GrandLineReview, I am calling you out.
This is a review mainly focused on the post-time skip era of One Piece in comparison to the pre-time skip.
To sum it all up, post-time skip is a shell of its former self. And why is that? Well, it’s because Oda has changed what he is prioritizing. In the pre-time skip days, Oda focused on character development as the top priority, followed by action, and then lastly, world building. The post-time skip One Piece has focused mainly on world building, followed by action, and very far back is character development.
What made me – and many others - get into
...
One Piece were the main characters, the Straw Hats. Watching the Straw Hats interact with each other and building their friendships was very entertaining. This is because all of them were likable and interesting characters – well, excluding Franky. Franky was never given a character; other than being the robot guy.
Since the time skip, our main characters aren’t really main characters anymore. The only exception is Luffy, who is always front and center. The plot no longer focuses on developing the Straw Hats. Nami and Robin are nothing more than fanservice nowadays; they barely do ANYTHING. Usopp is little more than the prototypical coward, and Chopper is just a mascot now. His monster point transformation, which was once the most fascinating thing about Chopper, has become a joke. Brook is still funny, but he never had as much development as the other characters anyway. The worst thing for Brook is that he joined too late in the series when One Piece was already getting more “kooky” and “zany”, meaning that any possible character focus he could’ve gotten had he shown up earlier is now a pipe-dream. Zoro does have cool moments and fights, but he been pushed aside by other characters like Law; who take on the role of second-in-command for long stretches at a time. And then there is Franky, who is a robot. This all leads us to Sanji. My god, Sanji, what have they done to you? After being chased by trans people for two years, he’s then given the laughable story arc of almost dying constantly because he gets noise bleeds from seeing girls. Fucking girls. Yes, he was like always like Brock from Pokemon, but after the time skip he is LITERALLY pushed to death’s door from seeing women! Also, Sanji has been getting his ass kicked in 1-one-1fights to everyone. “Hold on!” You must be saying, “Sanji got his own arc, right?” Yes, you are right, because after destroying a beloved character and turning him into a joke, you kind of need to find a way to fix him so the fans don’t rage. Enter the Whole Cake Island story, where Sanji redeems himself by: getting his ass kicked by his father, baking a cake, and getting a ridiculous Power Rangers suit. In short, he doesn’t do anything. They do touch on his childhood, but it’s pointless anyway, because all we find out is that he wants to be a cook, and that he had a shitty life as a child. Sanji, as a character, doesn’t change from beginning to end throughout the Whole Cake Island arc. Bafflingly, it is Luffy who develops far more in Sanji’s own arc. At some point, Sanji has his hero’s journey hijacked, and it ends up being Luffy who transforms and receives the gifts of goodness. Do I think Oda hates Sanji and the Straw Hats? No! That’s a really foolish conclusion to come to. Likewise, it would be just as foolish to believe these low quality character arcs indicate that Oda likes Sanji (wow, GrandLineReview). Only an idiot would present the false dichotomy that Oda either loves or hates Sanji. The actual answer is that he just doesn’t care about him – or the other Straw Hats - as much as he cares about world building.
World building has become the main driver in this series. To understand how, I will split up world building into two categories: first is the design of characters and the world at large, and the second category is the actual characters in the world. In regards to the first category, the different locations the straw-hats go to after the time skip are certainly crazy. Each new place seems to top the last, but none of them are bad. The character designs, on the other hand, are just ridiculous now. While it is true that the people in One Piece always looked goofy, Oda has turned it up the silliness to eleven. These are just nitpicks, however. For the second category, we come to the main problem with world building: the side characters in every location that get pushed to main character status. This is a very bad situation, because it means that in each new story arc, you will have Luffy, and at least one other side character that gets the focus, major character moments, and development. It happens in every arc: in Fishmen Island, it is Luffy, Jinbe, and Shirahoshi; in Punk Hazard: it’s Luffy, Law, Smoker, Momonosuke, and Kinemon; in Dressrosa, we have Luffy, Rebeca, Law, Bellamy, Sabo, Kyros; and now in Wano, there’s Luffy and every side-character (way too many to count). Wano is somewhat better, because Zoro is being focussed on too - which is a breath of fresh air, but doesn’t change the point being made here. Even in Whole Cake Island, we have characters like Pedro who get better moments than Sanji – who is the guy that the arc is supposed to be about. Now, I am not saying the development these characters are getting is bad (because it really isn’t), but I didn’t start watching this show for these minor characters. I don’t care about these minor characters. While it is nice to have a few, I care about the Straw Hats, and I do not enjoy them being pushed off to the sidelines with absolutely nothing to do. This is not to say this writing style is bad necessarily. The Alabasta arc had some of these traits and was great nonetheless, but having this type of story for five straight arcs while the main crew is neglected starts to get annoying.
When you look at One Piece pre-time skip - specifically arcs like Water 7 - the characters being focussed on were Robin, Usopp, Franky, and Luffy. Then you had awesome smaller arcs like Whisky Peak with great character development for Zoro, Luffy, Nami and Vivi. Enies Lobby is pretty much about Robin, while every Straw Hat gets their own fight and chance to develop. Some of the best moments of the show took place when the main cast was given the attention and focus, and those arcs were great because we dealt with characters that Oda took the time to develop over years; he didn’t start shoving new characters for us to care about down our throats in every single arc.
The action in One Piece is great throughout, so comparisons between pre- and post-timeskip is a wash. I will just mention that fights actually are very important in developing characters (contrary to what some idiots presume). The fact is that characters not having fights and not winning fights will ruin any character (Sanji). What makes fights so important to One Piece is not the action per se, but the idea that your life is at stake and they need to find any way to survive. Seeing how far you will go to become stronger when the chips are down was a way we were able to gain insights into most of the Straw Hats early in the series. It doesn’t matter what your role on the ship is: whether you’re a swordsman driven to finally cut steel in pursuit of becoming the best; or a doctor that is forced to the point of eating three rumble balls just to live and not let his friends down. Whether people want to admit it or not, fights are important to everyone in One Piece. Sanji’s best moments were against the wolf guy in Enies Lobby, and part of that was because we saw his intelligence at work.
SIDE-NOTE: GrandLineReview, you cannot make a video jerking off to the fight between Luffy and Katakuri, then turn around and say fight aren’t important to character development for a main Straw Hat fighter in Sanji. One Piece is a shonen, after all.
Why do I think Oda changed the formula to One Piece? Well, I think Marineford had a major part to play in this. Marineford was an arc that really focused on how grand the One Piece world really is, and since on Luffy was the only Straw Hat present, other characters who probably wouldn’t have that much screen time were suddenly pushed front and center. And what was the result of that arc? One Piece exploded in popularity, and the sales of One Piece manga took off into space. I don’t think it’s too much to assume that Oda saw what happened, and shifted the series more in the direction that made it so popular.
Another problem with this show is pacing. The series moves so slow that it takes forever for anything to happen. And no, I’m not just talking about the anime. People assume that the manga itself is infallible and perfect paced, but the reality is that it is also INCREDIBLY slow. The anime makes this problem much worse, but this effect is only so unbearable because of how badly paced the series is in the first place. Whenever a new One Piece arc starts, I actually think to myself, “Great! I’ll check back in two years when they stop faffing about and the story starts getting good.”
Side Note: The manga is horribly drawn. Oda shoves so much stuff in one panel that you have no clue what the characters are actually doing, and every chapter looks like a shit-show is taking place. This might piss some people off, but really, some of these panels are inscrutable as hell. Before some idiot messages me saying that I lack the perception to discern what is happening, this is not just me. I’ve watched videos of people reviewing manga chapters, and they will have completely different interpretations of what is happening in certain scenes. This is not an issue with me, this is Oda throwing too much shit on the page.
The bottom line is that there is something very wrong with what One Piece has become. There are a few signs that things are improving a little with Wano, but it genuinely feels like this series has lost part of its soul. We began with a small crew of really good people that you actually loved watching interact with each other. Some of my favourite moments in the entire series would be the parts between major arcs, when these awesome characters would be travelling on the Going Merry living with each other; they felt like a family, and I cared about every one of them (well, maybe not Franky). You don’t get this feeling anymore. In many ways, the move from the Going Merry to the Sunny is symbolic of One Piece as a whole: we have moved from a humbler, deeply personal adventure to an overblown and gimmicky monstrosity. The Straw Hats don’t feel like a family anymore, and they feel less real. The focus of the story is almost never on them being together anymore, with Oda opting to focus on building his big shiny world. The reality is that modern One Piece has become a caricature of itself, and whatever gave this series its soul died by the time skip.
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Jan 6, 2021
GrandLineReview, I am calling you out.
This is a review mainly focused on the post-time skip era of One Piece in comparison to the pre-time skip. To sum it all up, post-time skip is a shell of its former self. And why is that? Well, it’s because Oda has changed what he is prioritizing. In the pre-time skip days, Oda focused on character development as the top priority, followed by action, and then lastly, world building. The post-time skip One Piece has focused mainly on world building, followed by action, and very far back is character development. What made me – and many others - get into ... |
