The story is really well thought of. It has its originality of Devil Fruits, Haki and such. Especially the Pirate Era, the shichibukai system and the 4 emperors of the Grand Line. Though it took inspiration from the anime "Dragon Ball Z" an Oda took some real life pirates and turned them into his own, taking bits of them into his characters.
One Piece, as a long-running anime, was and is a very large piece of hard work. Oda has to keep it exciting with epic fight scenes, cliffhangers (Which I think he's amazing at), and emotional touching scenes. Oda is also really good at foreshadowing, because he has foreshadowed many things from the very beginning of One Piece up to even episode 500+. I do not wish to spoil any of those foreshadowing.
Back to the subject, Oda makes One Piece successful by keeping the interest flowing (Which he does by the good plot lines of each arc) so that at the end of each anime/manga episode/chapter makes you crave more and more. But that interest will sometimes drop when the fillers come, though some of the fillers are also interesting and hilarious on some occasions.
The interest also seems to fall rapidly because of the extremely slow pacing in any arc Oda makes.
Like each big arc (Like East Blue, Alabasta, Sky Island), they all have more than 50 episodes. And 50 episodes is about as long as a year.
That's why some people don't want to watch One Piece.
But, if you have the patience to sit down and just watch, I can assure you, there is a very high change you'll enjoy One Piece, a lot.
Art? No, it's not the best.
At the beginning of One Piece, I have to be honest, the art was pretty bad. But remember this was drawn in the 1990's and they didn't have good technology. The story sometimes can distract you from the art so sometimes when the story gets good, you'll just get dragged into the story deeper and you'll forget everything about the art.
Thankfully, the art improves greatly as the story progresses. The most noticeable improvement starts about around the Water 7 arc which is about episode 200 or so. By then, the story gets amazing good and you'll start to not care about the art.
Then, by episode 500, the art is really good. Compared to episode's 1 art to episode 500's, 500 is like the king of pirates while episode 1 is a small frog in a well (Couldn't help but quoting Mihawk there XD).
It still isn't the best animation but it still earns about a 8/10 by episode 500.
One Piece has a very large variety of sounds that fit the scene super well. From the slurp of noodles to a cymbal clap.
As for the soundtracks... 10/10, no question. Now I don't know about you but One Piece has many soundtracks that you could fall in love with and each scene in the anime, Toei Animation knows exactly what soundtrack it goes with and it fits so good, it's like finding the last piece of a puzzle and fitting it in, completing the puzzle. How do they do it? The soundtrack they choose is literally like finding a couple that were meant to be soulmates. The music can go to happy, then immediately go into a emotional melody.
The openings are the same too. The first opening, "We Are!", is super catchy and I just can't help but sing along with it. And I love it when they make "We Are" with different voices or recreate it into a different opening. There are a total of 3 "We Are" openings. Actually, all of the One Piece openings are catchy and loveable. I also enjoy the narrations in the openings too!
One of the best pros of One Piece is the outstanding character development. Each introduced character has a very unique personality. I don't think any of the introduced characters in One Piece have very similar personalities. That's just my opinion.
Like Nami, who is pretty mature and takes things serious but then turns into a deceiving mischievous cat when it comes to getting money. Like Zoro, who is very strong but gets lost super easily even when someone is telling him directions. Sanji, who acts cool and is a great cook but loses his cool immediately when he comes across a pretty lady. And Luffy who is a drooling dog when he sees food but can be the most loveable, understanding, mature idiot ever. I don't know but Luffy knows the exact words that people need to hear.
I really enjoyed this anime, as you can tell. My brother started watching One Piece about 4 months before me and it was all I heard him talking about. So, when Winter break started, I decided to start watching One Piece. My brother told me that in the beginning, One Piece was very slow but too me, like him, I fell in love with One Piece on the very very first episode. I actually caught up to episode 700 in a month. That's how good it was for me. Overall, I rate this a proud 11/10.
