One Piece

[LumRanmaYasha]

I've said it before, but Oda not writing the Straw Hats for two years really damaged their characterization. Only Luffy still feels consistent as a character anymore, whereas the rest have been reduced to their superficial characterizations and running gags. Compounding the problem is the fact that Oda seems to go out of his way to separate them near the start of an arc and reduce how much they do compared to Luffy, Law, and miscellaneous arc allies considerably, whereas before each crew member would have something meaningful to do and add to the story that would facilitate their own development in some way. It often feels like you can take all the Straw Hats besides Luffy out of the story and it would still play out the same way. Only now, with this new focus on Sanji and his family, does that not feel the case, but even then Oda's still split the crew in half again and we won't see them for god knows how long (especially considering that Nami, Sanji, Chopper, and Brook had been absent from the series for 65 chapters - basically a year and a half!). It's something that I keep hoping will improve, and Sanji at the very least should hopefully return to form, but I don't expect the rest of the crew to become relevant again for a while yet.

As far as villains go, Doflamingo is actually my favorite, or at least my second favorite after Crocodile. Even with how fatiguing the Dressrosa arc was as a whole, I find him as a character and as a threat the most interesting and entertaining out of everyone the Straw Hats have faced yet. But aside from him, I have found the other core post-timeskip arc villains, Hordy, Caeser, and Jack, to be underwhelming compared to previous ones, though I like Caeser as a comic relief character. Kaido made a great first impression, and is definitely imposing, but we still need to learn more about him and see a display of how dangerous he is rather than just interpret it.

I personally still find the story interesting and the series as it's been recently especially intriguing and fun to read, so reading it is not just "routine" for me. It's just the emotional investment I have in the goings-on and the Straw Hats besides Luffy is far less than what it was during the days of the Whitebeard War, and that saddens me to think about since the connection I felt with the characters was what I loved most about the series. It's entertaining, but a more hollow entertainment than what it used to be for me.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Recently, I came across the first two box-sets for One Piece (23-volumes each), and was really tempted to pick up at least the first one. On the one hand, the $185 price tag for one set is a good deal since individually those volumes would cost roughly $230, and I could always save up for it. I've also really been wanting to re-read the pre-New World arcs of One Piece from the early arcs to the golden years of this manga's run, but do you know the one thing stopping me from picking it up? Space. Or to be more specific, a complete lack of it. I simply have nowhere to put so many books for the time being. Not that my living quarters are necessarily cramped, but I don't have much in the way of shelves or storage cabinets, and there's no freaking way that I'm going to just leave a bunch of stuff cluttered on my floor.

So, I'll just have to pass all of that up for now, unfortunately. And yes, I know that I could buy the manga digitally, but the reason I don't is because I prefer to read new content digitally. If it's something that I've already read and liked, I want to own the physical copy. That said, I definitely will have to re-read all of One Piece at some point before it ends. The current stuff is good. It fluctuates a bit too much in quality for my liking, but overall I am still invested in this world and these characters, but I do feel that I lost a lot of the initial passion and drive that I had for the series back when I was first catching up to it, and just like with my revisits of manga like Dragonball and Rurouni Kenshin, I have a strong feeling that rereading One Piece from scratch would help me rekindle my love for it.

For all of the complaints that I've had about this series in the past few years, don't get the wrong idea. I still consider it to be one of Weekly Shonen Jump's greatest and most impactful properties, and beyond that it's a really important series to me.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I have been enjoying the current weekly chapters. I read it and it still feels like One Piece even near two decades since it started.

It's not personally one of my favorites, but I do like reading it. Especially since Sanji is one of the characters in the series I like best.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Whenever I revisit old clips from the anime from the pre-timeskip days, or remember iconic moments that still stick with me to this day, I rekindle that great emotional connection with the series that I reminds me how much I used to, and still, love it. There've been moments here and there from the post-timeskip stuff that might move me as well, but generally I just don't feel that emotional connection to the series that I used to in it's prime. Like with Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, I think a re-read of the series from the beginning would help me rekindle my passion for the series. I might try and do that next summer since it's 20th anniversary will be next July and all.

The current run of chapters has been great, though. I am so, so happy that the Straw Hats feel like themselves again and not the two-dimensional facsimiles that I felt most of them had become after the timeskip. Even more, I love that Sanji has been getting legitimate character development after years of him being little more than a punchline, which is well deserved and so satisfying to see. I love actually being invested in the Straw Hats themselves again instead of just the people they're helping like I was in previous arcs. Really, the only complaint I have with the arc so far is that I feel Oda's spending too much time in these goddamn woods and I just want Luffy to beat Cracker already so they can leave and go somewhere else, but considering that Oda's rectified almost every other gripe I've had about the way the characters have been written these last few years, I can deal with it in anticipation of what's to come.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I have been enjoying the current weekly chapters. I read it and it still feels like One Piece even near two decades since it started.

It's not personally one of my favorites, but I do like reading it. Especially since Sanji is one of the characters in the series I like best.

I still can't believe that you haven't read anything between Water Seven to The Whitebeard Saga. That's easily one of the best story runs in Weekly Shonen Jump since the Golden Age ended. It's like you've read all of One Piece Except for its best material.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Whenever I revisit old clips from the anime from the pre-timeskip days, or remember iconic moments that still stick with me to this day, I rekindle that great emotional connection with the series that I reminds me how much I used to, and still, love it. There've been moments here and there from the post-timeskip stuff that might move me as well, but generally I just don't feel that emotional connection to the series that I used to in it's prime. Like with Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, I think a re-read of the series from the beginning would help me rekindle my passion for the series. I might try and do that next summer since it's 20th anniversary will be next July and all.

The current run of chapters has been great, though. I am so, so happy that the Straw Hats feel like themselves again and not the two-dimensional facsimiles that I felt most of them had become after the timeskip. Even more, I love that Sanji has been getting legitimate character development after years of him being little more than a punchline, which is well deserved and so satisfying to see. I love actually being invested in the Straw Hats themselves again instead of just the people they're helping like I was in previous arcs. Really, the only complaint I have with the arc so far is that I feel Oda's spending too much time in these goddamn woods and I just want Luffy to beat Cracker already so they can leave and go somewhere else, but considering that Oda's rectified almost every other gripe I've had about the way the characters have been written these last few years, I can deal with it in anticipation of what's to come.

I agree about the characters. For the first time in literally years, they feel like themselves again. Up through Dressrossa we got bits and pieces of nuance and development to each of them, but it felt like everyone except for Luffy had become confined to little more than running gags and general comic relief for a while. Ever since the Zou arc I've actually become invested in the individual Straw Hat pirates again.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I have been enjoying the current weekly chapters. I read it and it still feels like One Piece even near two decades since it started.

It's not personally one of my favorites, but I do like reading it. Especially since Sanji is one of the characters in the series I like best.

I still can't believe that you haven't read anything between Water Seven to The Whitebeard Saga. That's easily one of the best story runs in Weekly Shonen Jump since the Golden Age ended. It's like you've read all of One Piece Except for its best material.

To be fair, I only started reading it at the back end of Dressrossa (which wouldn't end!) and all your complaints were also mine. But the current arc does remind me about what I enjoyed about the series, and feels like it could have been written back then without much trouble. It feels like Oda is in the groove.

But yes, they really do need to get out of the woods already.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I think Oda has gotten about 75% of his old rhythm back, but that last quarter is the most crucial thing absent which holds this series back from being as great as it was, and that's the narrative and pacing. Something about the way that Oda used to organize the flow of his story had a quality to it that kept me wanting to read more, and even when I caught up to the material at that point in time (which was back when we were at the beginning of the Impel Down arc), I constantly spent time reading and actively participating in discussion boards and sepeculating with others on popular fan theories as to where the story was going based on subtle clues that Oda left us throughout the manga's run (he's very much like the George R. R. Martin of shonen mangaka in that regard).

With the current stuff, I'm enjoying it when I read each new chapter for the most part, but the content doesn't really stay with me after I finish the last page. I'm not constantly thinking about what happened and where the story and characters might be headed next, and that's what I associate with One Piece when it was at its best, personally.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

While I am liking the development that Sanji is getting in this arc after such a long time of just having felt like a background character, I do have to agree with the fan criticism that Oda is relying a bit too heavily on the formula that he used with Nami and Nico Robin in the Arlong Park and CP9 sagas, respectively.

That said, for anyone following fan theories (and unlike other manga, many of the fan theories for One Piece are based off of actual clues left by Oda in both the artwork and the text), the rest of the arc seems like it'll play out much differently than the Straw Hat Pirates just participating in a series of one-on-one boss fights. Clearly there are other parties besides the Straw Hats who are aiming to crash this wedding, and considering that Big Mom has invited a ton of big names to this event, I have a strong feeling that this will go down as a glorious clusterfuck of multiple top-tier pirates going against each other. I'm picturing something like "Gangland" from TSSM, but on a much larger scale, obviously.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed that Oda's doing the whole crewmember pretends to betray the crew/Luffy doesn't believe them and convinces them to believe in the power of friendship angle again. But at least he's not doing it from the perspective of it being a reveal that the crewmember has betrayed the crew for the sake of the crew like it was with Nami and Robin, since we already know why Sanji's doing what he's doing, which is at least a different way to go about the same trope.

As for the wedding being crashed by multiple parties, I always imagined we'd get something like that during the Reverie, but I'd be interested in seeing that happen here. There's a lot of big players that could come into play, and I have to imagine they'll be some twists and betrayals in store too.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Capone is definitely going to betray Big Mom at some point. It's pretty obvious that he was only pretending to submit to her for the past couple of years since she and her crew massively overpowered him. But I don't believe that any of the Eleven Supernovas would willingly play second fiddle to someone else unless they had a plan in store to take advantage of the situation when things turned in their favor.

Speaking of betrayals, a popular fan theory is that Law will betray Luffy at some point. Despite their alliance, they are still rivals, so I could definitely see this happening, but not for quite a while. The thing about this betrayal, though, is that if it happens, it'll really sting since Oda made us care a lot about Law's character through his extensive backstory, but that could be a really good thing from a dramatic standpoint. Still, I feel like they at least need to overtake Big Mom and Kaido before Law could possibly justify breaking off from their alliance.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Yeah, Capone is definitely a prime suspect. I think Reiju betraying Judge at some point is also a given, probably to help Sanji but maybe for her own ends as well. Caeser also is in a do-or-die situation so he's bound to be figuring out a way to escape Big Mom, so whatever he does during the wedding is no doubt going to cause some chaos.

Law betraying Luffy would be so good dramatically because of how much they've been through now, and how much time we've spent with him over the last couple of years. It'd break my heart as a fan of the dude, but I think we need that kind of shocking heartbreak in the series again, and we haven't really had a surprising dramatic heel turn in the series since Lucci, Kaku, and Kalifa were revealed to be members of CP9. But yeah, something like that probably wouldn't happen until after Kaido is out of the picture, since they formed the alliance to take him down in the first place.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, my temptation to re-read the entire manga from the start up to at least the Whitebeard saga got the better of me and I bought the first five 3-in-1 volumes, which comprises the first 15 single-volumes of OP and covers the entire East Blue saga along with the beginning of the Baroque Works saga. Collecting it this way is actually even cheaper than buying the 23-volume box sets or buying the individual digital volumes.

I'll be updating you guys on my thoughts about the manga as I go through it in retrospect. It'll be interesting given Oda's tendency to clue you in on future events since he's quite well-renowned for having planned much of the story ahead and peppers in lots of clever foreshadowing that many fans notice on their second go through the manga.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Cool. Re-reading the series from the beginning is something I've got to do at some point. I'll probably wait until next summer before I attempt that, but I'll be interested in hearing your thoughts as you go through it again.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'd like to see that. As for me, I'm still waiting for my copy of Black Museum to come in. Should be Monday.