A Critical Look At One Piece

Key Takeaways

• Length and pacing are the main drawbacks of One Piece, with over 1100 chapters being far too jarring for many new viewers.
• Female characters’ hypersexualization is a questionable design choice that doesn’t add value to the story.
• Over-reliance on Luffy in every arc makes the storytelling repetitive and takes away from other characters’ development.

For almost 3 decades, One Piece has captivated audiences with its intricate story, lovable characters, mystery, and awesome action, among many other things. Due to this, it has not only become the most successful manga of all time, it is also the best-selling comic in history across multiple industries. This success, along with the millions of dedicated fans across the globe, has etched it as one of the greatest works of fiction to ever exist.

However, for all that One Piece gets right and for how beloved it is, there are still a few things about it that haven’t exactly stood the test of time. Of course, there’s no such thing as a perfect story in any medium and the few flaws of One Piece don’t at all take away from how incredible this series truly is. However, these flaws are still there, so let’s take a critical look at the series and see the, admittedly very few, things it has gotten wrong over the years.

The Length And Pacing

One Piece Has Over 1100 Chapters

The most widespread of all the complaints that the One Piece franchise gets has to do with the pacing. While most fans argue that this expansive length is needed for a story of such scale, it doesn’t make up for the fact that anyone getting into it has to read up on over 1100 chapters or, conversely, watch 1100 episodes. The very fact of committing to something so huge in scope, no matter how good it may be, can be jarring for anyone.

This is actually the most common complaint when it comes to those who aren’t into One Piece yet. In fact, many even claim to have started it at one point but left it due to the pacing not really allowing anything substantial to happen for far too long, leading to disillusionment with the series. The sheer length of One Piece, as well as the fillers making much of the pacing feel sluggish, is a major drawback for the series.

Don’t start a fight if you can’t end it!

Moreover, news of the One Piece remake from Wit Studio has sent the entire fandom into an uproar after it was announced that the entire story would be covered over the course of an estimated 276 episodes to reach the stage where the Toei Animation version currently is. This is an absolutely wild change since it shows that everything the original animation told over the course of over 1100 episodes could have been condensed to under 300.

This just goes to show how much of the fat can be trimmed off the main series and remain true to it. Similarly, the manga has some small filler arcs that, although they may have some important aspect or addition within them, largely break off from the pacing and bring it to an almost dead stop at times. One such example is the infamous Long Ring Long Land, where, despite introducing Aokiji and setting up Water 7, happened after Skypeia, bringing the momentum of the series to a crashing standstill.

Such an instance also seems to go against the main defense of the length of the series, as fans state that the extent is justified due to how expansive the story is, despite the fact that the Wit Studio remake is able to tell the same story in less than a quarter of the length of the original anime. Although fans just have to wait to see whether this will be done properly or if it’s rushed, it still bodes well for the future.

The world of One Piece is also one of the most compelling in all of fiction, filled to the brim with mysteries that are centuries old. Despite this being one of the most alluring aspects of the series, the amount of time fans have to wait for even a tiny tidbit of knowledge regarding it is often far too much, which also speaks to the dreadful pacing that One Piece is often criticized for having. Although this is the prevailing issue people have before starting the series, however, the pacing tends to fall into place once an interest in the story is created.

Hypersexualization Of Female Characters

Many Find The Treatment of Female Characters Jarring

Over the years, some of the greatest characters in this entire franchise have been the many female characters that Eiichiro Oda has introduced into the story. However, one of the biggest complaints here relates to their hypersexualization, as most of these female characters have typically exaggerated proportions and often wear overtly revealing or skin-tight clothes. While this doesn’t take away from how well Oda has written these characters, it’s still jarring to see when this aspect has absolutely no bearing on the story at all.

A great example of this is Nami’s design after the time skip. Most believe that the post-time skip designs for the Straw Hats were far better than the way they looked before, with each character having far cooler and different designs when they all met up at the Sabaody Archipelago after 2 years had passed. Nami, however, only wore a bra and tight jeans, showing a great lack of creativity on Oda’s part just to make Nami seem more ‘desirable’, which was quite sad due to how great Robin looked.

If you think I’m just a cute girl, you’re dead wrong!

Quite often, many female characters will just have the fronts of their shirts open, revealing far too much. There is no need for any of this and just leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth about how the women, no matter how amazingly written or developed they are, still have comparatively poor and oversexualized design choices as they’re just made to look as revealing and conventionally attractive as possible.

Over-Reliance On Luffy

Luffy Often Takes Away From Other Characters

Luffy is the main character of One Piece, so obviously, he is always going to get a light shown on him that others simply won’t. However, despite this, many often don’t like how everything in an arc eventually relies on how Luffy will eventually defeat the final villain, which it’s always him who manages to do so. This has been a complaint that has surrounded Dragon Ball over the years as well, since it is usually Goku who ends up defeating the main villain, making every arc somewhat repetitive.

Of course, every character has their own roles and the others still defeat villains on their levels, but the fact that it always boils down to Luffy’s eventual battle with the big bad instead of someone else doing it has made for repetitive storytelling. The reason why arcs like Marineford tend to sit so well within fans’ memories has a lot to do with the fact that things played out differently from how everyone expected them to.

This also leads to many of these battles of Luffy giving him insane plot armor, such as his fight with Crocodile, Katakuri, and even Kaido at the end of Wano, where it honestly always seems that Luffy won at the end because of pure luck. Having the main character win against the villains should never come at the cost of other character’s development, which many think may unfortunately happen on Elbaf with Usopp.

This over-reliance on Luffy always having to be the center of every single thing makes it so that arcs that had seemed to have been focused on others tend to take away from their moments to shine. For example, everyone had been expecting and wanting Wano to place Zoro as the primary focus due to his connections to the land, but he ended up with a comparatively smaller role in it than Luffy. Being the main character doesn’t excuse taking the shine off of others completely, since side characters having their moments of importance is just as needed at times.

One Piece can be streamed on Crunchyroll.