 2000s where it belongs. Naruto I felt peaked early, but (excluding Boruto) there’s also no point where it becomes outright atrocious, so I would say it’s the safest bet. As for where that leaves One Piece, it’s a tale of high points and low points.
One Piece for sure has it’s moments, but it also has it’s fair share of low points and I noticed that they often ended up right next to each other. And I don’t just mean there will often be a good arc followed by a bad arc, the quality disparity can be just as extreme going from one chapter to the next.
I found that I somewhat frequently flipped between not being able to stop myself from turning to the next page (that’s good) to having to force myself to turn to the next page (that’s bad).
That’s not to say the experience wasn't a positive one overall, but if I hadn’t gone in knowing there was a Final Saga on the horizon, there were multiple points where I probably would’ve gotten pissed off and then dropped it.
Anyways, finally, let me attempt to give you a “quick” series overview so that I can give you a general idea of which sagas to look forward to and which sagas to brace yourself for...
East Blue (1-100)
I thought the East Blue saga was generally pretty good... but it’s also essentially just one big prologue to the colossus that is the rest of One Piece, and that can feel like a bit much, like we haven’t even begun to touch the series yet.
I will say that about half the members of the core cast are introduced in these first 100 chapters and every time someone new becomes one of Luffy's Straw Hats, the process gets it’s own dedicated arc. But fact of the matter is, East Blue generally gets better the deeper into it you get.
The only exception really is Romance Dawn. It’s better than Orange Town and maybe even Syrup Village, but then Baratie is better than all three of them, but then Arlong Park somehow ends up getting this HUGE spike in quality, and then Loguetown manages to cap it all off on a satisfying note.
It feels weird to say that because all of these arcs, aside from Loguetown, more-or-less use the exact same overall narrative structure, but you know, some just do it better.
Arlong Park may have used the same template that was used for all of the arcs before it, but the reason it works so well is because aside from benefiting from being the culmination of everything that came before it, it adds in a really cool plot twist, in addition to plenty of great character moments for everyone.
Spoiler
It’s here where I would like to take a moment to praise the anime, albeit just this once. You see, if we were to compare One Piece to something like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, the One Piece manga has incredibly quick pacing where eventually tons of shit can happen all on the same page.
JoJo’s by comparison has tons of suspense and big detailed panels, and there was even that one time Giorno punched a guy for 7 whole pages in a row.
But One Piece will often simply use panels for narrative beats, with the time between to merely be implied, whereas JoJo’s is often willing to focus on those “between” emotional moments in order to immerse you in the scene.
This is how we end up with a situation like the “Help Me” scene where the anime slowing everything down to a fucking snails crawl is actually an improvement because in the manga, this scene is more-or-less breezed through, but if you slow things down, now there is a soul-crushing misery in Nami’s life that needs time to really sink in to envelop the audience.
This is also probably why there will never be this amazing, perfect adaptation of One Piece because it’s your call on when to make the decision where to slow things down or where to keep the pace going. The manga doesn't do it for you, so it’s something that will always probably end up being a mixed bag.
I want to speak of the villains for a moment because I think that might be one of the weaker aspects of East Blue, if not the whole entire series. It definitely has some good villains, don't get me wrong, Buggy the Clown and Arlong are actually pretty memorable, but the others... aren’t very good.
Where East Blue really shines, however, is with the protagonists. Every single one of them are likeable and compelling, and the process of watching Luffy convince each of them to open up their hearts and eventually become a Straw Hat themselves, it’s great, every single time.
These first 100 chapters, I mean... they didn’t blow my mind or anything, but they were at least good enough that I felt compelled enough to keep reading, especially once we get to Loguetown.
Loguetown was able to establish a lot of forward momentum, introduces some really cool characters and plot threads, and even brings back some characters that I previously wasn’t expecting to ever see again.
East Blue... I mean, it’s got a really solid beginning, but once you hit Orange Town it can shift from being really engaging to honestly pretty fucking boring and unremarkable, but starting with if not Baratie, then definitely Arlong Park, it really hits a stride and keeps that stride going all the way to the very end.
Even at times where I didn’t find the story particularly engaging or for whatever reason was just slogging along, the Straw Hats themselves were so good and so likeable, that I felt compelled enough to keep reading anyways just to find out what happens to them.
It’s a really good thing that’s the case because the next saga...
Baroque Works + Alabasta (101-217)
...is all over the fucking place. You see, it’s about as long as East Blue, but is way more inconsistent in terms of pace and quality.
Baroque Works is essentially yet another prologue split into smaller arcs, the same as before, and there are things I liked about all of these arcs, sure, but they all have at least one or two fairly serious issues.
You know, an issue One Piece just as a series has, even in the manga, is that frequently it’s pacing will just completely fall off a fucking cliff. Eiichiro Oda is for sure capable of pacing his series well and I also think, when he wants to be, he’s really good at establishing a forward sense of momentum and convincing us the series is really going somewhere...
...and for whatever reason, sometimes he’ll just choose to throw it all in the garbage and bring everything to an immediate halt.
Spoiler
That’s not to say it’s always the worst thing ever, sometimes things just slow down a little bit, but we can take Orange Town as an example of this.
Luffy comes face-to-face with Buggy the Clown and... he gets trapped in a cage. But that’s okay because it allows the villain to get fleshed out for a bit before Luffy fights him and it also ensures that all the other protagonists have an active role in the story, while keeping things moving along at a brisk pace.
Oh, I'm sorry, did I say a brisk pace?
Instead what happens is the cage with Luffy still inside of it gets taken off the roof and moved ALL the way across town, and Nami is like, hey, I’ve got the key and I’m going to get you out of there. But then a dog eats the key to the cage, which gives one of the bad guys enough time to show up and he has a giant lion, that’s how he fights, so the lion actually destroys the cage and that's how Luffy gets out.
And after having to fight this lion guy, we have to then go ALL the way back to where the villain is, and I’m sorry, but it just felt like a waste of time. That's not to say it’s the worst thing ever in this instance, but when it happens a lot, especially when it's close together, then it can get exhausting.
It’s a bit of a mixed bag because the backstory with the dog is actually the best part about Orange Town and is the thing that actually gives this arc it’s main theme. That means you can make the argument that it was worth it and sometimes these detours are, but often times whenever One Piece takes a break to give some irrelevant glup shitto some focus, I'll usually come away from it feeling like I would have just preferred to continue on with the main story.
I just think Eiichiro Oda could stand to be a more efficient writer, I guess, and the reason I’m bringing it up here is because this is probably my biggest problem with Baroque Works. It’s particularly frustrating here because this portion of the story establishes very early on that it’s building towards an ultimate climax, but it feels like it's taking forever to get there.
I think it’s telling how my favourite of the 4 arcs is essentially a side-quest that doesn’t have anything to do with the proper overarching narrative. That’s not to say there’s not interesting stuff that happens all throughout, but there’s always dead time between what’s interesting.
We can take Little Garden as an example. There are these two giants who can be found there and I thought they were awesome, it made me feel like a little kid again, and I was really interested in everything that had to do with them...
...but right after they get introduced, there is this HORRIBLE, AWFUL, DULL, BORING, just really needlessly long fight that happens that I was just suffering trying to get through.
To speak of the Baroque Works themselves, I’m actually not a fan of most of the villains that show up throughout this section. I don’t really like anyone aside from Miss All Sunday and Mr. Zero. I actually like Mr. 2 quite a bit, and Mr. 3 eventually grew on me after he shows up again way, way, way down the line, but everybody else... they didn’t really do it for me.
Things start to pick up once we get to Drum Island and after we finally make it to Alabasta, I think things get a lot more interesting... except when it’s not?
Okay, this is all gonna sound like small potatoes the further in we get into One Piece, you'll see what I mean, but despite the fact how Alabasta has some really large high points, but at the same time, when it’s boring, it is BORING.
It’s here where One Piece starts showing it’s first small inklings of jumping between perspectives in a way that I didn't think was particularly intuitive to read, and at first I thought this arc was placing too much focus on side and background characters whom I ultimately didn’t end up caring about at all.
Alabasta... was pretty messy, but I do want to stress that when it’s good, it’s really good. Alabasta has some incredible fights, interesting world-building, a bunch of compelling character moments, and the sense of growth and progress was easily unmatched by the end of Alabasta compared to anything else that came before it.
Baroque Works and Alabasta wasn’t the worst thing ever, don't get me wrong, but it has a lot of the same problems as East Blue, just without the same number of indicators that we as readers were making progress. It used to be how we were constantly getting introduced to new main characters and new series concepts, but that sort of thing doesn’t happen nearly as often anymore.
This isn’t my least favourite chunk of One Piece by any stretch of the imagination, but it was still one of the more difficult for me to finish. Drum Island was neat and when Alabasta is good, it’s really fucking good, but... this section is definitely flawed.
Skypeia (218-302)
I have some mixed feelings about Jaya because at the time I was reading, I thought this was where the series was really picking up for me. The reason for this is because it makes it very clear how far Luffy’s come since the start of the series and I personally consider that sense of growth really valuable.
It’s one of my favourite parts of engaging with any long-form story, actually, but unfortunately that just doesn’t happen with One Piece.
Spoiler
The first big indicator this was going to be a problem was during the big fight between Luffy and Zoro on Whisky Peak. I don’t think I liked it and it's because this would’ve been the perfect opportunity to start a real character arc for Luffy, like he’s still got shit to learn if he wants to become the Pirate King, but nope, it kind of just gets laughed off and we’re told to not take it seriously.
I remember by the time we reached the halfway point, I ended up ranking Luffy in my bottom three and it’s because he never changes, and whenever there is an opportunity for character growth it kind of just gets ignored or forgotten.
It’s something I’ve had to learn the very hard way but if the main character isn’t all that interesting, then the whole series isn’t going to be very interesting, it’s fucking inevitable. There’s nothing that can really salvage it.
Anyways, like Loguetown, this is also where a lot of new characters and series concepts get introduced or reintroduced or formally introduced concepts get expanded upon. The ending for Jaya might have left me a little too excited about people simply showing up and basically just standing there.
The only major issue I had with Jaya, honestly, is how it handles it’s core theme. And here we fucking go because now I have even more typing to do, holy shit. Jaya isn’t the only arc I have this kind of problem with, but in the interest of keeping spoilers as light as possible, we’ll be using Captain Morgan from Romance Dawn as an example.
It’s very clear that Captain Morgan was kind of just winged on the spot, they even provide notes hinting that was the case because he’s very one dimensional. He sucks. The thing Eiichiro Oda is trying to say with this character is he's a take-down of the might makes right philosophy.
Captain Morgan basically exists to show that it’s wrong to misuse a position of power and having a position of power isn’t necessarily the same thing as deserving it. I don’t think it’s a bad theme, but I don’t think One Piece explores it in a very thoughtful way.
He says constantly, and I do mean constantly, that his rank entitles him to do and say whatever he fucking wants. I don’t believe in "show don’t tell", I think that’s terribly misunderstood advice, but I also think the message is made clear long before it stops making arguments for why you should disagree with it.
I couldn’t help but find it a little annoying.
This isn’t a deal-breaker for me or anything, it isn’t unacceptable, but I’m not a big fan of it and it happens quite often in One Piece. Jaya isn’t the worst example of this in the series, don’t get me wrong, but it was a particularly egregious one. The theme is repeated verbatim through dialogue without any subtlety, analogies or metaphor, over and over and over again.
I don’t think it’s all bad? There are times where it’s clumsy in it’s execution, but I will say that, at least past Alabasta, the themes do become vastly more ambitious. One Piece is thematically malnourished early on and the way these themes are tackled is typically extremely straightforward, but past this point things do get significantly more complex.
One Piece ends up having a lot to say about serious real world issues like bigotry and how the oppressed interact with their oppressors, or the power and prevalence of weaponized information and disinformation, particularly how these things can be used by and how powerful they are in the hands of political institutions like in One Piece’s case the world government.
That means one of the core themes of the next arc, Skypeia, is the long term effects of colonialism... Whew, did you survive all that?
Anyways, I was really excited to get to Skypeia because it’s a controversial portion of One Piece or at the very least it used to be, so that means I get to decide on where I land on this particular divide and... I think I might actually like it? I'm not sure.
I think a part of the reason for this is because it deviates fairly significantly from the typical story structure that was used for most of the arcs before it. I think I alluded to this previously, but up until this point most of the arcs were more-or-less just the same story but with a different coat of paint, with the only exceptions being Lougetown and Jaya.
There are some which used this formula better than others, but Skypeia is the first one that pretty much consistently broke off from it completely and tried to do something else.
A common criticism I see is that, like Drum Island, it feels fairly disconnected from everything surrounding it, almost like it’s more of a side-quest than a part of the main story, but like Drum Island I also felt that the location itself was interesting enough that it just didn't bother me.
I will say that particularly by the climax it does start to feel reminiscent of all the other arcs in One Piece again, it’s pretty much the same as it is in Alabasta, but I will say that it’s quite cooler when it happens in Skypeia. There’s just way more of a spectacle to it when Enel does it over when Sir Crocodile does it.
To speak of Enel, I thought that he was pretty good. I don’t think he was as good as Sir Crocodile, but out of the villains we’ve seen thus far he’s among the very small pool of bad guys who are actually pretty good.
Pretty much everything I’m about to say can also apply to Sir Crocodile, but he’s extremely charismatic and he feels overwhelmingly powerful, even compared to all the other antagonists that came before him.
He also happens to interact with Luffy in a very specific and hilarious way, I won’t say any more than that, but when it happens it just put a big, dumb smile on my face.
Skypeia was far from perfect, and even though I enjoyed it and felt that it had some particularly strong moments, as well as following up on an intriguing plot point introduced in Alabasta... I don’t know man, it really just depends on you.
Water 7 (303-441)
Long Ring Long Land... makes sense in hindsight. Because I didn't hate it.
You see, something that I was a little turned off by was how serious and stressed out the whole crew were during the events of Long Ring Long Land despite how fun and silly everything surrounding it was. But considering the events that are about to take place, no, that actually makes complete sense.
If it had lasted an inch longer than it had I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much, but... it’s not that long. I thought it was exceptionally paced.
The best way I can sum it up is that it is THE most filler but it’s actually in the manga kinds of arcs that I have ever read in my entire life. The ending is really cool though, and it made me super excited to start reading the next arc...
Water 7 is really fucking good.
It’s better than Alabasta, it’s better than Skypeia, but I still don’t think it reached the same heights as Arlong Park as miraculous as that is to say. It has a really strong start, a really great atmosphere overall, and once again has a unique narrative structure compared to everything that came before Skypeia.
If I had one nitpick it would be that I think it gets pretty cluttered and awkward towards the end, but pretty much every single arc in One Piece has a section that’s cluttered and awkward, so you could argue that it's small potatoes.
Enies Lobby, however, more than surpasses Arlong Park. I felt that it was by far one of the best arcs in One Piece at the time it happened. This arc has the best pacing in One Piece, this arc has some of the best fights in One Piece, some of the best character moments and character development in One Piece, even some of the best world-building, pretty much anything you’d be looking to get out of this series is here in Enies Lobby.
The final fight here is the thing that fully convinced me that I should power through the entirety of One Piece until the very end. I had already committed to at least trying to do that, but after Enies Lobby I really wanted to finish One Piece for it’s own sake.
Thriller Bark (442-489)
I’ve spoken before about how One Piece is a tale of high points and low points, so my main issue with Thriller Bark isn’t necessarily that it’s boring, but that it feels excruciatingly long.
It’s shame I have to say that because Thriller Bark had the makings of being one of the best arcs in One Piece with a really strong beginning and end, as well as featuring some of the best moments in the entire series. It introduces a handful of important characters including one new Straw Hat, gives the existing Straw Hats some of their best character moments, and it even follows up on some fairly important plot points from earlier in the series.
I wanted to make that super clear because Thriller Bark does do some things exceptionally well, but dear god, so much of it feels like padding.
I think the big issue is ultimately that while it does do some things exceptionally well, I can’t really say the same thing about Brook, at least not until the very end. Perona was great, but it unfortunately suffers from a lot of One Piece’s villains not being very good and I can’t help but feel this issue combined with the issue of Brook’s inclusion are very linked.
In every arc before this where one new Straw Hat would join, they would have some sort of connection to the antagonist. If we had that with Brook it would have felt more personal, as well as giving Brook a real obstacle to overcome in the here and now... rather than just having Zoro do it for him.
Paramount War (490-597)
Sabaody Archipelago, however, is the good shit. It just feels fast paced, open ended, intense and unpredictable in ways few other One Piece arcs are. It also introduces a ton of new characters and a ton of key story elements, typically in a very exciting way. I always felt like something important was happening.
Amazon Lily, surprisingly, manages to maintain the momentum established previously for a change, but what turns me off is how unabashedly hideous and repetitive a lot of the female character designs are.
I’ve seen it argued Eiichiro Oda is better at drawing attractive men than he is women, and I think it’s due to a phenomena I’ll refer to as “homo-social” which is a man who only talks to other men. And the end result are sexualized character designs that almost look like they were conceptualized by gay men.
There was this movie “GOAT” which came out earlier this year and try to think about another male character in fiction who actually has a female role model but without it coming across as objectifying, that basically never happens.
Now, I don’t know how to talk about Impel Down without ruining it because this is something I really want you to experience for yourself. This was one of the most rewarding parts about reading One Piece for me.
Impel Down was just SO MUCH FUN and it reintroduces a lot of my favourite characters, and characters I maybe didn’t even like previously but this arc manged to help me to come around on.
You know, it was pointed out by Jelloapocalypse that One Piece really falters when it comes to the adventure arcs, but the thriller and espionage arcs tend to be a lot better. Which... I mean... this is supposed to be a pirate manga, so that’s kind of a really serious issue...
Anyways, Marineford is just fucking insane and I would argue it's right up there alongside the peaks alongside the likes of Arlong Park and Enies Lobby. Ignoring the speed bumps that are Thriller Bark and Amazon Lily, starting from Water 7 onwards what you’ve got is the best stretch in all of One Piece.
If One Piece has the legendary status that it does, I can assume this is why.
Marineford is in contention for some of the most world-building in the entire series, it constantly hits you with new characters and ideas all in the middle of some of the most epic set-pieces you’ll ever find in shonen. There are like a billion insane things happening back-to-back-to-back, so the pacing here is fucking wonderful, pretty much every character that shows up is at their best or close to it, and it really opens up the world of One Piece for good measure.
New World (598-????)
Okay, lets speed this up real quick. Fishman Island is about on par with Thriller Bark, it’s got a strong start and a strong finish, but pretty much everything in the middle is a fucking mess. It’s also another arc with an extremely lacklustre villain, so it’s messages about touching grass, fake news, and the dark side of inherited will aren’t all that compelling by the very end.
Punk Hazard is another one of those divisive arcs alongside Skypeia and it’s for the simple fact that I can’t read this shit. I’ve alluded to the fact about how One Piece was starting to become more difficult to read as time goes on, and it’s Punk Hazard where it finally grows too big and implodes onto itself.
Punk Hazard also has it’s defenders and it's for the simple fact that this is the final “classic” One Piece arc for all intensive purposes, and it doesn’t have just the most fuck-huge cast imaginable like we'll see later, but it’s also excruciatingly long for what basically amounts to a bunch of running around.
Dressrosa is... well, excruciatingly long doesn’t even begin to cut it. It’s another one of those arcs like Alabasta and I’m talking like a New Hope, Force Awakens levels of similar, as well as the positives and negatives that implies.
If I were to try and read through Dressrosa in real time, I can imagine myself just getting really impatient and pissed off and dropping the entire series, like this is where I most likely would have ended it.
Dressrosa’s pacing, as well as it's high points and low points are extremely inconsistent, and the low points are... I mean, they sure are low points, but to be fair it does come with it’s high points, the trouble is it’s just crammed into this 101 chapter long behemoth.
Thankfully, this is one of those rare arcs which include a phenomenal One Piece villain. That’s not to say he completely carries Dressrosa on his shoulders, but he does a lot to elevate the arc and thank god that’s the case.
Zou and Whole Cake Island is where things start to pick up again. Sweet Jesus! If I had to point towards the worst stretch on all of One Piece, it would probably be that 200 chapter stretch from Fishman Island to Dressrosa.
Whole Cake Island definitely has it’s problems, but I thought that it was set in one of the more interesting locations in the series, has some of the best main antagonists in the series, as well as some of the best fights in the series.
This is one of those rescue arcs similar to Arlong Park and Enies Lobby, and while it’s nowhere near as good as those two arcs, I can at least appreciate how it was able to reappraise Sanji’s character, which we’ll talk about more in a bit.
I also thought Wano was pretty good despite being another 150 chapter behemoth, but it was also split into 5 parts and I felt that it helped at least a little bit. The third part is pure flashback, the fourth part is bloated with fight scene after fight scene, and the fifth part was actually kind of rushed. It creates this feeling that Wano was too long and too short at the same time.
It is my understanding that the internet went into a bit of a frenzy during this time period and people seem to be highly opinionated about it, but for me personally, I felt that there was enough good stuff in it that I was able to turn my brain off and enjoy it.
Egghead seems to have been received a lot more favourably and I guess that stands to reason because it’s literally the complete opposite of Wano in every single way. If I had to pick a favourite New World arc, this would probably be it and it features one of the most heart-wrenching flashbacks in the entire series.
In conclusion...
Okay, now, I would like to share my broad, general thoughts for the most part. Let’s see if I can survive this and maybe we can survive this together.
Characters
It should come as no surprise to you that One Piece has a lot of characters and while admittedly these characters can be a bit of a mixed bag, take it or leave it, I do think One Piece scores a home run where it counts. Pretty much everyone important is at least pretty well characterized and likeable.
This can honestly get pretty frustrating because Eiichiro Oda tends to focus on these side characters a little more than I think he should, often a lot more than I think he should, in fact. I don’t really hate the fact that these characters exist or anything, just the fact that a lot of them stick around for way too long and have a more active role than I think they should.
He pretty much nailed it with all of the Straw Hats themselves, at least on paper, and while I did complain about the villains a lot, in the rare exceptions when they’re good, they’re really fucking good. Creating and realizing the “essence” and soul of these characters is something that I think Eiichiro Oda can be very good at. Even if he doesn’t always use or implement these characters perfectly, he at least knows how to create a likeable one.
My favourites are Zoro, Usopp, and Nico Robin and not only are they all introduced early, but before the time skip at least, they always felt like they were always doing something.
Luffy is inherently fun but he isn’t inherently interesting. He doesn’t really change or grow or learn all that much, and I get that’s supposed to be kind of the point seeing as how the first half ends, but he doesn’t get any better after the time skip, in fact he just gets worse.
It’s really radicalized me against this notion that the main character should always be the least interesting person in the room. Because even if everyone else surrounding them is interesting, there’s no guarantee we’ll be spending a lot of time with them.
Sanji and Brook were also in my bottom three, so let’s talk about Sanji. Now, a lot of people would disagree with this, but the reason for this is simply because there is a running gag with him that gets extremely annoying, extremely quickly. And if not for this he’d actually most likely be one of my favourites.
As a matter of fact there’s a part of the series, Whole Cake Island, where the gag is toned down significantly and... it’s so much better. It’s spectacular. But unfortunately, as soon as the arc is over, the gag comes back... and I hated it.
The problem isn’t just Sanji in isolation, this trope can be found in tons of shonen and I feel it’s something that’s become more antiquated the more it's used. Sanji, as well as Brook, just gets used to tell the exact same joke like a million, billion, trillion times... and it’s just not that funny.
Paneling and Pacing
Okay, so, I think this is for sure the area One Piece is the weakest in. The sense of progress is definitely toned down even compared to something like Naruto. In many other series like this it feels like something is constantly happening, but with One Piece you’ll just have to wait for the high points.
I just think Eiichiro Oda spends way longer than he needs to on most of the things in One Piece. The anime is super egregious about this, but even in the manga you could condense plenty of scenes, plot threads, and dare I say even entire arcs into less chapters and less overall time they tend to take up.
It wouldn't be unfair of me to say that One Piece can turn into a real slog.
Eiichiro Oda is for sure capable of being a more efficient writer, but he just doesn’t seem to want to be. It’s the choosing that gets to me.
This kind of goes hand in hand with the panelling, which... I don’t think it’s very good. In fact, I found that it actually tends to get worse and worse and worse as you get deeper into the series, not better like how you would expect. There’s not a good sense of flow between each panel, even between each fucking page sometimes, which makes One Piece hard to read, especially after the time skip.
There’s this weird contradiction with One Piece that are at odds with one another, which where it feels like it’s going extremely fast and extremely slow at the same time. I actually don’t like how so much information gets condensed into one panel because sometimes you’ll just end up with pages that are just FULL of text. It’s not quite as bad as Hunter x Hunter, that’s it’s own beast, but there are times where you'll feel like you’re reading a novel over a comic book.
You see, a lot of these arcs have their low points and typically those low points come from Eiichiro Oda introducing way too many characters and plot threads, and insisting on following all of them. In Dressrosa in particular, there were just way too many scenes dedicated to following brand new characters that I just didn’t care about at all.
It seems like he HAS to explore and implement any idea that pops up into his head, he refuses to cut them no matter what, and a lot of time what this leads to is boring or at least pointless fluff.
Now, with all of that said, he actually tends to be very good at following up on loose plot threads. If a character shows up and it doesn’t go anywhere initially, there’s a good chance that he’s at least thinking about circling back to it. And I just think that’s neat.
There were many times where I was frustrated because why did we spend time with this or why did we just spend time with that, and then, later in the story, that person or whatever ended up doing something really cool and interesting. It happens all the fucking time.
The world-building comes at a pretty big cost though, not just in time but also... the actual main characters tend to become a lower priority after a while. Pretty much every single side character gets a multi-chapter flashback explaining their backstory, and there’s almost a guarantee the extended amount of time you spend with a character you just don’t care about at all.
That’s not to say it isn’t typically worth it, it’s usually taken some place interesting, but it’s not always and even then it can take a long while. But it’s also one of the main reasons why One Piece is so much fun to talk about, so...
In conclusion (for real this time)...
It's fine.
I have my caveats with One Piece and it’s not even my favourite shonen ever, but I felt that most of these problems I was able to set aside for everything that I actually liked about it... most of the time at least...