especially against a guy who can toss meteors and lift up your ship with his devil fruit.
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One Piece Manga |OT| ZEHAHAHAHA! The Name of this Age is Blackbeard!
- Thread starter TheGreatDirector
- Start date
- Status
Wanda mentioned getting a newspaper that reported Jack was killed by the Marines he attacked, but they didn't find the body so it's heavily implied he's still alive.
MetroidPrimeRib
Banned
Stopping off on an island after the fight had happened and having no antagonist would be...odd for One Piece but not really unwelcome. Already greatly appreciating the change of pace and location from Dressrosa.
remember that his guys were still looking for raizou. he only left to go after doflamingo. now that he failed his next destination is likely going to be his old one. although things might change depending on what kaidou has planned once he finds out doflamingo is gone.
EndlessSky
Member
Edit: Wrong thread LOL
I don't know what the viz translation has it as, but in mine, Akainu keeps calling Whitebeard a loser. Before that, I heard Akainu's voice as a deep gravel, but the childishness of the insult just makes me hear Donald Trump come through. "Whitebeard was a loooser!"
Edit: Man, Rayleigh REALLY didn't give a shit about Roger's kid. Even after he found out the result of the marine war, he's just "So you're really dead, whitebeard"
Edit: Man, Rayleigh REALLY didn't give a shit about Roger's kid. Even after he found out the result of the marine war, he's just "So you're really dead, whitebeard"
igordennis
Member
Didnt he have a tear in his eye when he heard the news? Or is that another scene?
That's a tear for Whitebeard and not Ace though
Majukun
Member
well he didn't knew ace like,at all..and him being his captain's kid doesn't matter once he is dead
I figured that Sheepshead and Ginrummy had gone with him after the Straw Hats helped fend them off
ssj5krillhan
Member
Yeah, Rayleigh didn't go to Marineford after he found out Ace was Rogers son, but also Luffy was there & he didn't go (and he's supposed to be his uncle according to Buggy in fillers btw :/). I think Rayleigh new Whitebeards crew would keep Luffy safe or he sent Law lol.
did he get banned?
Tathanen
Get Inside Her!
And how! Probably just for a few weeks.
lol what did he post?
i don't really wanna rummage through the thread :/
idk if episodic is really a good move, but I'll play the part of hopeful optimist...
Cloud Strife
Member
Ditto. Ah well, though I'm massively dissapointed I guess we still have the original.
Hype destroyed.
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
One Piece would make a fantastic episodic RPG.
A good RPG, though. Not that trash Romance Dawn nonsense
A good RPG, though. Not that trash Romance Dawn nonsense
Indeed. The music in the anime is like something out of an RPG too.
Cloud Strife
Member
Omg that would be amazing.
Hopefully when the series ends we get a full fledged game starting at Windmill Village and ending at Raftel.
Hopefully when the series ends we get a full fledged game starting at Windmill Village and ending at Raftel.
I want a One Piece game, where you can create your own captain, choice your own crew and travel to unique islands at the same time frame as Luffy and the other Novas (is ends with your character arriving Sabaody Archipelago too late and therefore don't become part of the worst generation).
An open world One Piece game would be cool. Have some non-canon side islands before heading to the canon one.
One idea I've heard was Dragon Ball Xenoverse but with One Piece. Create your own fighter, choose your style, whether you want a Devil Fruit or not, going through the story as the OC.
One idea I've heard was Dragon Ball Xenoverse but with One Piece. Create your own fighter, choose your style, whether you want a Devil Fruit or not, going through the story as the OC.
Majukun
Member
well it wouldn't really work,especially because xenoverse is based around the ability to mix and match attacks and abilities..in onepiece this cannot happen since a devil fruit user should be stuckj with said devil fruit,or a guy who doesn'ìt have a sword can't learn attacks from mihawk or zoro since they are all weapon based
my dream onepiece game would be something like the bukai tenaichi or naruto storm series,with 3d arenas and a strong focus on the various abilities ,both for attacks but also for whatever other kinds of use they can have..like..i don't know,you play as miss double finger and you can walk on walls and upside down due to the spikes
of course I would also want an absurdely large roster..like.every character with a distinct personality in the manga
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
A One Piece Storm-like by CC2 is my dream game. OP fighting games don't get made anymore. Burning Blood looks like it's going to follow the weird arena-style Xenoverse/J-stars trend. :/
Sibersk Esto
Banned
I would spend so much money on a huge one piece rpg
A One Piece game by CC2 would be excellent, since they can make them look better than their respective anime. It's amazing how much Ultimate Ninja Storm makes the Naruto anime look like shit outside of the few extremely well animated bits. It also condenses it well enough, even if it does have its fair bit of sections that go on too long. I remember when the first screenshot for Ultimate Ninja Storm got released (the one that was only on PS3) and everyone's first reaction was "Holy shit, this blows the anime away."
It's also really funny how UNS4 is going to finish the Naruto storyline before the Naruto anime does.
It's also really funny how UNS4 is going to finish the Naruto storyline before the Naruto anime does.
Sibersk Esto
Banned
CC2 does good work on the animation front at least. Jojo all star battle was insane in its details.
So I finished the Marineford arc and......Well.....I'm done. This is the arc I wanted to reread with it's full context and color and now that I have, I don't have much more motivation to reread Fishman Island or Punk Hazard. All of Dressrosa isn't out in color yet. I think I'll wait until it is and then continue the reread. Coincidentally, I started reading OP around the time Fishman Island started, so I've come full circle in many ways. I'll still be reading Zou, but I don't really like to comment on ongoing arcs that much. Even with the most content packed chapters, there's only so much that can happen in 20 pages of a series that makes it it's mission to have a typical arc in the 30-50 range, and doubly so when it's such an interconnected story at this point.
So I think this is going to be my last post here in a while and I'll be summing up my experience and thoughts on One Piece as a whole. I'll try to keep it short, since I have little time now, and I frankly said much of what I would say on a lot of this already. But I'm also going to be covering a great deal of topics and I'm also me, so...well, you know what to expect by now.
Lets talk verisimilitude. I've tried to think of how to explain it, and I can't really demonstrate it using a work that lacks it so much, so I'll be pulling in examples from other stories in an attempt to make my meaning clear. I'm not going to say any of those are better as a whole, so please don't start that fight because it will just go no where. It's just that this is a very difficult topic to address because it's so ridiculously broad in type and it spreads onto every facet of OP. But I'll try. Lets see....
One Piece's story is an amusement park. I don't think this is a statement that anyone here will find untrue, though I'm sure many will disagree that it's a problem at all. In fact, I genuinely feel One Piece embraces the idea. The story is a driving vehicle to an adventure, but it is in a cartoonish realm where the idea of danger exists, but only as a way to excite the characters. When you go to an amusement park, you go on rollercoasters that do scare you going up, but they're fun and they are usually perfectly safe. And they’re also meant to replicate some kind of experience. The Superman - Ride Of Steel is meant to give the idea of flying. In haunted houses, you can have people chasing you around, but they can't actually touch you. They’re meant to give the experience of being in a horror movie, but without actually any danger. Amusements are artifacts created that take you to extremely fake versions of worlds in the name of fun.
Don't get me wrong, I love amusement parks plenty...but they have never been what I look for in a story. When I read a story, I do so to be transported to an actual different world that I can believe exists, not because it adheres to the physics of real life, but because they’ve developed their own internal engines that drive them forward. So, when I read LotR or ASoIaF or Kingkiller Chronicles, I don't feel I am in a place that is artificial or designed, I feel I'm looking into a believable world. Or, if we're keeping to manga, Berserk or FMA or Attack On Titan or Hunter X Hunter. Now, I'm not saying any of those are inherently better stories, but when I read them, I believe in them more than I ever do One Piece for a great number of reasons, for various reasons.
I've already talked about the frankly hundreds of incidents where OP compromises it's own world so as to either make a joke, or progress a plotline or just sheer contrived convenience. When it does this, the artificiality of the world becomes stark apparent, and I can no longer believe that this world exists in it's own build in systems of justifications. Now, in all fairness, literally every fictional world falls apart eventually. Go down the line of asking why this and why that, you'll come to the end of the universe where no one knows why it exists, and it just does. Which that, in itself, can So in both the real world and fictional world, there is a point where there simply are no answers for why things are the way they are. But with regards to Lord of the Rings, you have to go down a very long list that DOES justify why things are the way they are before you eventually reach that end.
With One Piece, that line is very short. Because there either isn't an answer or there isn't a satisfactory one. We were talking about Sanji's fire abilities before, so lets use that as an example. However, I’d like to make it clear I am only using Sanji because he’s the most convienent example I can think of at the moment. We are first given the justification that he does it by turning his leg, using the friction to create the flames. Okay. I can accept that Sanji can do this. What I don't understand the consequences that should apply from this point: 1. Why does Sanji's leg catch fire rather than all of him, or even the more flammable aspects of him, like his hair? 2. Why isn't he hurt by this? His leg hot enough to remain glowing, leg should be literally melted away. 3. If not his actual leg, then surely his pant legging. But no. His flame melted away the first time he used it against Jambe or whatever (the wolf guy from CP9) but not against Orz. I went back and checked. It didn’t happen in when they fought Kuma in SA when he used it twice either 4. How does he maintain the heat, and then disappate it at will? 5. I question how useful this would actually be in an actual fight. From what's depicted, people get severely burned or even cooked with bare contact with it. You need more time than that for heat to transfer, the same way you can touch a hot stove without hurting yourself if you pull away fast enough. And if it is enough time to burn that severely in the space of an instant, then I bring it back to question 2 of how this doesn't burn him, who holds the heat much longer. 6. Why doesn't EVERYBODY do this? If this is something that is so easy to perform, and there are people who are both stronger and faster than Sanji, and this is such an aid to their techniques, isn't this something that every fighter should be using since there are apparently no downsides for this power boost and it's incredibly simple to do. And this gets worse in the time skip when Sanji just uses homophobia to fuel his fire. So, pure emotions can just have exothermic affects like that? So what about Law then? Doesn't this imply that Sanji hates his experience more than Law hates Doflamingo for what he did? Shouldn't Law have been able to fire up his sword in his fight?
So, I could believe that Sanji lights his leg on fire, fine. But then that just raises a whole bunch of other questions that just undermine the rest of the world. For example, in Punk Hazard, they are in a frozen environment half the time. If spinning can produce fire, no one would ever go cold because all you'd need to do is spin once and instant warmth, for example. In contrast, while it's definitely not perfect, it's pretty clear how Alchemy has affected the world of FMA, and there were many clever utilizations for uses of Sympathy magic in the Kingkiller Chronicles. Even Berserk has the somewhat weak, but still a little believable justification for why Guts is the only one who can use a giant sword like that: It’s not that no one else can, it’s just that he is the only bastard crazy enough to try and train with one. I have my own problem’s with Gut’s justification, but it’s something. This…?
It's cheating, basically. Sanji didn't earn this ability, he bullshits it because the story gave it to him with the flimsiest excuse possible. Even though it may look cool visually, I have no satisfaction from seeing Sanji with a leg on fire as an ability because there is no sense that he should have it. And Sanji is only just one convenient example. One Piece is a manga that almost goes out of it’s way to never bother explaining it’s most basic narrative world, and listing every single instance would be tedious and long.
The predictable counter to the argument is pretty easy to see coming. Should EVERY ability be explained like we're in some kind of bizarre fictional physics class? Obviously not. In fact, the examples I listed earlier have a lot of things in them that aren't explained. But there is a difference between an explanation that isn’t explicit and an explanation that isn’t there. When a character grabbed a beam of moonlight for a moment in Wise Man's Fear, despite the fact that light is just a wave and particle and can't simply be grabbed and he said as much, but wasn't given any kind of explanation...but an explanation was implied, both by another character, and also the way the world was established allowed for the possibility for that framework of ability. So my point is that there should always be a good explanation that exists, even if it’s not given. For example, look at Ungoliat or Tom Bombadil from Lord of the Rings. The official Tolkien mythos has the apparent contradiction that everything that was ever created came from God, and she came from outside the universe and Bombadil is evidently inexplicable. But there are good fan theories that make perfect sense within the universe that reconcile these apparent contradictions and mysteries. So while these are never explicitely said, the fact that explanations are possible maintains the integrity of the universe. I don’t feel that you can do that with One Piece. The number of its contradictions and explanations that only raise more questions is so numerous that explaining the world is a futile ordeal.
But enough about the world. Lets talk about the characters of One Piece. If lacking a consistent worldbuilding places an obstacle to empathizing with the characters troubles and tensions of the situation, the way characters are written eliminates my capacity for empathy altogether. These people simply do not act like any people I’ve ever met. Like, at all.
First the generalities. Everyone is always smiling and super happy, taking immense joy in even the most mildly amusing of things. It doesn’t matter how bad the situation is. When Luffy entered Impel down, even there random prisoners still found it in their hearts to laugh uproariously when he suggested getting out. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a terrorist/revolutionary group, or a gang of criminals, or whatever. I feel I’m a fairly well traveled person, having been to most of the US, parts of Europe. I haven’t gone to Asia or the middle east, but I plan to. I’ve met friendly communities and unfriendly ones, and no one ever just grinned like an idiot by default the way people do here. There are exceptions in the form of 1 or 2 people, but mostly everyone in any given place is happy for the sake of being happy. Frankly, if I ever walked into a world where people acted like in OP, I’d be creeped out and uncomfortable. And when I got used to them, I’d probably just find them annoying, like I do characters now.
Then there’s the whole concept of honor. One thing that struck me in reading Marineford is that Whitebeard was surprised that they would tarnish their honor by not keeping their word to kill Ace on the schedule they said they would. I had to stop for a second and try to think about what this implied. Whitebeard is one of the most experienced veterans of the Piracy. The Marines just established the importance of killing ace to the whole world, which was directly followed by the worlds most dangerous pirates starting a war with them over ace. Why in hell would they arbitrarily stick to their schedule instead of killing him while they still had the chance? But that’s not the real thing that gets me. It’s the fact that he considers this a diminishment of their honor. Apparently, a widespread belief in this world (something that has come up several times, most recently with Bellamy sticking to Doflamingo even though he no longer believes in him) is that people have to stick to whatever they say, even in the most trivial matters possible, and no one seems to question this. The time of Ace’s execution was a bureaucratic decision, and the idea that not keeping to it in the middle of a fucking war battle designed around freeing him is some kind of underhanded kick in the balls is pure insanity.
And then there is trauma. Literally every character with a backstory seems to have lived through some kind of hell. But what I don’t like about it is that it’s largely never exposed to the outside unless it’s done as a reason for why the strawhats need to beat one villain up or another. For example, Luffy is mostly unaware of every strawhats tragic backstory, but it’s resolution is largely plotbased, with the emotional catharsis being largely internal to all the strawhats. For example, it’s hard to tell if anyone even knows Robin’s past, definitely not Luffy, even though the entire Ennies Lobby arc was centered around resolving that conflict within her.
More evidently it’s how we’ve just been shown how Luffy deals with grief. He just lost his brother, went into a catatonic state, he woke up, and just started wailing and hitting stuff. Then Jinbe reminds him that he has friends, and that is all he needs to not feel sad. Literally, Jinbe says how thoughts of self doubt and depression might creep in. “Just ignore them, focus on happy thoughts”. This….is kind of fucking awful, as someone who struggles with depression. It’s not entirely untrue that you need to focus on positive framing of your experiences, but it’s depicted as being so effective that he is essentially back to being normal within couple hours. He’s back to joking and playing around within 20 pages of grief at most. And no one ever tries to connect with him on this. After the time skip, after 2 years of pure silence from his friends, does anyone ever think to ask him if he’s still alright or if he wants to talk about his brother? No, they’re just off on the next adventure.
This is not friendship to me. It might seem odd to say that, given how obnoxiously focused One Piece is on loyalty and fun and nakama and so on. But these people are strangers to each other. They happen to enjoy each others company and will go to the line for any of them, but they don’t know any of these people. There is no sense of intimacy between them. It’s a very shallow connection of relationships. Why do they like each other? Because they’re fun. Why are they all willing to die for one another? Because of honor.
I feel I’m rambling at this point, but the point I’m trying to make is this: One Piece feels like a story that is psychotically devoted to the idea of fun to the point that it neglects everything else in order to try and achieve it. The only unfun things happening are things that Luffy can smash down under his power, which in itself is fun. As a result, it bastardizes different concepts to the point where they are unrecognizable, and it just produces this bizarre and unnatural depiction of things that are so far removed from any realm of reality that there is no way for me to feel that it's either earned or even human.
So...there. I might reply to a few posts depending, but I'll try to keep it short. This will be the last long post you get from me on OP in a long while. I've said all I can really say on OP, and I'm as relieved to be done with it as many others are, I'm sure. I wish my experience here had been more pleasant for everyone involved. In my experience, people cling to similar works to works of similar personality. Soldiers love to read Military fiction, science freaks love to read hard sci-fi....I don't know what my personality exactly is that I cling to stories I have no personal love for, but people who do love OP are the kind of people who just want to sit down and have fun without thinking about OP too hard. I know some have expressed this very thing to me, like Bjork and many others have implied it. You guys just want to go to an amusement park, and don't mind the obvious inauthenticity of everything. Fair enough, that's not a bad thing, and even now, I don't begrudge anyone for liking OP simply because I don't. That said, I hope the meeting of our two worlds has been beneficial in some way, so we atleast got something out of our exchanges, and I think that's the best we can hope for at this point.
So I think this is going to be my last post here in a while and I'll be summing up my experience and thoughts on One Piece as a whole. I'll try to keep it short, since I have little time now, and I frankly said much of what I would say on a lot of this already. But I'm also going to be covering a great deal of topics and I'm also me, so...well, you know what to expect by now.
Lets talk verisimilitude. I've tried to think of how to explain it, and I can't really demonstrate it using a work that lacks it so much, so I'll be pulling in examples from other stories in an attempt to make my meaning clear. I'm not going to say any of those are better as a whole, so please don't start that fight because it will just go no where. It's just that this is a very difficult topic to address because it's so ridiculously broad in type and it spreads onto every facet of OP. But I'll try. Lets see....
One Piece's story is an amusement park. I don't think this is a statement that anyone here will find untrue, though I'm sure many will disagree that it's a problem at all. In fact, I genuinely feel One Piece embraces the idea. The story is a driving vehicle to an adventure, but it is in a cartoonish realm where the idea of danger exists, but only as a way to excite the characters. When you go to an amusement park, you go on rollercoasters that do scare you going up, but they're fun and they are usually perfectly safe. And they’re also meant to replicate some kind of experience. The Superman - Ride Of Steel is meant to give the idea of flying. In haunted houses, you can have people chasing you around, but they can't actually touch you. They’re meant to give the experience of being in a horror movie, but without actually any danger. Amusements are artifacts created that take you to extremely fake versions of worlds in the name of fun.
Don't get me wrong, I love amusement parks plenty...but they have never been what I look for in a story. When I read a story, I do so to be transported to an actual different world that I can believe exists, not because it adheres to the physics of real life, but because they’ve developed their own internal engines that drive them forward. So, when I read LotR or ASoIaF or Kingkiller Chronicles, I don't feel I am in a place that is artificial or designed, I feel I'm looking into a believable world. Or, if we're keeping to manga, Berserk or FMA or Attack On Titan or Hunter X Hunter. Now, I'm not saying any of those are inherently better stories, but when I read them, I believe in them more than I ever do One Piece for a great number of reasons, for various reasons.
I've already talked about the frankly hundreds of incidents where OP compromises it's own world so as to either make a joke, or progress a plotline or just sheer contrived convenience. When it does this, the artificiality of the world becomes stark apparent, and I can no longer believe that this world exists in it's own build in systems of justifications. Now, in all fairness, literally every fictional world falls apart eventually. Go down the line of asking why this and why that, you'll come to the end of the universe where no one knows why it exists, and it just does. Which that, in itself, can So in both the real world and fictional world, there is a point where there simply are no answers for why things are the way they are. But with regards to Lord of the Rings, you have to go down a very long list that DOES justify why things are the way they are before you eventually reach that end.
With One Piece, that line is very short. Because there either isn't an answer or there isn't a satisfactory one. We were talking about Sanji's fire abilities before, so lets use that as an example. However, I’d like to make it clear I am only using Sanji because he’s the most convienent example I can think of at the moment. We are first given the justification that he does it by turning his leg, using the friction to create the flames. Okay. I can accept that Sanji can do this. What I don't understand the consequences that should apply from this point: 1. Why does Sanji's leg catch fire rather than all of him, or even the more flammable aspects of him, like his hair? 2. Why isn't he hurt by this? His leg hot enough to remain glowing, leg should be literally melted away. 3. If not his actual leg, then surely his pant legging. But no. His flame melted away the first time he used it against Jambe or whatever (the wolf guy from CP9) but not against Orz. I went back and checked. It didn’t happen in when they fought Kuma in SA when he used it twice either 4. How does he maintain the heat, and then disappate it at will? 5. I question how useful this would actually be in an actual fight. From what's depicted, people get severely burned or even cooked with bare contact with it. You need more time than that for heat to transfer, the same way you can touch a hot stove without hurting yourself if you pull away fast enough. And if it is enough time to burn that severely in the space of an instant, then I bring it back to question 2 of how this doesn't burn him, who holds the heat much longer. 6. Why doesn't EVERYBODY do this? If this is something that is so easy to perform, and there are people who are both stronger and faster than Sanji, and this is such an aid to their techniques, isn't this something that every fighter should be using since there are apparently no downsides for this power boost and it's incredibly simple to do. And this gets worse in the time skip when Sanji just uses homophobia to fuel his fire. So, pure emotions can just have exothermic affects like that? So what about Law then? Doesn't this imply that Sanji hates his experience more than Law hates Doflamingo for what he did? Shouldn't Law have been able to fire up his sword in his fight?
So, I could believe that Sanji lights his leg on fire, fine. But then that just raises a whole bunch of other questions that just undermine the rest of the world. For example, in Punk Hazard, they are in a frozen environment half the time. If spinning can produce fire, no one would ever go cold because all you'd need to do is spin once and instant warmth, for example. In contrast, while it's definitely not perfect, it's pretty clear how Alchemy has affected the world of FMA, and there were many clever utilizations for uses of Sympathy magic in the Kingkiller Chronicles. Even Berserk has the somewhat weak, but still a little believable justification for why Guts is the only one who can use a giant sword like that: It’s not that no one else can, it’s just that he is the only bastard crazy enough to try and train with one. I have my own problem’s with Gut’s justification, but it’s something. This…?
It's cheating, basically. Sanji didn't earn this ability, he bullshits it because the story gave it to him with the flimsiest excuse possible. Even though it may look cool visually, I have no satisfaction from seeing Sanji with a leg on fire as an ability because there is no sense that he should have it. And Sanji is only just one convenient example. One Piece is a manga that almost goes out of it’s way to never bother explaining it’s most basic narrative world, and listing every single instance would be tedious and long.
The predictable counter to the argument is pretty easy to see coming. Should EVERY ability be explained like we're in some kind of bizarre fictional physics class? Obviously not. In fact, the examples I listed earlier have a lot of things in them that aren't explained. But there is a difference between an explanation that isn’t explicit and an explanation that isn’t there. When a character grabbed a beam of moonlight for a moment in Wise Man's Fear, despite the fact that light is just a wave and particle and can't simply be grabbed and he said as much, but wasn't given any kind of explanation...but an explanation was implied, both by another character, and also the way the world was established allowed for the possibility for that framework of ability. So my point is that there should always be a good explanation that exists, even if it’s not given. For example, look at Ungoliat or Tom Bombadil from Lord of the Rings. The official Tolkien mythos has the apparent contradiction that everything that was ever created came from God, and she came from outside the universe and Bombadil is evidently inexplicable. But there are good fan theories that make perfect sense within the universe that reconcile these apparent contradictions and mysteries. So while these are never explicitely said, the fact that explanations are possible maintains the integrity of the universe. I don’t feel that you can do that with One Piece. The number of its contradictions and explanations that only raise more questions is so numerous that explaining the world is a futile ordeal.
But enough about the world. Lets talk about the characters of One Piece. If lacking a consistent worldbuilding places an obstacle to empathizing with the characters troubles and tensions of the situation, the way characters are written eliminates my capacity for empathy altogether. These people simply do not act like any people I’ve ever met. Like, at all.
First the generalities. Everyone is always smiling and super happy, taking immense joy in even the most mildly amusing of things. It doesn’t matter how bad the situation is. When Luffy entered Impel down, even there random prisoners still found it in their hearts to laugh uproariously when he suggested getting out. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a terrorist/revolutionary group, or a gang of criminals, or whatever. I feel I’m a fairly well traveled person, having been to most of the US, parts of Europe. I haven’t gone to Asia or the middle east, but I plan to. I’ve met friendly communities and unfriendly ones, and no one ever just grinned like an idiot by default the way people do here. There are exceptions in the form of 1 or 2 people, but mostly everyone in any given place is happy for the sake of being happy. Frankly, if I ever walked into a world where people acted like in OP, I’d be creeped out and uncomfortable. And when I got used to them, I’d probably just find them annoying, like I do characters now.
Then there’s the whole concept of honor. One thing that struck me in reading Marineford is that Whitebeard was surprised that they would tarnish their honor by not keeping their word to kill Ace on the schedule they said they would. I had to stop for a second and try to think about what this implied. Whitebeard is one of the most experienced veterans of the Piracy. The Marines just established the importance of killing ace to the whole world, which was directly followed by the worlds most dangerous pirates starting a war with them over ace. Why in hell would they arbitrarily stick to their schedule instead of killing him while they still had the chance? But that’s not the real thing that gets me. It’s the fact that he considers this a diminishment of their honor. Apparently, a widespread belief in this world (something that has come up several times, most recently with Bellamy sticking to Doflamingo even though he no longer believes in him) is that people have to stick to whatever they say, even in the most trivial matters possible, and no one seems to question this. The time of Ace’s execution was a bureaucratic decision, and the idea that not keeping to it in the middle of a fucking war battle designed around freeing him is some kind of underhanded kick in the balls is pure insanity.
And then there is trauma. Literally every character with a backstory seems to have lived through some kind of hell. But what I don’t like about it is that it’s largely never exposed to the outside unless it’s done as a reason for why the strawhats need to beat one villain up or another. For example, Luffy is mostly unaware of every strawhats tragic backstory, but it’s resolution is largely plotbased, with the emotional catharsis being largely internal to all the strawhats. For example, it’s hard to tell if anyone even knows Robin’s past, definitely not Luffy, even though the entire Ennies Lobby arc was centered around resolving that conflict within her.
More evidently it’s how we’ve just been shown how Luffy deals with grief. He just lost his brother, went into a catatonic state, he woke up, and just started wailing and hitting stuff. Then Jinbe reminds him that he has friends, and that is all he needs to not feel sad. Literally, Jinbe says how thoughts of self doubt and depression might creep in. “Just ignore them, focus on happy thoughts”. This….is kind of fucking awful, as someone who struggles with depression. It’s not entirely untrue that you need to focus on positive framing of your experiences, but it’s depicted as being so effective that he is essentially back to being normal within couple hours. He’s back to joking and playing around within 20 pages of grief at most. And no one ever tries to connect with him on this. After the time skip, after 2 years of pure silence from his friends, does anyone ever think to ask him if he’s still alright or if he wants to talk about his brother? No, they’re just off on the next adventure.
This is not friendship to me. It might seem odd to say that, given how obnoxiously focused One Piece is on loyalty and fun and nakama and so on. But these people are strangers to each other. They happen to enjoy each others company and will go to the line for any of them, but they don’t know any of these people. There is no sense of intimacy between them. It’s a very shallow connection of relationships. Why do they like each other? Because they’re fun. Why are they all willing to die for one another? Because of honor.
I feel I’m rambling at this point, but the point I’m trying to make is this: One Piece feels like a story that is psychotically devoted to the idea of fun to the point that it neglects everything else in order to try and achieve it. The only unfun things happening are things that Luffy can smash down under his power, which in itself is fun. As a result, it bastardizes different concepts to the point where they are unrecognizable, and it just produces this bizarre and unnatural depiction of things that are so far removed from any realm of reality that there is no way for me to feel that it's either earned or even human.
So...there. I might reply to a few posts depending, but I'll try to keep it short. This will be the last long post you get from me on OP in a long while. I've said all I can really say on OP, and I'm as relieved to be done with it as many others are, I'm sure. I wish my experience here had been more pleasant for everyone involved. In my experience, people cling to similar works to works of similar personality. Soldiers love to read Military fiction, science freaks love to read hard sci-fi....I don't know what my personality exactly is that I cling to stories I have no personal love for, but people who do love OP are the kind of people who just want to sit down and have fun without thinking about OP too hard. I know some have expressed this very thing to me, like Bjork and many others have implied it. You guys just want to go to an amusement park, and don't mind the obvious inauthenticity of everything. Fair enough, that's not a bad thing, and even now, I don't begrudge anyone for liking OP simply because I don't. That said, I hope the meeting of our two worlds has been beneficial in some way, so we atleast got something out of our exchanges, and I think that's the best we can hope for at this point.
the anime actually has a really good ost imo
I actually don't really disagree with much of that, Vleek. It's well reasoned and picks out the worst elements of One Piece, which is indeed that the characters, while well explained, seem disconnected from each other. It's no surprise that everyone really likes Usopp and Luffy's fight because it's a genuine moment of tension between the crew that isn't really seen elsewhere. Oda has essentially distilled the crew into one character with multiple faces. For story purposes, the strawhats are basically one character.
I think you're nitpicking on some things (Sanji's Leg catching on fire for one thing) and a little off the mark on others (I thought Luffy's grief over ace and Jimbei reminding of what else he could protect was actually pretty well done), but overall I think it's fair to say that one piece loses focus on its characters in the pursuit of fun and frivolity.
I honestly am a huge stickler for storytelling rules, but logical gaps rarely bother me. I'm more concerned with tone, theme, and character development. I think Oda nails the first two, and hits hard on the third but only in a self-contained fashion. Even his throwaway characters do have some kind of backstory that explains their motivations, which is more than I can say for a lot of stories out there.
You're right, it's a roller coaster that puts fun above all else, but I also like that it isn't attempting to appear deeper than it is. Oda's been pretty straightforward with what he wants to make, and I never really feel betrayed by what he's putting out there.
I think the difference between how I look at it and how you look at it is that you're just coming down real heavy on the need for everything to have a very grounded, logical explanation, rather than a thematic one.
I think you're nitpicking on some things (Sanji's Leg catching on fire for one thing) and a little off the mark on others (I thought Luffy's grief over ace and Jimbei reminding of what else he could protect was actually pretty well done), but overall I think it's fair to say that one piece loses focus on its characters in the pursuit of fun and frivolity.
I honestly am a huge stickler for storytelling rules, but logical gaps rarely bother me. I'm more concerned with tone, theme, and character development. I think Oda nails the first two, and hits hard on the third but only in a self-contained fashion. Even his throwaway characters do have some kind of backstory that explains their motivations, which is more than I can say for a lot of stories out there.
You're right, it's a roller coaster that puts fun above all else, but I also like that it isn't attempting to appear deeper than it is. Oda's been pretty straightforward with what he wants to make, and I never really feel betrayed by what he's putting out there.
I think the difference between how I look at it and how you look at it is that you're just coming down real heavy on the need for everything to have a very grounded, logical explanation, rather than a thematic one.
Your post is pretty fair and thank you for addressing it respectfully. It's just...well, I've seen and appreciated stories that are even more out-there than OP and come away better. Gurren Lagann for one. Vonnegut stories for another. I'm currently reading House of Leaves, and the House is a bigger mindfuck of inexplicability than anything I've seen in OP. But it's made believable because of how in depth it's explored, from many different angles. I don't think I'd be able to be more of a fan of fantasy than any other genre if it was just that.
It's not about being grounded, it's about being...True. Authentic. I should believe that Sanji can light his leg on fire for one reason or another. You say that it's a minor nitpick, but that ability is specifically something that helps him beat some of his most powerful enemies, like Jambe. To me that seems very important. Luffy makes it a point that there is a need to get stronger in order to protect your crew. Okay, that's the theme. And strength requires sacrifice, which is even implied with how Luffy is shaving off years of his life in using his gear abilities. Meanwhile, Sanji just lights his leg on fire for no adequate reason, with none of the consequences that follow. If being stronger is just a matter of pulling crap out of your ass, how is it thematically resonant?
But a better example is Jinbe consoling Luffy. Grief over the death of a loved one, over the death of a loved one you personally witnessed in front of you as he bled out, just....can't be fixed by a short pep talk. It's not that what Jinbe said, by itself, is untrue, but that's also just not how grief works. Something like that would lead to months of therapy in the real world. In the world of OP, it should be something that permeates much of Luffy's thoughts. The fact that Luffy can be just back up to laughing and joking like normal just feels so unnatural and fake to me that the thematic significance it leads to feels inauthentic as well, even if it is consistent.
I guess what I'm getting at is that it's one thing for a thematic element to be consistent, and it's another thing to feel true or earned. When the devices and characters and mechanism and substances that work to create the theme are so shoddily put together, how can the theme be true? You can argue that's being a stickler for logic and grounded rules, but I see it as having things be convincing of the thematic power in narrative. If the way in which the theme is proven true is so badly justified, then how is it true at all?
You know, I didn't consider it that way, but this is pretty true as well.
Sanji uses friction to light his feet. Ms. Golden Week controls people with her drawings, with no explanation. Neither are Devil Fruit users. Oda doesn't follow an internal logic.
Luffy did spend two years dealing with Ace's death. He's not going to process grief like Shinji. He puts on his best face for his friends and crewmates. Also, it's a show for kids.
I do agree that with no disagreement or even subplots among the crew, they're barely characters. I hope that whatever is happening with Sanji leads to some interpersonal conflict for the Strawhats. It's been a while since any particular crewmate had something to do.
I don't mean to reduce your post, Veelk, which I find to be a very elegant and evocative argument. I would be a little wary of generalizing OP readers based on your very personal criteria for storytelling and characterizing the supposed disparity as "worlds" apart. Many readers share your critiques and relish the study of fiction as much as you clearly do.
Luffy did spend two years dealing with Ace's death. He's not going to process grief like Shinji. He puts on his best face for his friends and crewmates. Also, it's a show for kids.
I do agree that with no disagreement or even subplots among the crew, they're barely characters. I hope that whatever is happening with Sanji leads to some interpersonal conflict for the Strawhats. It's been a while since any particular crewmate had something to do.
I don't mean to reduce your post, Veelk, which I find to be a very elegant and evocative argument. I would be a little wary of generalizing OP readers based on your very personal criteria for storytelling and characterizing the supposed disparity as "worlds" apart. Many readers share your critiques and relish the study of fiction as much as you clearly do.
Cloud Strife
Member
I wonder if it's possible to cook a devil fruit? Like spice it up and serve it in a meal. It apparently tastes like shit but I'm sure some chefs out there could make it work.
Well zoro and usopp had their fights with luffy already. Now it's what's his name turn.
Ha...Don't know how much you've been following the thread, but I wouldn't know if the last bit is strictly true. You're otherwise right though, I don't mean to pit readers under one umbrella, simplifying their own nuanced opinions. It's just a tendency I have tended to notice. Not anything you can just judge a person by, but it still makes sense to me. After all, a story is ultimately a mental journey, and taking that journey often times make them adopt the mentality of the story. I don't mean anything bad by it. Just that we like stories that suit or shape, and the stories often shape us in turn. So while it's not a hard or set rule, it never surprises me if particular type of people take to particular types of work.
I found another point of interest here. Any OP fan will enjoy looking at this critical analysis that is actually in favor of OP's storytelling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ5H72_2O7k
One interesting point is that it actually says that the paneling of certain action scenes is a positive because they can only look good in the framework of stilled images. I have the opposite feeling. I never brought this complaint up before, but I hate this specifically because I couldn't imagine how scenes would play out in motion in my mind. As he says, this ONLY works as stilled images, which makes me very aware that I am reading manga rather than being immersed within the story itself. I find it distracting and detrimental to the narrative.
Blame the Wiki for not changing it to Fruit. Keep the "X X" part Japanese if you want but at least go "X X Fruit" not "X X no Mi". It annoys me when scans do that...
haha sorry I just copy and pasted the names from the one-piece wiki
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
I actually 99% agree with this. The only difference is that I still love OP despite its flaws. Still, you really nailed everything off about the series. I hate how Luffy and co. can lose pints of blood and be fine the next scene. When it really hit me how ridiculous this was was in Water 7, when Lucci guts Luffy with his claw. I was watching it with my friend at the time, and he was like, "It's not like this hasn't happened a million times before." And the tension was lost from that one comment. I knew with 100% certainty that Luffy was going to be ok, despite the hugely menacing music, dramatic cuts, and buildup towards it being a tragic loss.
I especially agree with the presenter's criticism of the dialogue and character voice. This is my main reservation against One Piece as a broader work, even ignoring the disappointing fact that several characters with compelling backstories and dreams have been relegated to support roles for Luffy with very little agency. Few stories are remembered for their characters' uniformly agreeable attitudes.
Sibersk Esto
Banned
I can't say I disagree with most of what is being said here. I recognize that One Piece prioritizes fun over all else. Oda has said that he makes sure the reader doesn't feel stressed out, that he loves the idea of little kids being able to pick up and enjoy his work and writes accordingly. I know by now I probably won't get the deep character writing that explores the psychological ramifications of the character's trauma. It's by no means perfect.
Maybe that's why I stuck with it after all these years, when other "big" shounen franchises like bleach and naruto failed to grab me for very long. One Piece has an earnestness about it I feel without getting wrapped up in crazy convoluted self serious messiah crap. I like that everyone has these big Looney Toons emotions in a big crazy world to match.
It's like how one of my favorite manga ever is Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. It's a crazy series with insane characters (although maybe there is more of a sense of verisimilitude given that it's a character based series), but it wears it on its sleeve and I have fun reading it.
I'll probably be reading that soon with a buddy of mine. I'm not sure how to feel about it. I only know it from the memes, and I don't find them all that funny, so I'm hoping whatever Jojo does, it manages things sensibly enough on a character level to make me able to get invested in the craziness.
grandjedi6
Master of the Google Search
Jojo will be the series that finally destroys Veelk
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