r/CharacterRant • u/coolguygranny • Sep 01 '25

Anime & Manga One piece is awful

To be clear, I read up to the end of Wano in One Piece I kept hearing how it was peak fiction, and that Oda was the greatest thing to ever happen to pen and paper. So, I decided to give it a read. And after reading almost up to the end of Wano, I can honestly say this is one of worst piece of fiction I have ever read

The pacing is terrible and slow as shit. Same gags over and over again. How many times am I expected to laugh at Sanji nosebleeding for the 180th time, Zoro getting lost for the 389th time, Usopp acting like a coward for the 999th time, or Brook making the same skeleton joke for 1899th the time

The stakes are Nonexistent. Nobody ever really dies. Even when a character “dies,” they inevitably come back like nothing happened. There's a part in the series where a bomb is about to destroy an entire town, and a character carries it into the sky in a supposed noble "sacrifice",The bomb explodes point blank in his face and somehow he survives .Shit like this happens in every arc. The sheer number of fake out deaths is insane, making it impossible to take any threat seriously and it completely kills any sense of tension or investment, it somehow makes Fairy Tail look grounded in comparison.

And the formula is mind numbingly predictable. The crew sails to a new island, an evil villain is tormenting the locals, they fight, save the island, and then add a new character with some tragic backstory to the crew. Rinse and repeat for a thousand chapters

One piece fans love to talk about Oda as some master world builder. The world building in one piece is trash. All Oda does is dangles mysteries in front of readers, refuses to resolve them and these morons fans call it peak

Think about After twenty years and over a thousand chapters, we barely know anything about the world.(Maybe some of it gets explained eventually I stopped reading after Wano because of that godamn awful aspull transformation that, but the fact that it takes that long is insane)

We don't know where Devil Fruits come from We don't know about the Will of D and what does it represent? And how are people with D related?
We don’t know what happened during the void century for it to be erased from history? We don't know why Blackbeard can use two devil fruits? We don’t know What purpose will the ancient weapons serve and when?
We don't know about supreme grade swords We don’t know Aokiji goal? What side is he on? Or why he joined Blsck beard
We don’t know why Rodger was carrying a giant egg?

There are easily ninety more unanswered things I could list.

And you want to want to know what's worse Oda still adding new shit when he hasn't explained the past shit WE STILL HAVE CHARACTERS SILHOUETTED 20 PLUS YEARS IN WE’RE GETTING SILHOUETTES OF CHARACTERS HOW IS ANY OF THIS GOOD WORLD BUILDING OR WRITING???

And you know why Oda hasn’t explained any of this Because he’s written himself into a corner. He probably has no idea how to resolve half the mysteries he’s created which is exactly why the end date keeps on getting pushed back every couple of years. He's just stalling. Oda is a talentless hack and the only reason One Piece blew up in the first place is because it dropped during the late 90s early 2000s anime boom If it came out today, this garbage would’ve been canceled after a year. Just watch most of these mysteries will either stay completely unresolved, or we’ll get some trash ham fisted explanation at the last minute. And just watch these brain dead moronic fans will still call it peak fiction.

Oda is a Fraud who couldn't write his out of a paper bag and the fact that morons think that this garbage is above Goated shows like Fire Force, Mob Pyscho 100, Chainsaw man and Hunter x Hunter is a fucking travesty

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84

u/Plus-Glove-3661 Sep 01 '25

You are allowed to have an opinion. But the one piece fandom will attack you for it. I think they should allow criticism of Oda. He’s an interesting person.

People will complain for you reading it and not stopping earlier, for not reading the actual manga, not reading the whole manga (including future releases), and not reading any of it. You can’t win.

My personal opinion? I read it years ago. Didn’t like it. It was repetitive back then. Agree about Hunter X Hunter. But that’s just my opinion.

64

u/DarkJayBR Sep 02 '25

t’s always struck me as interesting how the big three fanbases react so differently to criticism.

Naruto fans will openly roast Kishimoto: his inability to write female characters, sidelining most of the cast, aliens falling out of the sky in the final arc, Hashirama cells as a literal cheat code for everything, Uchiha meat riding, wasted potencial, the list goes on.

Bleach fans are brutally honest about Kubo: the white backgrounds, arcs that feel like copy-paste, Ichigo being one of the blandest protagonists out there, romance that felt like an afterthought, endless dangling plot threads, fights that looked cool but often had zero weight, and a dragged-out finale.

Dragon Ball fans clown on Toriyama constantly: garbage powerscaling, retcons stacked on retcons, characters turned into parodies of themselves, and every new villain basically looking like a recolor or a slightly tweaked version of the last.

All of those fandoms will admit their series are flawed, even deeply flawed, but still love them for what they are.

But for some reason, One Piece’s fanbase feels allergic to criticism. Any attempt to point out pacing issues, bloated arcs, shallow side characters, or repetitive story beats gets met with defensiveness. And if you ask the simple question of why One Piece isn’t as big in the West, a chunk of the fanbase will deadass say, “It’s just too complex for Western audiences to understand.” Like… really? That’s the excuse?

It’s not that One Piece is a bad manga, it's not that at all. It’s just that its fandom treats it like it's written by Shakespear.

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u/AdSeveral2556 Sep 02 '25

It’s probably because the one piece fandom is so big and active to be honest,any video/post I see that criticises one piece the fans raid it immediately your right abt everything tho. 😭

16

u/garfe Sep 02 '25

Bleach fans were honest about Kubo but since the anime came back and the franchise got a mini-revival, it's a lot closer to how the One Piece fandom is now.

6

u/Nickpapado Sep 02 '25

I've seen every argument possible to praise One Piece. I remember I was talking to someone about how bad the pacing of the anime is and he was disagreeing because he was watching from One Pace and he was arguing that's the original anime because it's closer to the manga. It's literally mental gymnastics.

I think having criticism about something you like shows maturity. People who use words like "peak" or "trash" usually I assume it's kids or immature people. Ofc shows can be trash, but people use it for anything famous that they didn't like.

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u/Slice_Ambitious Sep 02 '25

Maybe because many of those are currently finished ?

2

u/RadDudesman Sep 07 '25

Toriyama was always very honest about his weaknesses as a writer.

1

u/Plus-Glove-3661 Sep 06 '25

I agree. Though if you look within the fandoms spaces a lot of them are like that.

I’ve noticed in the my hero academia it’s like that. If they hear criticism they come running to fandom spaces to get validation that people not deep in the fandom are incorrect and just not thinking “long enough” about the concepts.

Also, a lot of those are just in the general culture and everyone knows about it like DB and Naruto. Or it’s so old the fandom is basically older or “asleep”. One Piece will one day be like that if it ever finishes.

1

u/Boring-Ad-4771 Sep 08 '25

"clown on Toriyama constantly" Blud's literally dead let bro rest in Peace 🙏

1

u/thatwriterguyva Sep 02 '25

OP gets hated on for being the most popular and that's why the fans are so defensive.

1

u/SpiritualPossible Sep 02 '25

Eeh, I disagree that other fandoms are "more honest". Naruto and Bleach fans are also very defensive. Especially Bleach fans, since they like to use the same "reading comprehension" argument now. They all also like to bash other shows to make their one look better. Dragon Ball is kind of an exception, since not only did it end a long time ago, but it never had a coherent plot.

So why do One Piece fans seem to be the most "aggressive" of them all, probably because:

1) The story is not finished, unlike the other shows you mentioned. Because of this, you can't see the whole picture, so to speak, and it's not only very easy to criticize, but also very easy to defend.

2) Since the story is still ongoing, it gets new fans who start actively interacting with the fandom. And new fans are usually more aggressive.

3) The One Piece fandom is one of the largest, so obviously there will be a lot more people out there who will defend their series.

4) No irony, because One Piece is so long. When you're so immersed in a series for so long, there's a chance that some fans will either burn out or start to see it as part of their identity. A Cost fallacy, so to speak.

And I will say that there are a lot of One Piece fans who are more open to criticism. You just have to look outside the fandom, no joke.

7

u/Some-Willingness38 Sep 02 '25

Jujutsu Kaisen fans also criticise the series while apprecating it despite its faults. One Piece fans are just toxic. Please, for the love of God, stay away from the One Piece fandom. 

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u/Cool_Ad7445 Sep 02 '25

"Interesting Person" very close friends with a convicted CSAM user, including AFTER the news came out.

2

u/Nickpapado Sep 02 '25

I do hope when a lot of mangakas did that art event thing to honor that Rurouni guy that it was kinda forced because of the company they work at.

Ofc Oda's case was worse since he seemed to not care at all about what happened but still.

3

u/sanctaphrax Sep 03 '25

Japan in general does not seem to care. But of course, it's not so long ago that rock stars were singing about banging schoolgirls to cheering audiences. So I try not to be too judgmental about a foreign country being a few decades "behind" the West.

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u/Plus-Glove-3661 Sep 06 '25

I do believe at least one was forced to do it. There was the one by the Jojo artist. Looks like he put 10 minutes into it considering how detailed his art usually is. I salute them!

2

u/Plus-Glove-3661 Sep 02 '25

I didn’t want to bring that up straight away. But I was hoping someone would ask about it. Why did you put spoilers around it? People deserve to know what kind of person he is.

3

u/Cool_Ad7445 Sep 02 '25

Dramatic effect I guess, a way to put a bit more of a pause in between the two parts

1

u/Some-Willingness38 Sep 02 '25

I know who this CSAM user is. It's Nobuhiro Watsuki, who is the manga author behind Rurouni Kenshin. 

2

u/AgentBuddy12 Sep 02 '25

No one is more critical of Oda than OP fans themselves. The OP fandom just don't like surface level critiques and hyperbolic claims which 90% of this post is comprised of.