I didn't even feel bad for him in God of War 1.
Here's the other analysis explaining why if your interested while you wait for my response to OP
Well....in most of my analysis, I can pick out things that pretty much everyone agrees are bad. Logical errors, bad characterization, plot holes, etc. One piece is slightly different because it does a lot of things right. Not just kinda right, but things like maintaining continuity for 15+ years is impressive. The way it brings back past characters into the fold is impressive. The foreshadowing is really good, so when the plot twists come, they're still unexpected, but they make sense. And the things it does wrong, like not making sense, people either tolerate or embrace it because the manga clearly does not care about it.
However, what this series does is push a lot of my buttons. For example, on general principle, I don't like series that flat out tell me "haha, just have fun and don't worry about how this makes sense!" and One Piece is a series that exactly that. OP is a series that rarely contradicts it's own internal rules, but has absolutely no regard for how things are supposed to make sense beyond that and we're supposed to accept them. For me, this really lessens the impact of anything, because it feels like there is no integrity to how the world is supposed to work. This basically dissipates any tension in conflicts for me because at any point, they're going to pull out some inane BS that solves their problems. Recent example, Robin's attack on Diamante in the last chapter. Diamante attacks with his snake sword or whatever and she sprouts hands making a butterfly symbol that somehow averts the attack. Apparently, somehow she is flapping her hands in that super inefficient way makes enough of a gust to deflect the blow. This kind of stuff simply drives me up the wall. There is no way this should work, but it does, because her hands look like butterflies, and therefore gust of wind strong enough to do that.
And whenever I bring this sort of stuff up, people just tell me not to overthink it and just have fun, which is why I said debates with OP fans tend to get heated with me. Because it's kind of insulting to basically be told you're thinking about it wrong and that makes you a drag. This kind of stuff isn't fun to me, it's just stupid. It's becomes too nonsensical to enjoy for me. So just the way the vast majority of events play out for me is just frustrating to watch, because a lot of it is plot important stuff. For example, the way he beat Crocodile. Crocodile can turn to sand at any moment of impact. He has such control over sand that he can create sand hurricanes and fire it at such a rate that it cuts like a sword...but he can't activate it because Luffy is using TINY amounts of water from his bloodied knuckles? Why? How can that tiny amount of water incapacitate someone who can do all that? And that's not even getting started on the higher level powers. Law has control over fucking spacetime, he should be able to incapacitate anyone. Look, I know it's fiction and that means I have to make some allowances on logic. Avatar itself asks a fair bit in this because firebending should not work the way it does, scientifically speaking, but it tries it's best to make sense otherwise. But OP has kind of stuff happening nearly scene by scene, and I cannot accept it at that staggering amount. It drives me up the fucking wall.
In terms of the characters, I hate nearly everybody and simply do not accept them as human beings. This is for a number of reasons. For one, there is just the manga aesthetic. I really don't like the overly cartoony aesthetic that OP has, but I've mostly gotten over it and tolerate it at this point. However, what I haven't gotten over is the faces they make on emotional scenes. You do the face fault kind of stuff when you want to do a comedic moment, to show it's over the top. OP does it with crying faces as well, which ruins a lot of the emotional moments. For example, when Ace died, I was legitimately sad. I was engaged and immersed in the scene. You know how it happens when you are super into the world and giving it your full attention. Then Luffy cries, and what should be the moment of my deepest emotional connection to Luffy's loss is utterly ruined by that stupid pez dispenser face he makes. It's like being dunked with ice water. I'm no longer in the moment, I'm reading a manga, and the connection I've felt with the character is severed. This is still the most tragic death in the entire series of a character I liked more than most, and I am completely indifferent to it.
There's also the way it's structured. Have you ever imagined how OP would read without the flashbacks? For me, it seems like it'd be a super happy series where the Strawhats just come in and punch away all the problems for reasons none of the main characters fully understand. Because for the most part, there is a severe disconnect between the present and the past. The flashbacks are just a way of showing how problems came to be and where all the tragic stuff happens. The present is Luffy solving those problems by punching. Korra would be proud I guess, but for me it creates an air of artificiality, because without even knowing the content of the flashback, I essentially already know the conclusion. If it's a flashback, it's going to end with the character whose helping the character having the flashback dying. If it's the present, it's going to end with Luffy solving everything by punching the guy, who is usually the guy that killed whoever in the flashback. It's so repetitious that it's boring, and it absolves any tension in the present because I always know the bad guys are going to get their comeuppance. Again, I really like the Marineford arc because it is a complete subversion of this tired formula. I also liked the Usopp conflict in Waters 7-Ennes Lobby, because it was an ongoing conflict whose resolution I cannot predict. Even the current arc, I can tell you that there is a 95% chance that Doflamingo will just get his ass beat and then show up some later time. THe only reason that's not 100% is because he's coming off as a much more important 'boss' character than other boss characters have been thus far, but that's still somethign I'm sure is going to happen. His cutting off of Law's arm will be either undone or actually improve Law's abilities (another thing I've noticed. No injury ever seems to actually injure people. Any disability that someone has is somehow overcompensated for.). Basically, I'm saying that for all the deaths and terror it has, OP lacks grit. Very rarely do I ever feel any kind of tension for the characters, and would like more conflicts like Usopp.
And then there's just the way the characters act. This might be wierd to say, but it's so hard for me to picture the Strawhat crew as actual friends. It's more like they are a collection of highly empathetic people who have VERY strict policy on not abandoning nakama. But that's not necessarily friendship to me. We get all these flashbacks, but a large point is made that Luffy (and presumably none of other strawhats) ever really inquire about their past. They never get into any kind of deep conversation about their beliefs, their differences, why they follow their dreams, if they're actually afraid of wherever their crazy captain is going to take them next, whats going to happen if one of them actually gets killed or whatever. They just bicker and have fun together, but that makes them playmates to me, with the only thing that actually binds them in friendship is an unusual sense of loyalty to one another. It also stalls character development. There is so much stuff that happened, but I don't feel any of characters actually changed that much. Usopp got slightly less afraid? Maybe? Luffy went thought a pretty heavy experience, but no one seems to ask him "hey, you okay there man?" They don't know what he went through in the 2 year time skip, but oh, he's acting like classic Luffy, he must be fine! There are some subtleties to the characters, but they are drowned out to me by how they are much more like like archtypes that never really change in a big way. They simply do not act like real people to me and I can almost never get invested in whatever personal conflicts they are having. Again, the Usopp conflict is one of the rare exceptions because that's one of the few times I felt things were actually changing within the dynamic of the crew, and nothing like that has been seen since.
And not being emotionally invested is a really big problem, because this series all but runs on emotion. It tries to force me into the pathos of what is happening so often. Character does something. "X JUST DID THAT!!!", as if the manga is trying to bring the reader into the manga by having him be part of the spectators who are slackjawed at what is happening. This is present in way too many scenes. There is so much yelling in this series, over mundane things anyone can see happening. And there are always dramatic close ups when villains do something particularly bad. There is such an emphasis on those moments, often complete with BWAHAAHAHAHAHA! to try and make me feel as bad as possible. But that stuff just doesn't work on me. It just feels like the series is trying to manipulate me, to which my natural response is "No, fuck you, I'm not going to care no matter how much you try to make me!" I really like Akainu, because he doesn't engage in that sort of BS. He just does things and it feels like natural storytelling to say, Hody's "NOW LET ME TWIRL MY MUSTACHE AS I DO THIS TOTALLY UNNECESSARILY CRUEL THING BECAUSE I'M EEEEEEEEVUL AHAHAHAHA!"
Ugh, there is more, but that's the general gist.
So why do I even read it, I hear you asking? Well, for all that it does to drive me away, there are certain mysteries I'm curious about. Namely, the void century. But honestly, if Oda would publish a fictional history book on OP that just explains it, I'd rather read that than the actual series, because I couldn't care less about Luffy achieving his dream or whatever, and care very little about any other character.
