"One Piece" from the perspective of years

Another archival text, this time about "One Piece". Since today I wrote a long post about the upcoming series, for a couple I will put my only text about OP. This year I would like to write at least one more (I have 2 ideas - "Why anime OP sucks?" And "Akatsuki vs Troupe of Phantom vs Shichibukai.) And for now, I invite you to read, have a nice day.

Although I don't really like "One Piece" at the moment, believe me, or not, but years ago I was his zealous fan. At one time I was the administrator of the onepiece.com.pl website, having received a baton after Hyrule. I was also at a concert in London, where the creator of the "One Piece" soundtrack, along with talented musicians, played various songs known from the anime discussed here. In addition, cult anime scenes flew in the background. In general, simply something beautiful, an indescribable impression.

So as you can see, I devoted a lot of attention to this title. Bah! It is also probably the manga that I devoted the most time to in general (and it was not easy, considering my extreme reluctance to read scans on the web), but it would be rather impossible without the help of Dahaka from op.com.pl, which was demanding the worst of the military treps. My current reluctance is due to several reasons: poor anime, "fatigue of material", a few annoying flaws (reproduction of certain patterns, way of drawing some characters, not very complex fights, as in HxH or "FMA: Brotherhood", excessive stretching of the main plot) and strokes (do not be afraid, I do not judge her badly, this is a purely subjective matter). The fact that I'm slowly growing out of most "fairy-tale" titles doesn't help that. Although I admit it Clothing always and everywhere, just as Toriyama and Togashi were able/often to show dynamism and strength of the character in their own manga, so gOda learned to perfectly move his reader with the same drawing. I am an emotional man, although I rarely move with a movie or manga, but ... Eiichiro can present emotions, facial expressions so well, create an amazing, fairy-tale atmosphere, so overwhelm the viewer with unimaginable suffering, and show the most beautiful scenes in life. .. Ah, long to speak.

I often make fun of "One Piece", sometimes I complain about some solutions in the manga, almost always on anime (yes, I know, I am fucking boring about this topic xD). But despite all this, it's probably still the best "tapeworm" in the world. Yes, I officially gave it above HxH. Mainly because of hiatus, and yet we are not sure if Troll-gashi would have maintained such a level were it not for the breaks. When it comes to purely subjective impressions, I prefer his manga because of the characters, building relationships between them, I often get the impression as if they really lived (I have a similar feeling with OP, although I feel it less strongly), fighting and general maturity. I'm not saying that "One Piece" is not like that, it's about a difference that Chucky once wisely noticed, also from op.com.pl - "If the character in HxH declares that he wants to kill someone, he actually leads to real actions and tries to do it. " These reasons make me prefer manga about hunters rather than pirates. After all, you need to be able to look the truth in the eyes and simply recognize the superiority of this comic. One Piece can be criticized for many things, but it can be praised for even more. Well, you can even write about it all rich books, so I will try to summarize it so as not to bore you too much.

But back to the beginning ... My adventure with the "One Piece" brand began right after graduating from high school. I experienced the longest vacation of my life that I spent playing "World of WarCraft" and watching "One Piece". If I didn't play in the world of Azeroth, I was stacking a double exp belt in the city and watched the next adventures of the Straw crew. In general, you know almost 100% extreme no-life. At the same time, anime was a bit ahead of the Thriller Bark saga, so I had a lot to make up for. Just like then, today my favorite ark is Water 7 and Enies Lobby. At the moment I do not think that these are the best stages in the history of shounens, they are a little for Yorknew and Chimera Ant in my personal ranking. This does not take away the craftsmanship with which the author combined the two arc , creating one, as beautiful and almost perfect saga as hunters with chimeras.

Nico Robin's past is an absolute masterpiece. I have tears in my eye when I watched these episodes for the first time. When Aokiji was freezing Saul, I was really close to tears. To this day, they are one of my favorite flashbacks in general. As I said, Eiichiro knows how to move a viewer very well through ordinary comic strip pages. After years of reading the chapter in which Luffy orders Nico Robin to "live", it was impossible to stop the emotion. The ship's funeral was similar (yes, I know how strange it sounds), but trust me ... it really worked. Luffy's voice actress also gave advice and many scenes, mainly thanks to her involvement, have already gone down in the history of the best moments in M&A ever. Real walls of the text were written, counted in tens of megabytes, in which the voice actors were praised, as well as, of course, the author of the comic, so these delights are not exaggerated.

I continued my adventure and came to the beginning of Thriller Bark. However, I was forced to take a break to watch other cartoons so as not to be sentenced to one episode a week. I returned to the series, somewhere around Zoro's fight with Kuma on TB (by the way, it turned out great, even today this thread is defending). I stopped watching anime after Marineford because the level of animation and excessive dragging started to irritate me too much. While the episodes from the arc, in which Kuma separated the Straw (I can never remember the archipelago of these islands ...) I fanatically praised, while at Marineford, I began to whine more and more at the Toei Animation studio.

This is a good opportunity for me to present things that I consider to be flaws in this title. Let's start with my biggest problem, anime. It is disgusting dragged on! I remember the time when "Naruto" came to Poland and all fans praised - "it's something like DragonBall, but without dragging!". Oh damn, I'll tell you that as I refreshed the whole DB a year ago, I was much less pissed off, and stretching the action was definitely less noticeable. This is a battlefield, most episodes should be quite dynamic. This is not some philosophical series that can be based primarily on great dialogues or a slow presentation of the world, and building a climate. The creators do not have to throw 4 or 5 chapters into the animated version (like David Production to "Jojo's Bizzare Adventure" or MadHouse to many episodes of HxH), just put in 2 chapters, it's the perfect pace for OP. I don't like watching adventures, battlefield players, sportsmen, etc. in which the pilot flies too slowly, it irritates me much more than animation and sometimes worse line in episodes. This really can be forgiven, especially that creating such a long series is simply unprofitable these days.
The solution to this problem is the long-standing fillers which have passed the exam in the case of "Naruto". After such 3-year stuffers you can make 2 decent ark, 1 20-episodes filler, another canonical arc, etc. I would survive, but as far as I'm concerned, I can wait. Honestly, I prefer to get OP at +/- DBS than what Toei produces from Water 7 (although now it is said to have improved). As for the rating of this cartoon ... well, when I finished my adventure with him, I gave him 6/10 and I think it is an honest assessment. Peany in honor of the great plot, world, history goes to the account of the manga. I can praise the animated version at most for voice actors (whose Toei Animation has really good and with a concise!). And a bit moderately for music, which in my opinion for several long years was missing several battle music backgrounds (in contrast to HxH , or above all "Naruto" and "Naruto: Shippuuden"), although it has a lot of touching songs that perfectly build the atmosphere in heart-catching flashbacks and sadder moments.
Speaking of which, it irritates me that the author avoids killing characters. While a few deaths can be swallowed, wasted the sacrifice of Pell (who had no chance of surviving this bomb), it is an ordinary sin and the massacre of a very good idea. A similar fate befell Pagaya, this grandfather from Heavenly Island, who took the ulti of Zeus from Dota (optional Karthus from LoL) as a chest and got up ... In turn, some characters could fall away, such as Law, who survived a lot on Dressrosa, but that's the fate of popular characters ... Sasuke and Hitsugaya also had "bonuses" thanks to their fans.

For years, the saying that "characters in OP die only in retros" and for a long time was the most accurate text. However, it is annoying to drag some of the arches in the manga by accumulating too many threads and characters. A good example of this is Dressrosa, where not only too much was happening, but Eiichiro decided to separate the crew, which resulted in the story developing at an even slower pace. What is worse, the plot of some of the archs is often so overloaded that sometimes it is impossible to fully develop the potential of new (or old, which have not yet received enough air time) characters. The last thing that irritates me, however, is such typical "scriptures". Don't get me wrong, the series is non-schematic in many respects, and the author develops it in a really ingenious way (and praise him for that!). The point is that some of his habits are all too noticeable. Nami got sick and we need a doctor - we get to the island where Chopper is. Luffy always fights the captain, Zoro with his right hand and Sanji with the left. Absolutely every member of Straw has to have (at least in theory) some dramatic flashbacks (although this last point may be related to the final piece "One Piece", as well as his previous message about companions, so do not take this accusation very seriously). By the way, most of the Straw would end up in a closed facility after such childhood experiences. There was more of it, I once wrote a long text about it, giving specific examples, but unfortunately, they faded from my memory for years. Generally, it is worth remembering that although gOda stands out at many points in comparison to other mangacs, he cannot always be original.

When it comes to these positive aspects of "One Piece", the most visible thing is the universe itself. Gargantua large, with a well-thought-out and well-written story. Each island has a characteristic climate. From the idea itself, through the culture and network of relationships between the characters. As I often complain about OP, I respect him very much for the world. If that was not enough, it is a manga in which you can see many creatures known from mythology and fantasy (and if I'm not mistaken, I think he used all the more or less known creatures here).

What's more, gOda is extremely efficient in reaching for the characters we already know and from time to time, reminds us of their existence. It is worth praising him for a very wise approach in many cases. Once when talking to Hyrule (the former translator of the OP episodes on my previous site), we agreed that Eiichiro Oda perfectly "closes" the threads. If a character or a plot is ever useful to him, then he leaves himself a suitable gate, in the form of a reasonable understatement. It turns out that it is not necessary for further history and/or harms (even the most brilliant creator will not plan everything in 100% and he may have some worse ideas), he just does not come back to it. Looking at competition from Jump , in this respect he is a great creator. It is similar to the power system and the character balance. Despite a dozen or so but it is good, and looking at "Naruto" or "Bleach", it is very good. Although the Nen system from "Hunter x Hunter" appeals to me much more, "Devil Fruit" is equally interesting and varied. Initially, the most logical for me was the type of Logia (which turns man into elemental <for some time it was, you know Japan>, e.g. snow, electricity, fire, light, mud, etc.), which are generally ridiculed by serious pirates. Crocodile put it best - "the power of the fruit depends on the user's imagination." Each of them has its strengths and weaknesses, you just need to be creative and use them wisely. Let the first one throw a stone who has not laughed at least once for the fact that Luffy is a gummy. He and Hisoka from HxH prove to us that rubber, contrary to appearances, is really useful, strong, and dangerous power.

A few sentences about the characters at the end, because both of them and their connections deserved a separate paragraph. There is a meme on the internet that shows the complexity of "Naruto", "Bleach" and "One Piece". The line symbolizing such an indicator in "Naruto" is, for known reasons, pointlessly tangled up. In the case of "Bleach", generally simple, like a flail, and OP extremely complex, chaotically twisted, but still internally consistent. Hundreds, if not two, connecting threads. When a person begins to count them, you can immediately get the proverbial "headache". Currently, I do not like most of the characters from "One Piece", because the way they were created ceased to suit me. I have nothing to them, I still like: Enel, Robin, Nami, Zora, Doflamingo Luffy, Drake, I respect Akainu very much, the scene when he burned Ace was just beautiful, he deserved it, he got provoked, like a moron and wasted all his father's work. I also like Kizaru, and yes, I still think that its fruit makes it the most powerful in this universe - if you want, I can discuss it. I just prefer the way the characters create the author of the often-cited "Hunter x Hunter". Ode is good in this respect, but my tastes have changed over the years. It's not that the characters from "One Piece" is shallow or something. Ie. well, sometimes they are, but OP is a comic book written in the convention of fairy tales and the way these characters are created (or at least as far as I can remember this title) is part of the story of God. I just prefer more realism, a wider spectrum of "gray" (less black and white characters), which is in HxH or FMA.

I once read (90% in an interview, but I don't remember exactly) that gOda wants "One Piece" to be the "quintessence of the" shounen-battlefield "genre in the future. In my opinion, he is doing really well, although there are periods when the ship has worse winds. I have not always liked the author's decisions, but I have nothing to complain about. Let him achieve his goal, I wish him that! I hope that our flag (was the action of signing on the Polish flag, which will go to Eiichiro Oda) reached you and maybe we will get some hidden joke in the manga?