Apr 26, 2016
Spoilers: I reveal the name of the crew members.
One Piece is the story of a boy named Monkey D. Luffy and on his journey to become the "Pirate King" and find the One Piece, which is the treasure left behind by Gol D. Rogers.
Let me start out by saying I used to really like OP and was a big time fan, and as of the recent updates my passion for it has really declined over the years.
Pros:
1) The setting - The world of OP is vast and filled with pretty much anything and everything possible. Fishmen, Mermaids, Giants, animal people, etc. Anyone
...
with a sense of adventure can find some reason to like this world!
2) Tackles a lot of real world issues - Slavery, politics, corrupt government, etc. All these things appear and play a large role in the overarching story.
3) Haki is pretty interesting and I'm curious as to where it goes from here.
Negatives:
1) WAY WAY WAY too many characters - There are so many important characters to put up with, all with unique personalities, and powers that all play an important role in each arc. But the price for that is lack of screentime. A lot of characters get booted to the side and don't play a major role in the Arcs due to the large cast, the biggest example is one of the Strawhat members. He joined the crew in the final parts pre-timeskip and literally has had zero screen time after the skip. It's really disappointing seeing a lot potential go to waste. Even now, Oda continues to introduce more and more characters that continues to crowd out the old ones. While it's understandable that some more characters are necessary for story-reasons, the amount Oda has establish is completely unreasonable. For example, You have the straw hat crew, the navy, the pirate warlods, the Yonkos, the CP9 or whatever, the Supernovas and that's not even including their crews. This all moshed up with the required story characters really puts a hamper on the pace of the manga.
2) It's going the Naruto route. Before the time-skip, it felt like everybody on the crew were actually there and played a large role in the stories. Now we only have Luffy, Zoro and Sanji are the only really useful people, while Robin and Nami are just there for fanservice, Tony-Tony Chopper who's just there for marketing reasons and occasionally do his job, Franky who's really just there to steer their ship, Ussop who is just comic relief, and Brook. Poor, poor Brook. Even among the 3 useful ones, 1 has been out of the picture until recently thus leaving Luffy and Zoro. Again, Oda is just wasting potential by not utilizing these characters
3) Probably the one that I get the most hate for: Luffy is a really stale MC. Up until one specific arc, he literally is just the same as any other main character who fights for his dream and his friends with the only difference being that he doesn't really care about other's opinions. After the mentioned arc and he experiences the reality of the world, what does he do? Nothing. He literally does not change or develop. This really angers me as I feel Luffy doesn't develop as a character. We feel a better connection with the character when we see them struggle and overcome obstacles and then grow as a person. Which is why Zoro is the best written character in OP. He actually feels like a human for what it's worth while Luffy feels completely unrealistic. Especially his reaction in the Dressrosa arc when a certain character is introduced and he has the worst reaction ever. I would like to mention that there is one instance where I give props to Luffy for overcoming an obstacle and it's his "bloody" fight.
Final thoughts: OP is mediocre at best. It only has a few good moments that really stand out from the rest but the rest is just pretty eh. If you're into the pure essence of an epic adventure then I'd totally recommend One Piece to you, but if you're looking for more than there's plenty of better options out there.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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