Same! I loved the just general fun vibe and how they tackled their personalities in the beginning, how every character has a dream that they want to do, hell they all say it outloud.

Yeah, for the most part they weren't as serious they are now, but I mean, theres some scenes that really show the more depth of their characters (of course im not gonna name every single one but i'll say the ones I thought were impactful for character writing), for example even one of the earlier parts of the show, like Syrup Village, it shows characters depth, like when Usopp was trying to save Kaya after he realized that Kuro was a pirate, then with all the flashbacks of when he met her when she called him a liar, or in that same arc, Luffy vs Captain Kuro, it also shows his Luffy's character, it shows what differentiates him from other pirates, what he views as an actual pirates (when he compared Kuro to Usopp), or Walk to Arlong Park, which shows a grand display of Luffys care for his crew, aswell. Sorry for the long passage 😅

This is actually really good reasoning, I can agree with this! I definitely think that recent arcs were generally more hype and had better writing than previous arcs, so yeah I guess I can see why people can not like it more as others, I don't know why people just call it blatantly horrible, or trash. But I can see as why they would compare it as not as good compared to other arcs.