This review contains spoilers for One Piece. You have been warned.

One Piece is perhaps the most ambitious long-running manga series of all time; its attempts at crafting a world that's epic in scale is unparalleled in the history of the medium, and it follows a cast of distinct characters that are given unique quirks, powers and distinct character designs. Its cultural influence on the broader Japanese anime and manga scene is not something that can be questioned - it heralded an entire era of manga that had stronger emphasis on world-building, and while various One Piece characters were based off of archetypes - Dragon Ball being a particularly obvious influence - One Piece having the cultural footprint it did let to the series in and of itself also popularizing a few character tropes.

This isn't a review about One Piece's cultural influence, but rather on why in my eyes One Piece isn't a particularly good series and in many regards fails in the face of its contemporaries, being a relic of a bygone era that has refused to evolve where it matters most - but I'm getting ahead of myself.

On a fundamental level One Piece is a series about living freely - which ties well into how its premise is about a pirate finding the One Piece and becoming the greatest pirate in existence. There are various ways the series decides to explore this theme - from various characters tied down by both material and familial burdens, showing how absolute freedom can often be dangerous, represented by the pirates that act like conventional pirates (committing acts like murdering, looting and terrorizing civilians) like Blackbeard and Buggy, to having a rigid, authoritarian government that cracks down on civil liberties and engages in active historic revisionism over the origins of the world of One Piece and its backdrop. This works well in providing several conflicting ideologies and motivations in order to flesh out its themes, and it's perfectly understandable in rationalizing how this series gained the fanbase it did.

There are problems involving One Piece's plot structure, and particularly in how despite handling such nuanced subjects it falls into a black and white fallacy, with very little moral grayness covering actions characters take. Luffy himself is a representative of this - he has a simplistic understanding of the world and often is dismissive of critical information out of his lack of willingness to expand beyond what he already knows. While this personality trait makes him endearing to many, this also makes him a character that inspite of clearly developing and progressing in many ways refuse to evolve with the thematic backbone of the series. This problem extends to the series' villains, who while ideologically motivated are usually initially presented as evil villains that commit heinous crimes, with the writing emphasizing their wrongdoings more than their ideals. Examples like Akainu unambiguously murdering and fighting any pirate he sees, Crocodile causing a drought and being emphasized as maliciously scheming in the background or my personal favorite - Don Flamingo screaming about how he wants to murder civilians and especially children - make it difficult to care about any conflict that happens in the series. The closest One Piece ever had to a meaningful character conflict was Luffy and Usopp bickering over getting a new ship in Water 7 - which interestingly also highlights another problem with Luffy's character writing, and that is how exactly he perceives characters around him.

Luffy is a relentless, selfish and often egotistical pirate who in any context should be dead, yet somehow survives this series due to extensive plot armor and often moronic villains that refuse to finish him off when they have the chance, either to a justified code of honor or due to villains assuming he's already dead - which is one of the worst shonen tropes to consistently keep using and one this series repeatedly uses in an attempt to raise narrative stakes that falls flat (and especially on a reread/return after an extensive period of time) due to it meaning that the reader is never certain that thing would never genuinely go a character's way - and when they don't instead asking questions about why it didn't happen sooner in a better context (the Crocodile fight being a particularly good example of this). Luffy has no monologues, emphasizing his external character traits rather than any internal one, and often meaning that his actions are left up to the interpretation of the viewer. The problem this leads to is that a lot of context is absent from his actions, leaving simply a hero who does good things in a series that's about freedom, while ironically trampling over the freedom of others and demanding they do tasks for him or to join his crew, which is always justified in-setting as these characters being chained by some greater personal burden or villain that Luffy liberates them from.

While thematically consistent a lot of Luffy's actions when taken as stand-alone show someone that miraculously understands other people's problems and sympathizes with them, yet has a notorious habit of wounding others in conflicts with them instead of calmly explaining a given context or situation. This becomes particularly grating during the aforementioned conflict with Usopp, where Luffy is portrayed as being in the right despite (un)intentionally hurting Usopp and opting to instead engage in a fruitless conflict with him, only highlighting the author's inability to write a consistent character due to Luffy miraculously sympathizing and understanding others yet in this instance being unable to rationally understand why his comrade is upset. And in many ways, this problem plagues the entirety of One Piece's character writing - characters feel very disjointed from each other as a group, often being flanderized and reduced to whatever quirk makes them the most marketable while making sure there's barely enough progression to keep fans of the series immersed.

It is a successful tactic to be certain but detracts from the quality of the series - Luffy likes eating meat, Zoro has no sense of direction, Usopp is a coward, Brock keeps cracking jokes about women's private parts and the worst offender of the bunch is Sanji and his obsession with women that veers straight into extremely creepy territory. This flanderization robs the characters of a lot of their potential chemistry, making interactions feel strangely repetitive and superfluous. The gags also are not executed with enough variation and often the punchlines have similar buildup - if Sanji and a woman are in confrontation or directly interact with each other, the reader would naturally expect a joke, and a similar predictability exists with every running gag in this series.

What's worse than the running gags insofar as the humor goes is how it disrupts any narrative stakes a fight has. On one hand it gets easier to appreciate a fight when there's no jokes by commentators in the fight, but when characters who act as commentators say predictable jokes or have over the top wacky expressions (usually involving have these gigantic ass ugly mouths opening wide as they exclaim something in all caps) that completely ruin the flow of many fights, and this problem persists and even gets worse as the series goes on. This made it difficult to completely suspend disbelief and at various points ruined entire arcs for me, as the series constantly would fluctuate between joke fights, joking in the middle of fights and deadly serious ones at the drop of a coin.

Another major issue is how the serious handles the theme of fraternal family and specifically its strange socially conservative attitude to both family and its own circle. Characters often genuinely physically abuse each other - to say nothing of countless cases of physical abuse - and yet much of it is swept under the rug and even handled as though it's the natural thing a parent or friend would do. An example of this is Garp, who the narrative expects you to sympathize with due to the irony that despite the fact he's Luffy's foster father, his son is now the most dreaded man in the setting and fears the day they both clash with one another. The problem is, however, is Garp is an actual monster who was physically and verbally abusive to Luffy and him taking care of him (if you can even call it that considering his neglectfulness) isn't nearly enough to magically make me sympathize with him. Traces of similar attitudes I can find in Sanji's backstory or Nami's attitudes towards her crewmates (even if in the latter case it's occasionally justified with Sanji).

Where One Piece's problems multiply to hell and back are in worldbuilding, however. One Piece has some of the shoddiest writing involving politics ever seen, and it's a wonder the World Government are even a force in the setting considering their baffling actions and lack of accountability to injustices they themselves commit not only against civilians but also pirates. The series' approach to politics is extremely securitized - and this includes the Straw Hats - with alliances often drawn based on strictly shared goals and rarely on ideological agreement. The noteworthy exception to this rule that I actually liked was the Pirate Alliance, where there was even an attempt to construct an identity on what exactly it meant to be a true pirate. This was a breath of fresh air in contrast to the rest of the series' black and white attitude and featured a few characters that I'd argue succeed in actually being morally gray and intriguing - like Law, a character who in many ways works wonderfully as a foil to Luffy.

This is the exception rather than the rule and while there's clearly a lot of inspiration from classical fairy tales - fitting into the overarching theme of romanticism in adventure that the series is promoting - and even successfully manages to weave a way to have them fit thematically - Usopp's backdrop using the Boy who cried Wolf is a particularly good example of this - it often feels tacked on for its own sake and I'd argue even adds to the general feeling that the series is refusing to grow beyond what it started as on a fundamental level. The series is unbelievably juvenile in its appeal and that's something even Oda himself lampshades in an interview when he mentions that he wrote One Piece with the intent to be a story aimed at children. This is not a problem in and of itself - Digimon Tamers and Dennou Coil are examples of series aimed at children that I personally think are fantastic - but it leads to the entire series dumbing down its appeal in order to appeal to the broadest audience possible, without ever elevating or moving beyond particular tropes and running gags, instead simply being comfortable in what it is. This makes sense from a financial standpoint but not a narrative-related one, as the characters continue acting like 10 year old children who permanently are high on sugar and it's hard to ever feel like these are characters that grew with their audience even if they have progressed considerably from the beginning of the series.

Other issues tie in with how this reductionist writing ends up undermining the worldbuilding the series aims for. The series tries to show off a dynamic world, filled to the brim with culturally diverse settings and characters reflecting all these locations, yet there's this feeling that characters have to act like they're in a gag comedy manga so this immersion ends up being completely ruined. Due to the series' securitized understanding of how politics works, this extends to how these locations are seen by the central characters, often simply being side steps in a greater journey that are resolved and will be fine once the heroes have left said destination, even when it's something as grievous as a civil war or overthrowing an entire government of a small state. As such it's hard to genuinely feel like these are really functioning states but rather that each state is a concept that Oda simply explores. And that understanding is reasonable but in my eyes it detracts from the writing of the series rather than adds to it.

More importantly, there's a jarring lack of understanding on how globalization impacts humanity in such a setting, or how technology would impact such a series. Airships somehow can only be flown with Devil Fruits, but ships that are incredible technologically advanced exist. The World Government deprives parts of the setting from history, but how would such a setting react to the increasing prevalence of communication devices? The world of One Piece is constantly moving and shifting forward and yet the people and extended society in the setting act the same as they've always done, with no extensive efforts put into understanding how the world would change. And perhaps all of this wouldn't be a problem if the series either limited its setting scope or didn't try to focus on that, but it does and that in and of itself is a problem.

On a technical level, One Piece's artwork is easily among the best in its demographic and contributes much to the series' success. Panelling is marvelously done, with dialogue boxes handled efficiently and cleanly, conversations flowing extremely naturally (even in text heavy pages) and a constant emphasis on artwork, by extension using the medium to constantly show off various sides of its characters and have as much expression as possible. This is a wonder considering that the series has been ongoing for several decades and the artwork has somehow only been improving over the years, which is more than what can be said about many manga in general, which resort to time-consuming cuts that remove facial expressions and artwork and emphasize dialogue, often resorting to poor dialogue placement that is a drag to read. Character designs are similarly distinct and striking, with interesting variations on clothing and weaponry that end up adding a lot to the characters. The same can be said of the backgrounds, which are beautifully detailed and add to the overall experience of reading the manga.

What I cannot say the same for are the faces, which for the lack of a better word look extremely ugly and unseemly to look at. The proportions of the faces for the most part are extremely unappealing, and particular mentions have to for to the way Oda draws facial expressions involving open mouths (as I mentioned earlier), female character designs looking very jarringly similar to the point where it's very possible to confuse characters with each other, as well as both lips and the janky look of many characters' bodies. While the character designs deserve praise in some regards, I sadly cannot agree that the actual appearance of most characters are attractive.

There are yet other broader issues with One Piece as a series; arcs have a particular pattern and usually devolve to one on one fights between foils, the Straw Hats constantly committing a No True Scotsman fallacy over what is or isn't a true pirate while never seemingly being aware of that hypocrisy, exposition often being lazily repeated across the series despite information having already been explained beforehand and the general refusal of the manga to elevate itself despite having been ongoing for over two decades, I believe that by this point anyone who doesn't understand my issues with One Piece never genuinely will.

Truthfully, that is more than fine. This is a series that I certainly understand on a basic level the appeal for, it simply just wasn't for me. And if there are fans that can accept some or all of these flaws but love their series and think it's great anyway, more power to them. I can respect passion and love for a series, and fiction is powerful despite its flaws for what it can convey to so many people.

That being said, I cannot and will never like One Piece, and unfortunately that just is how it is.

Thank you for reading, and especially to those who do like this series but read this out of interest anyway.