One Piece is without a doubt the worst anime ever created. Its characters are obnoxious and simplistic, its art style is extremely hit or miss, its music is overbearing to the point of annoyance, it's just straight up sexist, and, worst of all, it is SLOW. PAINFULLY SLOW. UNWATCHABLY SLOW.
First and foremost, let's take a look at the story and the characters. With the sheer amount of time put into introducing each member of the crew, establishing their backstories, and then forcing them into a wide array of situations, one might get the impression that One Piece is almost entirely character-driven. This expectation is pretty
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well established during the show's first arcs--the East Blue section, as we're introduced to the first members of the crew: Zoro, Nami, Usopp, and Sanji--each of whom have varying backstories and personal scores to settle before they can become part of the straw hats. Arlong Park, which I would consider to be one of the worst arcs in anime history, really drives home this idea, that before we can get into the action, we have to dissect the stories of our protagonists, antagonists, and featured side characters. So why is Arlong Park so bad, and why do I consider One Piece's characters so utterly shallow?
The first answer is that Luffy, largely because of his status as a self-insert for the audience, is often relegated to the sidelines for the sole purpose of not resolving the story too quickly. In Arlong Park, he does nothing, for no reason, for episode after episode, just to fight Arlong at the end. Even though it would have made much more logical sense for Luffy to fight Arlong sooner, the show needed to artificially suspend the action just to tell us about Nami's character via endless flashbacks. If Luffy wasn't just a tabula rasa, if he actually had a personality beyond wanting to eat food being intellectually stunted, this wouldn't be such a problem, but as an empty protagonist, he's relegated to being a plot device.
The second answer is a combination of factors: the content of the cast's stories is often cliche and the characters themselves are archetypal, and the way in which that already poor content is delivered is slow and laborious. As I'll further elaborate on later in the review, One Piece is very filler-heavy. The same flashbacks are played sometimes multiple times per episode, only to be played yet again in the next episode on top of a separate recap. To once again use Arlong Park as an example, Nami's incredibly simplistic backstory, that she was a young girl forced into organized crime to help her family, is repeated ad nauseam while we wait for Luffy to waltz in and resolve everything when he finally feels like it. The content here is poor, its delivery is poor, and its pacing is bad.
In the end, even after 14 episodes focused entirely on Nami and her past, we're left with little character development and a backstory so deep I already summed it up in less than a sentence. She joins the strawhats, but she remains a thief obsessed with money, just as she was before the arc began.
Every main character can be summed up in the exact same way. We meet them, they display their singular character trait, they reveal to us via flashback a pivotal moment in their past that now defines their entire existence, the strawhats help them work towards their defining goal in life, they join the gang. All of this remains simplistic, poorly paced, and formulaic. Even over 300 episodes in, the exact same formula is at play, delivered in the exact same way.
Moving on, let's talk about the art style. I've heard a lot of people call One Piece ugly or grotesque, and I strongly disagree. SOME of One Piece is ugly and grotesque, but only some of it. The main characters, minus Usopp, are aesthetically pleasing and thematically consistent in their depictions. Luffy especially is masterfully designed, the Strawhat logo is wonderful, and their first ship, the Going Merry, is quite nice. I think that the majority of One Piece's art problems lie in its inconsistency and its side characters. So many characters in One Piece look disturbing, grotesque, ugly, and frankly obnoxious. And while sometimes this makes sense for thematic consistency, often times the dissatisfying character designs get in the way of my enjoyment of the show. Why do random character look so freaky??? It's unsettling, and I wish that less characters were deep in the uncanny valley.
Next up is the music. One Piece has a perfectly fine soundtrack on the face of it, but because it has specific themes for its characters, many arcs overuse tracks to an obnoxious degree. From what I remember, Chopper's introduction arc is what broke me. The same songs are played again and again with the same demented flashbacks. It felt like I was being Pavlov'd by the show runners. That's all I have to say about that.
Here we are, at the juicy part of the review, the brain-dead sexism.
There's a very well known meme online about how One Piece's female characters "change" over time, but assuming you aren't familiar, here's the deal: the main female characters, Robin and Nami, have their breasts increasingly enlarged over the show's runtime, to the point of absurdity. Although this is absolutely hilarious, it's also disgusting, depraved, and obnoxious. I need to know, who the fuck is watching this show for the sex appeal? There's also Sanji, the resident otaku of the group, and then Afro-skeleton, who are massive pervs and painfully unfunny. Their behavior isn't amusing, it's just gross, plain and simple.
So how about we elaborate on something I've consistently brought up throughout the review: the pacing. After the show's initial start, every episode becomes ~50% recap. This isn't even a joke. There is one 20 min episode of One Piece for every 1 issue of manga, so the showrunners are forced to pad, and pad, and pad out the run time over and over again until the show reaches near unwatchable status. Now I know what you're saying: skip the recap parts. And while that is possible, it's annoying. Trying to binge watch One Piece feels like hours of just mashing my right arrow key, skipping the intro, the credits, the endless recaps and flashbacks and reused scenes. This might sound hyperbolic, but the reality of the situation is that it is PAINFULLY REAL. Even the most diehard fan could not watch One Piece without skipping through at least some of the filler. This goes hand in hand with the show's other problems to create a truly infuriating watching experience, where the characters go on demented rants recapping the same shallow backstories and events we heard in the last episode, and the episode before that, and before that, and so on. On top of that, the show's endless cast of side characters fill up a good 20% of the show's valuable remaining run time. And while I sometimes enjoyed time spent with them, I soon found myself waiting for all those side adventures to pay off, for the non-essential characters to reappear, for there to be any character development at all for either them, or our mains (other than just powering up), but that's the thing about One Piece, there is no development. All those side characters you were looking forward to checking back in with? They've just disappeared permanently after a pointlessly lengthy one-off introduction.
One Piece is a lot like the controversial live action show LOST, except LOST had an ending. It didn't go on forever. In the end it answered its mysteries, it had conclusions, it had full character arcs. One Piece never ends. It's an endless stream of new characters the audience will never see again, their introduction and short lived examination acting as nothing but a substitution for any form of character development or main story progression. And even though I truly despise this show, what kept me watching were the small glimpses I got of greatness. The interesting arc premises, the overarching mystery, the lore and world building, these all genuinely interested me and kept me watching. But in the end, there isn't anything there. To get literally anything out of this show you have to voluntarily waste your time for hours upon hours, watching as nothing changes except Nami's cup size.
I guess that brings me to one last point before the conclusion: THE MAIN STORY IS GOOD. I like the lore of One Piece, I like the pirates, I like most of the antagonists, and I like how the main characters just fuck around murdering cops and helping people out when they feel like it. But what I don't like is how rarely the arcs pay off, how unimportant the side characters are, how overwrought the flashbacks become, and how little was revealed about the main story in my over 340 episode watch time. The only conclusion I can realistically come to having watched so much of it is that this show is meant to waste your time.
So why on earth is One Piece so highly rated? Two reasons: First, the initial couple of arcs are so bad that they generally put off anyone who might have mixed feelings about the show, weren't very interested to begin with, or were never going to be invested. The few people that do actually make it through the Arlong Park arc, i.e. the worst thing of all time, generally enjoy the show a lot more, as its almost all uphill from there. Second, sunk cost fallacy. As you watch more and more One Piece, a certain mentality begins to set in. You find yourself saying again and again, "I've come this far, it'll get better" "Just one more episode, things'll pick up" "Just one more arc, and something will finally happen..." And yet the more you watch, the more you realize nothing is ever going to change. That the small crumbs of story and meaning dropped every 20 episodes simply aren't enough anymore. And yet it's so hard to stop watching a show that you're hundreds of episodes into. That you've invested far too many hours in to just drop all of a sudden. It's the people that stick around, that become invested to the point of delusion, that simply can't escape anymore, who dominate the ratings online.
Do yourself a favor, avoid this one. (If you're desperate to experience it tho, read the manga instead)
Aug 14, 2022
One Piece is without a doubt the worst anime ever created. Its characters are obnoxious and simplistic, its art style is extremely hit or miss, its music is overbearing to the point of annoyance, it's just straight up sexist, and, worst of all, it is SLOW. PAINFULLY SLOW. UNWATCHABLY SLOW.
First and foremost, let's take a look at the story and the characters. With the sheer amount of time put into introducing each member of the crew, establishing their backstories, and then forcing them into a wide array of situations, one might get the impression that One Piece is almost entirely character-driven. This expectation is pretty ... 
Aug 8, 2022
Blame! is my favorite manga of all time. There's something enthralling about reading it, to the point where I literally could not put it down from start to finish, and I think this comes down to just how well Blame! utilizes the medium of manga to tell a story.
The first thing you notice reading Blame! is the negative space. Nihei Tsutomu tries his best to tell a purely visual story, with dialogue and text kept to the bare minimum. Fitting with this theme, many of Blame!'s characters are illiterate, completely unable to decipher any signs or symbols in the grotesque world that surrounds them. ... 
Aug 8, 2022
With the abundance of cyberpunk manga and anime available, Gunnm stands out as a true masterpiece alongside the titans of the genre. Its extraordinarily vibrant world paired an equally vibrant art style elevates it far beyond its peers---it's often violent, bloody, brutal, disturbing, but these darker aspects just serve to better highlight the moments of levity for Alita and our characters.
Talking in too much detail about the plot would involve major spoilers, but I cannot recommend this work highly enough. If you've read Blame!, Akira, Dorohedoro, and other manga in a similar vein, you should without a doubt give Gunnm a try. |
