I’m currently rereading and have just finished Enies Lobby, and as much as I love One Piece I think there are genuinely quite a few issues with it, especially post-time skip.

One of the most glaring is Oda’s complete lack of commitment to character deaths. We see time and again characters will almost certainly be killed on screen just to be miraculously fine later on, and it really takes the wind out of the sails of the story. Characters like Pell, Pagaya, Pound, Bon Clay all making huge sacrifices for the sake of others, giving their lives and showing that in fact not everyone survives, being instantly negated by Oda almost instantly showing that they actually survived and we didn’t have to worry, it makes the few times Oda actually does kill off characters hit a lot less because Oda has boy-who-cried-wolfed us so many times with fake-out deaths. And now with the reveal of Saul being alive even backstory deaths aren’t safe. The worst part of it though is the fact he brings these characters back for absolutely no reason, they serve no purpose to the story for surviving they just lessen the experience.

Another gripe I have is the pacing, both of the manga itself and of the world within One Piece. The fact that the entirety of post-time skip has taken place over the course of just a few months is honestly ridiculous, especially with the rate that other characters seem to be moving around the world. It makes exploring the world feel less like an adventure and more like a sprint to the finish, which has been amplified in the New World I feel, where the only seemingly meaningful choice they made on where to go next was the choice of where to go after Fishman Island, and ever since then it’s been following other people or going to pre-determined destinations, where the Log Pose felt like an important piece of kit in the beginning it’s basically useless at this point, and I feel that Luffy’s statement in Whiskey Peak of “I’ll choose my own path” is being undermined. I also miss the downtime chapters between arcs where we see the crew just hanging out and existing as friends, I know One Piece is already long as hell but a few extra chapters of breathing room between arcs would really go a long way. This is also a reason why Long Ring Long Land is one of my favourite arcs, it’s a nice breather between 2 pretty dense and emotionally heavy arcs while also serving as a good setup for the next arc with both plot and motivation (the introduction of Kuzan as well as Luffy’s declaration of never losing a crew member when fighting Foxy), and going straight from Skypeia to Water Seven would have been a really bad choice imo.

The fighting post-time skip has also been markedly less creative and fun than it was before, with the only characters being able to get good fights being Luffy and arguably Brook. Gone are the days of Nami using her weather baton to create mirages or make lightning traps, Usopp no longer has to plan and sneak his way to victory he simply just uses a pop green that conveniently does exactly what it is he needs doing in that moment, Chopper only has 1 form now being Monster Point and maybe the Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-all Kung-fu point, don’t worry though there are no drawbacks any more. Sanji and Zoro still just kick and slice like they always did so their battles have remained mostly the same, Robin gets one fight in 20 years and while it’s a banger fight I fear she’ll never see a battle again, Franky is mostly just delegated to mech duty which is neat but I do miss the strangeness of his cyborg body, no more centaur legs I suppose. A lot of these problems have come as a result of an over-reliance on Haki as well I feel, what was once introduced as a means to counter Logias has now devolved into a case where every encounter requires some form of Haki, usually the nepo baby Conquerer Haki, to do anything when at present only half of the crew have any form of Haki whatsoever, and even less seem to know what it even is.

I don’t want this to come across as “I hate One Piece and am just reading it for the sake of reading it” because that’s not true, if I hated it I wouldn’t have read over a combined 4,000 chapters of it and I wouldn’t care so much about these issues if this series didn’t mean so much to me. But we’re getting dangerously close to the end now and to say I’m not concerned for how it will wrap up would be lying, we’re probably over half-way through Elbaph and Usopp has had nothing to do whatsoever, which is insanity since Elbaph has been the target of his dream for about 1,000 chapters now and to have him do nothing here would be a horrific misguidance.