I've been a reader of One Piece on and off for years now. The premise of "uhm actually, being a pirate is about having fun with your friends" is what kept me attached. Exploring the world with your friends while dodging the grip of a UN for Monarchs is a very cool premise. It's a really romantic version of piracy. In practice though the crew's journey seems to be them going to the most dystopian fucked up islands imaginable and doing a regime change. I feel like a different formula would've been cooler. But as the current president of the United States once said, I'll still keep drinking that garbage.
It's got an amazing world though. Water 7 and Skypeia are my favorite locations.
spoiler
Critical support to the anti-imperialist Doflamingo for standing up to the World Government :fidel-cool: jk
I've been a huge fan from a young age. There's a lot of anti-imperialistic themes throughout. The World Government flag has a resemblance to the Japanese Empire flag and Akainu talks like a Japanese right-winger.
The concept of exploring the world and starting a revolution is what kept me intrigued and continues to keep me interested.
Also the world government always reminded me of the US. Military bases everywhere, controls the media narrative, positions itself as a positive to the entire world; all while doing nefarious shit and being controlled by a very small minority.
That's an interesting perspective. Personally I avoid viewing media thru a political lens cuz it almost always ends up souring the experience.
I usually do too, but I got into One Piece at around the same time I was learning about US intervention where I live. The resemblance was too strong for me to ignore it.
The sexism is painful at times but overall I like it. Cool anti-government themes.
Yeah I definetely started noticing some of the problematic aspects after the timeskip. He's also getting lazy with the female character designs, but the "fanservice" is pretty tame.
Its more noticeable now because One Piece is almost ancient in anime terms, and things have come along. Jujustu Kaisen has great women, Attack on Titan (I want to start a fight) even has better than the average.
One Piece feels a bit too much like the epitome of the whole "Making weird characters and powers just to be unique" thing that's present in a lot of action series which while I understand why it works so well, I just can't get into it. For every cool power like Law's or good design like Zoro, there's another like that mocchi man or big mama that just are snooze for me and just seem really weird and bad as if the creators ran out of ideas half a series ago and is just trying to come up with something off the top of their head. You see this in a lot with other shounen series, My Hero Aca has some really cool ideas like Hawk, and then they have "sticky ball man who is also a pervert" for no reason.
I'm sure I could analyze it more if I tried but if I can't enjoy a series at a basic level it's really hard to try to get into it deeper and care about anything else.
Broke: One Piece is about having fun with your friends as a pirate
Woke: One Piece is about doing a regime change over and over
Bespoke: The world of One Piece is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq2w_Zm2K3c
Google number of episodes
Nearly 500 hours of content, what is almost definitely mostly filler
Lol big nope for me
I was really into it when I was younger, and only really read it until around the ice kingdom where they get chopper? maybe a touch after that. It was just too much for me and i kinda just got over it.
yeah I also got to arround shippuden and then only watched a little more after. but this was back when the bootleg scans were being released into the US, not the contemporary novels or episodes.
I also didn't really care about Luffy, but really loved Sanji and Zoro and other side characters way more.
In more recent years it takes a dramatic turn towards power struggles, factions, powerful people facing each other, and revealing mysteries. It has such a dramatic tonal shift. Not a judgement call either way, but you wouldn't even recognize it today if that's how far you got and I find that interesting.
One Piece is awesome, it's got a lot of problems but it's such a fun romp in a cool well thought out world with (generally) fun characters AND it has a lot of left wing themes. Skypeia is a personal favourite arc of mine cuz of the themes, which I never expected in an anime, not to mention it's not a super problematic portrayal.
I really feel like the quality dropped after the timeskip, none of yhe arcs post red-line (or was it grand line?) havebeen as memorable as the arcs before it
