Mar 18, 2021
This show does not deserve such a high score. Not anymore.
For the longest time it baffled me that this was such a popular series in Japan. I caught glimpses of the 4kids dub on TV and was immediately turned off by it.
Then in 2011 I actually knew some Japanese friends who liked the show and they eventually convinced me to give it a chance with the original version. I remember their claim that Oda (the creator) said the series would likely go on for another fifteen years. Given that and the fact that the show was already near the end of the Punk Hazard
...
arc, or over 600 episodes, by the time I began watching, I was more than a little daunted by the whole undertaking.
After giving it a chance, for several years I was obsessed. A huge fan. But, I don't know: I grew weary.
Here's the short of it: For what it is, the story, and by extension the manga I assume, is quite good. It can really only be compared to other long-running shounen type shows, and in that respect it is much smarter in the construction of the story. Story beats and elements are thought through well ahead of time and not just pulled out of nowhere week after week.
The characters are both likable and memorable. The comedic moments are funny, and the dramatic moments are really sad. The music is repetitive if you're bingeing the whole show in one go but it does achieve the proper effect on the listener in evoking a sense of adventure on the seas.
Now here's where I give it mediocre score for enjoyment: The pacing gets abysmal after a while. The opening theme gets longer and longer with shittier music, followed by a secondary opening, and then a recap almost as long as the opening itself. Once you've caught up and you're watching the episodes premiere weekly it becomes even more of a slog. You've waited an entire week to see the continuation of the story and when the new episode finally drops you get like two minutes worth of content stretched out to fill 20 minutes. It feels as if watching the episode didn't even matter. As a result, almost no stand alone episode is good. Cumulatively the story is good, but this show would be so much better if they took time off to let the manga gain some distance from the anime.
Another issue is the constant use of flashbacks to fill up time, sometimes entire strings of episodes are just flashbacks piled on flashbacks with a minute of new content. They used to bother me but lately not so much because often times it has literally been a decade or two since a scene they reference has premiered. I just don't remember what happened anymore.
I'm going to continue to stick with the anime and not switch over to the manga, but that is not a recommendation for everybody. I hope that one day they release a "Kai" version of this show that gives it a more consistent style and has tighter pacing for the story. THAT I could give a higher score.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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