Now the basic facts. There are currently 688 episodes aired, and that's probably bit more than half of the planned material Eiichiro Oda (the manga creator) has . To catch up to the current arc you would need to sacrifice around 40 average anime series (or you could do just a lot of different staff in your life, right?). That's more than ten days of constant watching. So how to measure if it's worth it? How to benchmark it?
Before you will read further you need to be totally aware of one thing: the anime is slow, the pacing is awful, more so then ever in the newest arcs. It's like they are trying to squeeze all the money they can from the audience (the Toei animation studio), the same thing that Naruto is currently doing.
Also, the anime in my opinion, has a pretty much a love/hate relationship going on, and to measure it for yourself, you would need to consider watching around 100-110 episodes. Now if compared to 700 or 1000 it's or even more it's not that bad...
The reason for that, is that the real action begins with the Alabasta Saga (saga consists of few arcs), that starts at episode 62. If the Alabasta Saga won't get your full attention, you will feel forced to stare at the screen etc., dislike this and that, then you should consider dropping One Piece for your own safety. If, on the other hand, you will find yourself immersed in the anime, waiting impatiently before you can watch the next episode, welcome on the love train.
Also consider this. One thing is to watch anime that has the standard 12-24 episodes (or just a bunch of seasons), another thing is to watch anime that has hundreds of episodes. Obviously, to keep the quality level constant in such big series (or manga series for the fact) is just impossible. If you won't like Alabasta, it will be hard to keep on watching later. Now there are better arcs then Alabasta, but do you want to watch another 100 episodes just to get to them?
All in all, the best way, from the neutral point of view would be just to write down the aspects that create One Piece, make it what it is, and depend on how you respond to them, watch or just leave, it's just as simple as that, having of course in mind what I wrote above:
• Humor with mix of goofing around
• Slow, bad pacing at times
• Long Battles - full shounen style
• Good Story that connects all the Sagas
• Great Characters with their own personal story (especially the crew)
• Many black and white characters, you are either good or bad
• Simple, meaningful emotions, that even the youngest audience will understand (especially friendship)
• Repetitive at times
• Very good voice acting ( I am NOT watching a dubbed version)
• Pretty much no death
• Just decent music and art even in the newest arcs
• Enormous world and enormous amount of characters that you will stumble across your journey
• Creativity regarding the laws, history, organizations, countries, buildings (size of some of them is truly astounding) and most obviously all the POWERS the shounen characters get
• Predictable at times
• Generally, over the top design of many aspects of the manga and anime
• Misconception regarding some terms: like pirates, government, marines etc.
Know the author of this simple review is a bit of fan of series, but I tried to stay as objective as possible. So the high score for me is obvious.
Thanks for reading.
