The Great One Piece Falloff

~ MOSTLY SPOILER FREE UNTIL WANO~

I'm first going to rate One Piece from the beginning until Whole Cake Island, then split everything after into other sections.

Story/Plot/World Building - 10/10

One Piece easily has the best world building and story that shonen has to offer. Luffy goes from island to island gaining crew mates and finding the one piece so he can become king of the pirates. Every island offers a new location with a diverse cast and deep lore, and just the sheer quantity of story is insane. Each arc is necessary and adds onto the never ending lore of One Piece. It seems like every new location and cast has something to do with other locations and characters which makes every chapter intriguing.

Art - 8/10

One Piece has very good art and paneling which makes the manga easy to read. The art style is very good and something only Oda can pull off. Also good lord the art can be saucy (especially in Skypiea where the style shines.)

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Fights - 8/10

The power system offers unique situations that you really can't find anything like outside of One Piece. The fights are also very easy and fun to read.

Cast - 9/10

It's very impressive how human Oda writes characters in this story. You feel bad for both the victims of villains AND the villains themselves. All of the villains have valid motivations for their actions and have fulfilled characters by the end. All of the straw hats also has fantastic backstories and motivations for joining the straw hats. They each get their time to shine and rarely fade into the background. The main man Luffy himself is also perfection, nobody could possibly be a more fitting MC for One Piece.

Consistency - 9/10

For a manga as long as One Piece, it's very impressive how there's barely any bad moments or useless parts in the story. That being said, there are SOME bad moments (spoiler warning.)
~!- Ace kinda stinks, what happened to him in Marineford was very poorly done.

• Long Ring Long Land was very useless, although it was still pretty fun.
• Oda has a big problem killing characters, which leads to some characters also having tons of plot armor.
• Post time skip in general has pacing issues and can drag. !~

Emotion/Personal Enjoyment - 9/10

One Piece was my favorite story ever at one point in time and I still love it before Wano. I was invested in almost every character and arc.

Wano - 5/10

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So first of all the pacing is atrocious. This arc is 150 chapters long and it drags and drags. The cast is the weakest in all of One Piece and Oden specifically is the worst in the series. This guy falls for the bad guys lies who are very obviously lying, then expects us to feel sympathy for him, the worst type of character. Then there's Yamato who's entire personality is mimicking Oden, so I guess there's two bottom tier One Piece characters now... okay. The samurai guys are fine until the war when they sacrifice themselves to stall Kaido, except they all survive the fight after which makes their sacrifice lose all impact. About 5 minutes after that though one of the samurai dies to a random bomb HAHAHAHAHA. Momonosuke is annoying. There's of course Kaido, he has a good personality with good fights but that's about it. The straw hats have a massive fall off this arc. Zoro turns into Sung Jin Woo and Sanji says he doesn't want to be like his brothers and he'll get strong on his own just to keep that Germa suit in his pocket. Not to mention he only uses it to spy on women in the bathhouse. Usopp specifically though really sucks. What's the point of writing a loser into a brave warrior if he's still a loser 1000 chapters after he's introduced? All interactions and writing Usopp had this arc should be changed.

There could have been tons of lore involving Ryuma and Zoros swords just for them to get little to no backstory. This whole arc is wasted potential honestly. And they introduce so many characters but most of them serve barely any purpose. Like why is Apoo here? Why is X Drake here? Why is Hawkins here? Why is Big Mom here? Why is Perospero here? If they actually got expanded on and served some greater purpose it would be good, but they don't. It just seems like Oda grouped a bunch of characters he had no plans on doing anything with together at Wano and called it a day. Big Mom also got nerfed so hard, it's genuinely upsetting. She was a legendary One Piece villain and a pure haki monster what happened?

This arc wasn't all bad though. That haki training arc was very fun and everything with Law and Kidd were good. Gear 5 was pretty good, although everything about Luffy was better before. The entirety of roof piece was awesome. I liked the Kanjuro twist and his backstory. The Oden/Roger/Whitebeard backstory was great. King and Queen were good too, but Jack sucks. Everything with the smile fruits were also tragic, definitely made me hate Kaido.

So yeah overall this arc is a mess, but has plenty to enjoy about it too.!~

Egghead - 4/10

~!So the art and paneling become an absolute mess this arc. The sheer reading experience is really bad, and the pacing doesn't help. These chapters drag forever. That Vegapunk speech lasted forever and once it ended I was just happy the story was finally moving forward. The five elders had a big reveal just to do... nothing. Kizaru was still great, it seems that no matter what the admirals will always have good writing. Vegapunk himself was pretty meh and I didn't care about the traitor plot. Then there's Kuma and Bonney. I don't know how Oda used to write genuine tragedies and now he just tortures a guy over and over and calls it deep writing. I'd be lying if I said I didn't love Kuma punching Saturn though, that moment was great.

Okay I'm not gonna sugarcoat it the straw hats were garbage this arc. No character arcs, no memorable moments, no nothing really, they just exist. They are so excruciatingly boring this arc and I don't know why One Piece fans aren't more up in arms about how bad the straw hats have been since Wano. Oda really wrote Whole Cake Island just two arcs ago and now this? There's also gear 5 which is such a huge downgrade from gear 4 that it's beyond words. Going from Luffy vs Katakuri and Luffy vs Doflamingo to this is very painful AND IF I SEE THAT EYE POPPING GAG ONE MORE TIME I'M GIVING UP ON ONE PIECE.

Overall I can't say I enjoyed much this arc. I think this real panel of Kizaru being a great character while gear 5 Luffy acts annoying in the background and Sanji aura farming for no reason despite not doing much this arc while Vegapunk bleeds to death on the ground forever really, really represents Egghead well.
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Elbaph - 6/10

~!Well the art is still atrocious when it comes to paneling and linework, although the actual quality of the art is great. The reading experience still could definitely be better. All of the giants are pretty boring but Loki is solid. Harald is another Oden, truly incredible. Imu and Xebec actually got revealed which I couldn't be happier about but the God Valley backstory was definitely disappointing. I was expecting something like Madara vs Hashirama just for Imu to turn Xebec into a devil so Garp and Roger team up to defeat him power of friendship style. Sommors is great, Gunko is great, the other god knight guy I forgot the name of is great.

Imu is also cool and I loved seeing gear 5 Luffy get humbled. Keep in mind this arc isn't even close to being finished but this is easily the best arc since Whole Cake Island. There's a lot more to enjoy here than Wano and Egghead and I like the lore drops.!~

Overall One piece used to be my favorite story ever told and I still like it overall. If Oda cooks then I will praise him but it's become pretty clear One Piece won't even have an arc as good as Thriller Bark ever again. I fear that Oda has lost the sauce that One Piece used to have.