The seemingly never ending story of excellence

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KobeReekonJul 2, 202529 of 44 found this helpful

So I've caught up to One Piece, thoughts? (Strictly Manga opinion)

One Piece is an insanely ambitious story clearly thought out from start to finish and willing to take the time whenever it can to expand on it's world building, cast, power system, general rules and seemingly endless variety of themes (Shit like the will to live/purpose in living, freedom, even a hard focus on exploring prejudice at various times which i really didn't expect). It's clear Oda takes giant inspiration from just about anything he enjoys as shown in his sbs (question segments) as he shows a huge level of research into things far beyond just like pirate history

It's almost unfair to rank compared to other series as a single saga could be the length of an entire series, that dedication across 27 years definitely pays off tho and makes this something you can't really get anywhere else. You can find yourself reaching near the end and just thinking, funnily, it's not long enough.

One of my biggest gripes with the series funny enough has to be it's earliest bits. I can look back now and see it as great but when I was initially getting into the series I couldn't help but be UNBELIEVABLY BORED. I was stuck on the first 3 arcs for legit months because while solid for a old, classic manga. It just didn't grip me whatsoever. The main thing pushing me on was friends actively getting me interested on future content such as Water 7, Marineford, Wano, Egghead etc. No character really gripped me yet either since Oda was willing to take his time with most strawhats (Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp). I didn't outright dislike any of them, but I didn't feel much of anything. It's why whenever I hear someone say they dropped One Piece, it's usually super early on, and I can't even blame them. It's literally what I did for a while.

The opinion of where it picks up is person to person, but I think the moment the series was finally clicking with me was Arlong Park, Baratie had a good moment here and there with Zoro's speech or Sanji's gratitude but Arlong Park really made me realise I'm starting to enjoy these characters with Nami's straw hat scene.

It progressively just got better imo, Alabasta saga was consistently good and making me really enjoy the cast more, Sky Islands began setting up a lot for the future and showed how creative the world could be and of course by the time I hit water 7 there was legit no going back. It definitely helped that the manga's pacing never suffered from the anime stretching out canon episodes or adding filler, making most later arcs super smooth to read through. And that's not to even mentioning the amazing artwork

Oda's art improvement noticeably increases around Sky Islands and Water 7 as he becomes more confident with character designs and begins HEAVILY using the two page spread images (basically the big panels). These ones were really well detailed and usually helped add to the impact of fights, locations or reveals insanely well. I still think one of his biggest and most consistent flaws comes in the way he designs many "appealing" female op character's faces and body structure (usually in the hour glass look). For some reason I think it's handled a little bit better here than anime and theres obviously gonna be quite a few exceptions considering the hundreds of characters he makes, but still, problem nonetheless.

It was something I mentioned briefly, but I just gotta say how much I love the power system in op bruh, easily the best I've seen. Fruits are so intricately made and understood in the world (With the three types of zoan paramythia logia) and are given the perfect weakness of immunity to the ocean and sea stone stuff. Characters can very actively choose to not take a fruit as the weakness is too dire, not to mention if not properly educated you could just be ending up with a dogshit fruit, still with the same weakness
The fruit powers are so varied, just when you think Oda should be running out he manages to make another 20 out of nowhere. Despite many of the powers being insanely powerful, one of the coolest things about OP is you don't even NEED powers to be at the top, the fucking king of pirates for example has 0 devil fruit. This is due to pure hard training and the implementation of the series' other giant power system in the form of "Haki" also having 3 types in Armament Haki, Observation Haki and Conqueror's Haki. These can directly counter things such as Logia fruit users which early on almost seem invincible which is a smart way to balance hard training (with haki) and gifted luck (with devil fruits)

Don't know where to put this, but I love that the manga goes through smaller stories in images for chapter covers that couldn't really fit anywhere else in the story. Many of these are cute, neat little things that sometimes can end up being pretty important in terms of understanding how a previously introduced character may come back in a later arc. The same goes for the sbs question centres, sometimes you may just get pervy questions especially later on, like literally reoccurring people come back as a joke (sanadacchi my goat) but sometimes you can get full side character backstories and lore drops not mentioned in the chapters or looks into what characters favourite and least favourite food could be, their favourite type of seasonal island, what they'd look like in the past or future, etc. It's clear there's so much ideas packed into a single character whether main lead or side, reminds me of oc's in roleplays honestly. All of it just add to the crazy charm this series has

The charm is so evident in the way where one moment you could be laughing your ass off from some dumb fucking thing like buggy crying with his head chopped off, franky screaming at his balls being crushed or all the goofy crazy expressions one piece has to offer then you could be feeling extremely bad for even the most silly looking of characters, there's not many series that can do it quite like op in that regard.

I can't even talk about the characters, I'd be here for days. I love literally all the straw hats and all the big organisations are written so well, there's truly only a handful of characters among the thousands that I truly think are shit written and they're typically ones that solely serve the purpose of being a gag. Even if you think a characters just "whatever" right then, 9 times out of 10 theyre gonna show up much later and somehow end up goated. Sometimes the only thing I wish Oda would do more is include more romance because there's so many mfs I enjoy and just want to be happy with something like that (He keeps it to being a very rare occasion for main characters however since its a "boys manga" like ARGHHH C'MON MAN I NEED FROBIN)

I ain't even gonna say much more, if I delve any further this is just gonna plummet into being a nonsensical fanatic talk which ive already done multiple times in the prior saga reviews. But yea, overall? The best manga I've read and one of the best pieces of media I've experienced, I'm super optimistic that it's consistency continues into its very few remaining arcs, and considering its stayed so good for nearly 3 decades, my faith in it couldn't be higher.

(If you'd want my reviews on respective saga's feel free to ask me as many of them are quite extensive.)

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