ugh. Finally, an opportunity to make a comprehensive post about all the faults I have with one piece and I have finals to study for. Dammit. Well, without going into specifics, I have various issues with it, but it simply demands too much suspension of disbelief from me. I'm a nit picking kind of person, and I admit that, but OP has more moments that make me go "That's just dumb!" than anything else I ever read. It's just everything, from how the powers work (There are so many examples I can list, but one is that because Luffy had a thin layer of water on him, he could hit Crocodile, even though Crocodile has been shown to have to be able to drain water from an entire city, and the water on his fist would probably dry out after the first punch), the characters (Zoro is trapped in a rock like substance and has a sword that can cut through rock. "I'll cut off my legs!..Oh, wait Luffy's hear, I'll just sit on my *** until he takes care of the work for me then.")and a lot of the plot points (At the end of Alabasta, though Crocodile was defeated, people still blamed the King for the destruction of their city. Thousands of the rebel fighters are enraged and ready to take veng- oh, wait? What is this? A child? He says that he saw the King acting not like himself? So he must have NOT been the king?! Oh, joy! Everything is okay now, based on the anecdotal evidence of this random child! Come on, everyone, lets party! Forget about the fact that god knows how many people just died fighting for what we only now realize was NOTHING at all.Lets just leave their still rotting corpses in the streets because this is a time for JOY and HAPPINESS because now everything is going to be ****ing dandy! Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit).
All the characters are very one dimensional and never truly develop. Tell me, has Luffy, the most recurring character of them all, ever developed? He's gained powers and went on a bunch of adventures, but I never see any real change in him. He wanted to be a pirate from a child, he acts dumb but joyful, always looks for fun, never betrays his friends, and is angered whenever something bad happens to his nakama. Not even Ace's death really changed him, he is the same character that he was from the beginning. Happy go lucky guy who loves his friends and continues to search for adventure. Some characters do change in minimal ways, but never in large fundamental ones (Nami learns to trust Luffy, Sanji goes on an adventure, Robin realizes that she found her place).But the problem is that hardly anyone ever changes in a fundamental way. Almost every one of them is, by and large, the same character they were when they were introduced.
Simple characterization isn't a bad thing, it has it's time and place, but I don't think it works when EVERY character is simple. As a result, when I look at one pieces characters, I don't really believe in any single one of them. By that, I mean I can't empathize with them. I don't care when they get a victory over the current arc's villain, and I don't care when the villain does something horrible to person X. I found the Going Merry's sudden anthropomorphism to be a pathetically sad desperate grab at the audience's sympathy, and when I found out that it actually worked for the majority of people, I actually laughed. The idea of people reading this and having the going merry 'die' is hilarious to me. And that's the greatest emotional reaction I ever got out of the manga. I got a much deeper emotional reaction from Naruto's development from a lonely boy to the determined ninja that he became in part 1 of naruto. I have a much deeper emotional reaction when I read Killua's inner thoughts about how grateful he is to Gon for being his friend. I meh'd my way through 99% of One Piece.
Now, I like one piece. People are often shocked to hear me say so after I rant about it so much.I like the badass moments and I'd really like to see more of the World Government and it's world conquering backstory and especially Akainu. And I like a lot of the characters. It's a fun adventure whenever I turn by brain off. But I have heard people say that one piece is one of the greatest epics of our time. Once I get over the shock induced by hearing something so outrageously ludicrous, all I can say is "To each, his own."
