This COULD have been one of my all time favourite animes, and I'm going to tell you why it isn't.

[Spoilers Warning]
[One Piece Fanboys Warning, Feelings May Be Hurt]

This is likely to be my longest review, which makes sense because this is the longest anime I'll ever watch. I'm currently 1000 episodes in, watching the Wano arc. So I can for sure say I'm allowed my opinion, and I realise many people won't like it, because this is one of the most beloved animes ever made. I will say, though, this COULD have been one of my all time favourite animes, and I'm going to tell you why it isn't.

Firstly I want to talk about the positives. Absolutely awesome world building, my favourite parts of One Piece are usually when they're about to go to a new island, and we're going to discover a new culture, and have some sort of adventure with some new people, in which one of them may join the crew. Two, I love some of the characters they've given us, there are some brilliant characters who I really enjoy watching, and I'll give a rundown of my thoughts on characters after my third point. My third point is that they have some great comedy between the characters, and this especially stands out when they're travelling around before they reach their destination. The sound is generally also good in One Piece, and I'll give a little shout out to the animation. The animation is actually good in my eyes, that goes hand in hand with some good fight scenes, and I mean early One Piece I still liked the animation. It has a really friendly feeling to it, and in more recent episodes it has become super smooth at points. When I seen the arrival of Kaido as a dragon, the animation of his body moving, slinking, and coiling towards them, was well done.

So for this part, I'm going to do the main cast, and put them into a tier list, with a little explanation of why they're there. Then after I'll talk broadly about the entire cast.

(Once again, this is just my opinion, I know people will disagree)

Main Cast;
A Tier - Robin, Nami, Chopper
B Tier - Zoro, Usopp
C Tier - Jimbei, Sanji
D Tier - Luffy, Franky, Brook

So, Nico Robin for me works well because she's nothing like the rest of the crew, there was a running gag for a long time that she was the only one on the crew who didn't partake in their, well, gags. So her joke is that she doesn't do jokes. I also love her humour around just saying really terrifying, or messed up things so nonchalantly. Her mature demeaner is also a nice break from having the others constantly acting like they're 10 years old, only acting with their first instincts without any thought.

Nami for me is just an all around cool character, and I'm gonna shock you here, but I've enjoyed her fights, because she actually has to use her brain instead of just "I'm gonna endure all your punishment and outpunishment you!".

Chopper grew on me, and he's the perfect mascot for the crew, I enjoy his humour and general being. One thing that ties all these three up for me, though, is that they all have great character building, interesting backstories, and I got emotionally attached to all 3 of them because of it.

Now, Zoro was A tier for me, for most of the show. I mean, he's a badass with 3 swords, in my opinion he has some of the very best fights in the whole of the show. He went down, because he doesn't really do anything? Like, he never has an input on what they're planning to do, I don't think we have even seen much of his backstory, and we don't really know too much about him as a person at this point. He had an awesome moment at the end of Thriller Bark, but honestly, what does he even add to the crew in the last 500 episodes? I know people will say "he's their best fighter", well, that's not true, Luffy is, Luffy defeats every bad guy, so he's clearly stronger than him.

Usopp grew on me a LOT, I hated him for so long, but I did gradually come around. He would be A tier if he had some sort of character development besides changing his clothes? He's still the same cowardly type we met in episode 10, as he is now in episode 1000.

Jimbei I'm indifferent to, and Sanji I just purely dislike because his fighting is boring, the amount of screen time we get of it zoomed in on his cigarette as he either lights it up, or just stands there, could probably fill an arc of its own by this point. I also am not a fan of the fact it took them near 850 episodes to give us his backstory. I do like when he says Robin and Nami's names, but other than that he's just a more overbearing Brock from Pokemon.

Franky is just boring to me, and I'm not sure of the point in Brook? I liked him in Thriller Bark, but kinda wish they never added him to the crew. After the 5th time of him making the exact same "I can't believe my eyes, oh well, I don't have any yohoho" joke, it gets stale. And that's all he has to offer it seems?

Luffy. Many people absolutely love this guy, and honestly, I have no idea why. He as a main character is truly boring, and far too much of the show revolves around him. I don't like his fights, stretching is just a boring power, he does the same old "I like food" joke that we've seen a thousand times in other anime. He doesn't progress as a character, at all, he is still the exact same person as he was in episode 1. Before fire fist dying, he didn't even have an interesting backstory, all it was is "he met a pirate called Shanks, and promised to him that he'd become King of the Pirates". Luffy is one of my biggest problems with One Piece. To compare what I think is an actual truly good front character, with Luffy, let's talk about Naruto. Naruto had crazy amounts of development as a character in that show, and they did it in less episodes, too. He went from being a stroppy, dumb, antisocial, kind of an ass, to being a super outgoing, popular, thoughtful person, who even would think through his fights before just rushing in like he would at the beginning. Luffy doesn't showcase this at all, no matter how many times his crew have almost been killed, he doesn't think, ever, his head is empty, he see's an enemy, and he just rushes in not knowing what their power level is, or their devil fruit ability.

Moving onto my favourite characters across the whole anime.

Fire Fist Ace, Nico, Chopper, Nami, Aokiji, Fujitora, and Law.

This isn't to mention all the other awesome characters they have Doflamingo, Kuma, Crocodile, Eustass Kid, Caesar Clown, Akainu, Kizaru, and here's one from the memory banks, Kuro. I bet I have even missed out a bunch of other cool characters. My problem here is that, with the longest running anime of all time, 1000+ episodes, and some of these awesome characters have BARELY appeared. Are you kidding me? We've seen Shanks far far more in flashbacks than the actual anime, the guy who essentially started off One Piece by inspiring Luffy, and we NEVER see him. Aokiji, holy fuck has there been a better introduction to a character in an anime? Guy is just asleep, chilling. Fucks them up with ease, and then rides his bike across the ocean. But then guess what? We don't see him again for another 200 episodes, and even in that, it wasn't in any meaningful way. After Marineford, again, he's gone until a cameo appearing at the end of Punk Hazard, and we haven't seen him since. What in the fuck is with this writing, instead of using the already build world of great characters, they just throw them in the bin to carry on making newer, less interesting ones like Carrot???? How many characters do they introduce, and then focus on, just for that arc. During Arabasta, we met Vivi, which I thought was not a bad thing, because at this point we only have 5 Straw Hats, let alone a world filled with characters. After Marineford, we have so, many, characters, we do not need to move to new places, and spend 30+ episodes on backstory for some new characters that aren't fresh or interesting. Dressrosa brought in a bunch of them, the king, his daughter, her husband amongst others that I just didn't care about.

Overall, my problem with their use of characters is mostly just the lack of them being actually used, and constant focus on newer characters when we already have 50+ we can play around with. The lack of character development isn't huge, but I'd like to see at least one or two changes in some people that isn't just appearance. Why hasn't Luffy learnt to be smarter when wanting to fight someone after he watches his brother die, and he thought his crew all died to Kuma. Why hasn't Usopp gotten a backbone after going through so many wars and fights. Why do the animators think giving Nico and Nami bigger boobs, and more cleavage, is character development? Also, Fire Fist Ace should have been the main character of One Piece, he had far more charisma, seemed far more intelligent, and actually was interesting to watch in a fight.

Now, let's talk about the arcs (I told you this would be a long one).

I don't wanna write a novel, so I'll be as concise as possible here and straight up say, that they made, FAR too many episodes for some of these arcs. Arabasta is the first arc that made me wanna quit watching because of how long it was, little did I know, 38 episodes would be a short arc in One Piece by the end. Although I did enjoy Skypiea, I don't know that it could have been a lot better having less than 42 episodes. Enies Lobby the same with 46 episodes. 51 for Fishman Island, 46 for Punk Hazard, 45 for Thriller Bark. And now here comes the killer, 118 episodes for Dressrosa. This arc here is the one that absolutely burned me out watching this show. Really, 118 episodes? My god, I'm getting Vietnam flashbacks thinking about this arc right now. 95 for whole cake island. And now we're currently 114 episodes deep into Wano Country.

I realise people will say, "but Seth, the more episodes, the more we can get backstory for characters, and build an emotional connection to them", but do we really need that many? I'm gonna list off a few anime here which absolutely had people invested in the characters and what happened to them, and they did it in less episodes that all those arcs I just mentioned in the last paragraph.

Steins:Gate - 24
Death Note - 37
Cowboy Bebop - 26
Neon Genesis Evangelion - 26

Heck, to make my point, just look at all the movies that build a world, build characters, give backstories and manage to have it all play out with people being emotionally invested in only 2 hours, which is let's say 4-5 episodes worth. Now, I'm not saying all animes should be shorter because of this, I'm merely pointing out One Piece has had far, far more than enough time to have every single character fleshed out by now, and we could have progressed the story a lot more than we currently have. Naruto is one of the greatest animes imo, although it went on a little longer than I thought it should, and I got a bit bored of it towards the end, at least in those 766 episodes we know so much about every character in that show. We know the entire history of the the world in Naruto, we seen every person have a fight with every other top character, we have seen some characters completely change through their development on the show, we seen all of it play out and finish in 766 episodes. By the 1000th episode on One Piece, we still don't know anything about the 100 year period in their history, we only JUST learnt about Gol D Roger, we still don't know too much about characters past like Zoro who have been in since the beginning of the show. We still don't know what the One Piece even is, we have 0 idea on how strong Shanks is, we have rarely seen all the top characters fight with one another, and I'm just not sure what we've been watching in replacement of all of that? New shittier characters than we already have? Focusing a tonne on characters that will be gone when the arc finishes and they leave the island? Spending half of the episodes doing flashbacks of previous episodes? (Naruto did this a lot as well). I will say, I enjoyed Thriller Bark even though that was 45 episodes long, but I felt that more of this was valuable, because the new character that we were introduced to, and had a bit of focus on for a few eps was Brook, who actually ended up joining the Straw Hats. It felt like this arc actually had a good focus on our already established crew, and we didn't get half of the arc showing us flashbacks of a character that we don't care about. Longer arcs can be good, but in One Piece they oftenly aren't imo, because they don't use the already built characters in the world that we care about, and they waste a tonne of time on pointless shit, stretching out the arcs needlessly.

So, lastly, I'll do a quick run of my favourite arcs from first to last.

Marineford - Most people's favourite, and it's obvious why. We had a bunch of big boys fighting it out, and I loved the dynamic of Garp being between his career/upholding what he thought was justice, and his family. Most importantly, this was only 33 episodes long. Only one downside was that only Luffy from the Straw Hats was in this arc, none of the others made it there, so we never got to see them in action versus the Navy's strongest. Still, overall a great arc though. Also, I wish they made Ace die on the podium, rather than make him look dumb as fuck by basically escaping, but then going back to be killed just because Akainu said "ur mom gay". Really did my boy dirty, and made Ace look stupid at the end there.

Sabaody Archipelago - Introduced so many good characters, an arc that turned out huge for the story of One Piece, introducing the worst generation, Kuma sending everyone away, leading to a two year time skip, and we seen a lot of moving pieces within' the story in only 21 episodes. Maybe the biggest shock was that we seen the Straw Hats get dismantled so easily by Kuma, after watching them win almost all of their fights up until this point. It was the first time we seen the usual happy-go-lucky Luffy in a state of despair.

Water 7 - One of the best countries they visit, unique, really cool theme, and nice bit of mystery with a fun twist in there. Really good setup for Enies Lobby, and most of the episodes were centred around Usopp, Nico, and Franky, three characters who are actually in the Straw Hats. Usopp vs Luffy was hard to watch, but a part of me wanted Usopp to get a reality check, and that he did. Him watching them sail away from him actually had me feeling for him, even despite Usopp's many flaws.

Arlong Park - The arc that changed the vibe of the show from 'tehehe', to 'oh fuck'. This was one of the first credible threats to the Straw Hats, and I felt Nami's story, as well as her character, were told really well here. I sympathised with her immediately, and it made you want to see Arlong get his ass kicked. 14 episodes and it's still pretty memorable even now, nearly 1000 episodes later.

Enies Lobby - Good arc, what might be the most heart wrenching moment of the show when Nico screams "I WANT TO LIVE!". Absolutely beautiful, and I loved that. I found most of the episodes that focused on the people moving through the city quite boring, but when they finally catch upto Nico and CP9, everything from there is great. People might ask me why it's not ranked higher, and that's because I felt Water 7 was enough build up, and then the train ride there. When we arrive, we still have to wait another 10 episodes for them to get through the city, at this point I'm blueballed. I realise people may say it's only 10 episodes! But that's over 3 hours of waiting for it. I'm being picky, I know, but that's just how I felt watching it, extremely bored until they stand on top of the courthouse, and what a moment that was.

Thriller Bark - I know a lot of people don't like this arc, but I enjoyed it quite a lot, and it ended with one of the most memorable moments in the entire show. (Zoro-Kuma) It stands out because of the slight gothic-horror theme it sets. Robin rejecting Franky's robot transformation was also hilarious. It was good to see them all fight together as a team here.

Little Garden - Very short and sweet, they only needed 8 episodes to tell us an interesting story of these two giants, that would be used further on in the One Piece timeline, and we got to see some fights involving Baroque Works.

Skypiea - Best part about this arc was the journey to getting there, not knowing if the sky island even existed, and the mystery around all of it. It does get very slow when they arrive, and outside of Eneru, it was a bit too easy for the Straw Hats to beat everyone.

Impel Down - A great prelude to Marineford, and it was really helped with the tension built during this arc. We see some old faces, as well as new ones, overall decent arc for what it was. Buggy actually became a pretty funny character in these episodes.

Drum Island - Only 14 episodes long, but we get Chopper introduced, as well as a new snowy country, and Chopper's background is pretty good to watch. Wapol played a good villain, and we luckily didn't get 20 episodes showing us his backstory.

Punk Hazard - Again, I know many don't like it, but I actually enjoyed it for the most part, glad to see Law involved as he's one of my favourites, it serves as a decent build up to Dressrosa.

Syrup Village - This here is where I started to actually enjoy One Piece, the only thing I can say about it, is that I wish Kuro wasn't beaten so easily, I genuinely thought he was a pretty badass villain, but Luffy makes him look like a chump.

Wano Country - Currently slogging through it, again spending an absurd amount of time on the history of this country, and the Akazaya Samurai. The flashbacks of Gol D Roger were great, but not enough added to the main story, or the main characters for the amount of episodes it's gotten so far imo.

Zou Arc - Met some of the animes worst characters, the mink are really uninteresting, and annoying at times. The country itself initially was really cool to see, it was awesome to wonder about what happened to it, how it got there, and why it's on the back of an elephant, but that all went to shit through the reveals and characters who took up screen time.

Orange Town - Not much to say beyond Buggy can be funny at times

Baratie - Honestly can't remember much about this arc, I think I kept falling asleep during it until Zoro is defeated by Mihawk, that had my full attention, but by then the whole arc was almost done.

Arabasta - The first arc that made me consider dropping One Piece, just because of how long it was, and how little we were progressing in learning, well, anything. This entire arc was about the civil war in Arabasta, and that story alone wasn't interesting to me.

Fish-Man Island - I can barely remember anything about this arc, to be honest

Dressrosa - Started off really well, Punk Hazard sold us a picture of what it would be like, and how strong Doflamingo is. We met some interesting characters like Senor Pink. But overall it was far, far too long, and the emphasis was most of the time not on the Straw Hats, or the main story. Really enjoyed seeing Law's history with Doflamingo's brother, and it pisses me off that Luffy beat him, Law should 100% of been the person to defeat Doffy. Fujitora was a really cool addition to the arc, and the show as a whole. But yeah, 118 episodes was really hard to get through, when it could have all been said and done if you took out the pointless shit, in less than 50 episodes.

Whole Cake Island - Decent start with them travelling around the small islands and running into Pudding, but got boring very quickly with Germa who are lame as all hell, and then the proceeding hunger pangs rubbish where we had to listen to Big Mom saying "cake" about 100 times. Absolutely nothing added to the main story through these 95 episodes. We learned about Sanji's upbringing, and that's all.

To try and sum it all up as concisely as I can. The biggest problems for me is firstly Luffy as the main character, he never changes, he always has to be the one to beat the bad guy, so I have to watch his overrated boring fights, and he never really seems to think. Secondly, that they overemphasise on side characters or mini-stories that won't effect the main story, or main characters in any meaningful way. Later on in the anime they need to stop introducing more and more new characters, we have tonnes already that are cool and interesting, use them more. No arcs in my opinion should ever go over 100 episodes long. Naruto managed to wrap up the entire Shinobi Fourth War arc in 53 episodes, which is their longest. One Piece needs to stop taking the piss by having multiple arcs run over 50 episodes. For anyone who's read this entire thing, I hope you enjoyed it, and if you didn't and think most of this was a bunch of shit with a few nuggets of truth, then you truly know my feeling towards One Piece!