“One Piece” is widely known as an incredibly popular anime, but it also has many problematic aspects. Though it’s well-liked by many, I had to quit after watching nearly half of it. It became too frustrating and overwhelming with the sheer number of episodes, which is currently 1,127 and increasing every week.
Eiichiro Oda, the creator of the “One Piece” series, is continuously working on finishing new volumes of the manga, which doubles as an anime, and promises that it won’t be accomplished before 2030. This is a downside for “One Piece” fans who just want to know how the long-running series ends. Although some people will relish watching never-ending series, I am not one of them.
The anime was first released in 1999, which makes it 26 years old. It totals approximately 19 full days’ worth of episodes, each numbering about 24 minutes. It also has 15 official movies, and it would take around 22 hours to watch all 15.
This would mean that if someone sat down to watch it for almost 20 days straight without any breaks, they’d finish it. This may not seem like a lot, but to finish it, a person would have to watch it eight hours per day, without breaks or sleep, for almost 59 sequential days. However, that doesn’t consider school, work, or other activities the average person would be doing then.
Filler episodes are non-canonical content used in animes to lengthen them and provide a short break from the plot. “One Piece” has nearly a hundred filler episodes, totaling about 9% of the anime. However, this is much less than longer animes like “Detective Conan” or “Naruto Shippuden.”
However, that’s about 32 hours lost to something that isn’t even the oeuvre of “One Piece’s” plot. This doesn’t even include the hours’ worth of unimportant, exaggerated battle scenes that the minor antagonists always seem to incite.
The pacing of these scenes is even worse, and they do nothing to further my interest or the quality of them. Monkey D. Luffy’s fighting style hardly changes, and “One Piece” is supposed to be an anime about adventure, not fighting.
One of the major drawbacks of the overly prolonged fight scenes is Oda’s reluctance to follow through with character deaths. It may seem cruel to hope for the main characters’ demise, but the author seems afraid to change the status quo of any character. This makes “plot twists” obvious to watchers who are used to seeing the same thing happen constantly.
The frequent teasing of characters’ deaths makes the anime’s fighting scenes feel hollow and superficial, which doesn’t contribute to the lack of animation quality in them either. While no fan loves to see their favorite characters die, sometimes it’s needed to create a more in-depth plot.
However, this goes well beyond prominent characters. Oda has a habit of creating detailed and vivid backstories for main characters, but frequently unimportant side characters as well. This can be frustrating to the audience and distracting from the main narrative.
Oda created an extremely diverse myriad of characters; however, it is a commonality that almost every single character in “One Piece” has a tragic backstory. Usually, unfortunate pasts are a way for characters to have a drive or a reason, but also for viewers to relate to them. An example of this was Nami, whom I generally disliked until I saw the Arlong Park Arc.
In this arc, it was shown that young Nami and her indigent adoptive family had to fight for their survival when the Arlong Pirates took over their village and forced them to pay in exchange for their lives. She became my favorite protagonist in the anime, due to her determination and wit. She’s a very well-rounded character, but there are some outward features that I still despise.
The main problem I still have with her is the physical attributes she was given, which are shared with most of the women in the series. Each feminine character has the same body shape and style, which feels out of place next to the unique designs of their male counterparts.
Even though he has a recognizable art style, Oda could have made vast improvements on his interchangeable body types for the women. He doesn’t seem to have an issue with creating a variety of distinctive features for male characters. On top of all this, the women are heavily sexualized, with unrealistic bodily proportions.
It’s not difficult to say that Oda was completely going for what he thought were idealized, attractive characters to himself and other men. It feels as though these characters were completely designed for the male gaze alone and to boost fan service. Despite the women being proven important in the storyline, their designs feel more like bleak templates rather than rounded individuals.
Sadly, many animes exaggerate unrealistic bodies for women. This influences unattainable body standards, which is an already ongoing issue in today’s society.
The issues that lie within “One Piece” are deeply rooted in the stereotypical anime’s qualities and contribute to many people’s perceived resentment towards the anime community. While the fanbase for “One Piece” is large, it’s hard for them to disagree that it doesn’t lack in aspects that have been proven to be detrimental to its reputation.
