Discussion Why is One Piece also number One?

[Finale]

The thing I like about OP is that almost anything can happen in it and it will make complete sense unlike many other manga where crap just pops up out of nowhere. As you read OP every tiny detail or little piece of information can have huge ramifications later on, thats what makes the discussions about it so entertaining.

 

[Zoro #1]

I think that One piece is doing so good is becuase of the awesome story line and how every little mini arc is related to the main story line unlike other mangas where you have mini arc after mini arc and the story doesn't go anywhere. Another reason is the characters, even though Luffy and his crew are the main characters they are not hyped up they never had any kind ultimate power that other people in the manga don't have, and the fighting style is also quite diverse where the main character is not using and spamming the same thing over and over again. But most of all it is about how great Oda is in creating such a complex storyline without forgetting about the small details.

 

[jorped]

For me One Piece will never be the number one , because that spot belongs to Naruto , but i get why it nowadays is almost every time number 1!

I mean One Piece is a very good shounen manga. Oda was able to create a fantastic world and the story is awesome.
Oda managed to create a bunch of awesome characters and though some arcs might be boring ,talking more about the beginning of One Piece, it has indeed very beautiful arcs with a lot of emotional moments.
And we can't never forget the comedy , though i think that sometimes Oda exaggerates for example with Sanji .

But in the end it is all because the story though is good, it's pretty simple.

Naruto story and plot is away much better but doesn't reach the popularity of One Piece and won't ever because is much more complicate.
Though Naruto has better battles , awesome characters and better villains than One Piece , in the end One Piece stays always as the first !

I think that the main reason why One Piece is almost always number one is because it might appeal to a large ammount of people than for example Naruto do.

One Piece is awesome , but their is some times that some chapters of other mangas really deserve to be higher than it . But One Piece will always stay on a very good position cuz Oda is indeed a very talented mangaka and even though their is still at least 10 years left, he will somehow manage to keep that awesome historical

 

[Zoro #1]

For me One Piece will never be the number one , because that spot belongs to Naruto , but i get why it nowadays is almost every time number 1!

I mean One Piece is a very good shounen manga. Oda was able to create a fantastic world and the story is awesome.
Oda managed to create a bunch of awesome characters and though some arcs might be boring ,talking more about the beginning of One Piece, it has indeed very beautiful arcs with a lot of emotional moments.
And we can't never forget the comedy , though i think that sometimes Oda exaggerates for example with Sanji .

But in the end it is all because the story though is good, it's pretty simple.

Naruto story and plot is away much better but doesn't reach the popularity of One Piece and won't ever because is much more complicate.
Though Naruto has better battles , awesome characters and better villains than One Piece , in the end One Piece stays always as the first !

I think that the main reason why One Piece is almost always number one is because it might appeal to a large ammount of people than for example Naruto do.

One Piece is awesome , but their is some times that some chapters of other mangas really deserve to be higher than it . But One Piece will always stay on a very good position cuz Oda is indeed a very talented mangaka and even though their is still at least 10 years left, he will somehow manage to keep that awesome historical

Lol, you pulled the naruto card, for me naruto is second to one piece not because of the long and interesting battles, in naruto they show very little hand to hand fight the rest of the time its just the character spamming their same old jutsu over and over again, I mean look at naruto its either shaadow clone or the 10,000 different variation of rasengan, plus the power of sharingan and other powers are so hyped up that the other normal ninjas look mediocre infront of the main characters while in one piece the character and powers are quite diverse and there is no single person that is the most powerful in the world. kishi is a great writer its just that some time he takes a jutsu like the ET and spams it in such a way without giving explanation that it confuses the hell out of the reader.

 

[jorped]

Lol, you pulled the naruto card, for me naruto is second to one piece not because of the long and interesting battles, in naruto they show very little hand to hand fight the rest of the time its just the character spamming their same old jutsu over and over again, I mean look at naruto its either shaadow clone or the 10,000 different variation of rasengan, plus the power of sharingan and other powers are so hyped up that the other normal ninjas look mediocre infront of the main characters while in one piece the character and powers are quite diverse and there is no single person that is the most powerful in the world. kishi is a great writer its just that some time he takes a jutsu like the ET and spams it in such a way without giving explanation that it confuses the hell out of the reader.

Yeah i can't stop myself from agreeing with you on the ET part , cuz somewhere on it Kishi failed ! Maybe when he gives to us more info it will be better.
But you can't say that Naruto fights are boring , when for most of the time Luffy wasn't anything more than gomu gomu attacks . It was away to boring , but that changed cuz we are seeing haki being used more often and the gears are pretty cool .
When i said Naruto battles are better , that is my opinion because Naruto's fights are much more tactical and i love the way Naruto and other characters managed to win and beat their opponents with unique solutions !

there is no single person that is the most powerful in the world.

You sure about this ?
Whitebeard was the most powerful guy in the world with only that fruit , now Blackbeard possess Whitebeard's fruit and he still possess the darkness fruit. With this 2 years he must have managed to control well this powers , so i don't expect anyone to be able of beating him ! And i really don't know how Luffy will with only the gomu gomu fruit

But that is something up to Oda , and i do believe that he will surprise us in a good way

 

[Samui]

But in the end it is all because the story though is good, it's pretty simple.

Naruto story and plot is away much better but doesn't reach the popularity of One Piece and won't ever because is much more complicate.
Though Naruto has better battles , awesome characters and better villains than One Piece , in the end One Piece stays always as the first !

So One Piece's plot is simple, and Naruto's plot is much better? The grand scheme of things in One Piece is so much better than Naruto, whose plot revolves around bringing back Sasuke, Naruto's so-called friend, and fighting Akatsuki whose (real) leader is to control the world through Genjutsu reflected by the moon. How is that complicated when in One Piece we have a corrupt Government, a good-doing selfish pirate for a protagonist, the Ancient Kingdom and all that ties into it (the treasure itself, the Ancient Weapons, the Void History) and the fact that according to Rayleigh, the truth isn't simple. So in the end we've no idea how it's going to end, no one can predict the ending of this manga.

Also, how are Naruto's villains are better? The only good villains are Orochimaru (from the 1st part, he pretty much got butchered in the 2nd), and Pain. That's it. The rest were decent and didn't take much part in the story because Kishi just had to kill them off for some reason (Poor Kisame), and actually the sames goes for Pain as well. He didn't do anything until his invasion, so he's pretty much right above the "weekly enemy".

One Piece's list of villains consist of genius masterminds (Crocodile), a psychopath with God complex (Enel, who terrorized Skypiea with his God-like power), the most pirate-ish villain in One Piece so far (Blackbeard) and the list goes on...
Unlike the Akatsuki, the villain Shichibukai (Crocodile, Moria, Blackbeard, Doflamingo) aren't just one time antagonists who were defeated and thrown out of the story like Deidara, Hidan. Kakuzu... each had their own goals, and they're still part of the story even after their respective arcs, we still continue to learn about their past and motives. Take Crocodile for example: He was defeated by Whitebeard, tried to find an Ancient Weapon and taking over an entire nation to match the military strength of the World Government. We also know that in the past he wasn't different than Luffy, but something changed and he lost trust in people (and considering his wounds that surely weren't caused by Whitebeard, it's easy to guess that perhaps Crocodile's old crew betrayed him). We also know that he knows Ivankov, who has knowledge of some secret of his. Now can you compare him to Deidara, Kakuzu, or Hidan? Kakuzu and Hidan are even worse than Deidara, because Kishi did as he's told by his editors and ended the arc sooner for some weird reason (He didn't have the time? Really?!)

 

[Syzerd]

Regarding this Naruto vs One Piece sub-discussion, honestly i started watching Naruto earlier than One Piece, and I started my manga adventure with Naruto, but at some points it was so boring, so much pointless missions and fillers, that now i can't watch Naruto anymore, i definitly given up on it.

There was another anime that for me it has one of the best awesome history that I have ever seen, and that was Death Note, but unfortunatly, for me it ended at half at the history and i couldn't watch the rest (want to avoid spoilers for those that havent seen it) but for me it still is one of the best.

Really loved Hajime no Ippo, and hope that the Anime get started again as fast as it is possible, because i don't appreciate the manga that much.

Watched the first episodes of Bleach and Fairy Tail and died of being so bored, and given up.

But there is one Manga and Anime that fascinates me more and more with the time, I watched all the movies i hope i watched all the specials too, and that is One Piece, it has such a well written story, so much awesome characters, and not only the protagonists, also the bad guys are unique, I love that well build up characters, its like each character has is own life. Then, the humor makes start laughing at the beggining of a chapter and stop at the end of it, sometimes with some cry in the middle. And i think the most important is that we still don't know almost anything about this world, there is so much detail in it.

And this all makes me every wednesday, wait religiously for the next chapter, and after read it be impatient for the next one. And thats why it is number one for me.

 

[Ninja_Pirate]

Its just oda who can develop characters the way it has been done in one piece,.. Even a ship as a character has been developed such that its burning by luffy's hand made so many burst in tears ... odasome

 

[Zoro #1]

Yeah i can't stop myself from agreeing with you on the ET part , cuz somewhere on it Kishi failed ! Maybe when he gives to us more info it will be better.
But you can't say that Naruto fights are boring , when for most of the time Luffy wasn't anything more than gomu gomu attacks . It was away to boring , but that changed cuz we are seeing haki being used more often and the gears are pretty cool .
When i said Naruto battles are better , that is my opinion because Naruto's fights are much more tactical and i love the way Naruto and other characters managed to win and beat their opponents with unique solutions !



You sure about this ?
Whitebeard was the most powerful guy in the world with only that fruit , now Blackbeard possess Whitebeard's fruit and he still possess the darkness fruit. With this 2 years he must have managed to control well this powers , so i don't expect anyone to be able of beating him ! And i really don't know how Luffy will with only the gomu gomu fruit

But that is something up to Oda , and i do believe that he will surprise us in a good way

If BB was that powerful then he wouldn't have just hightailed from seeing Akainu on the ship he wanted, he has the DF powers but he is long way from perfecting it just look at luffy after almost 16 years or something of having his DF powers he is still learning and finding new ways to improve so to say that BB has mastered his powers in just 2yrs is over the top, plus there is haki so BB isn't that big of a hot shot against an admiral with logia power and haki. WB was strong but still he was considered second to Roger, but I think it was mainly because he was never interested in fame or power, though still WB and Roger were considered to be the strongest people and still are in my opinion. In case of Luffy defeating BB I think that BB overconfidence in his power will bring his downfall plus we have a whole half of one piece left so anything can happen during that time. And I'm sorry for saying that fights in naruto are boring, what i meant was that I would rather love for kishi to have a more hand to hand fight and give the characters are little more jutsu's rather than using the same old jutsu's that are just tweaked a little bit.

 

[Anduren]

The best way I can explain why I think One Piece is number one is with a thought experiment:

If you take a survey of random people on the street and ask them "If you were in these situations, how are you more likely to act/react?"

Spoiler

Situation #1: Would you chase after someone who has blatantly rejected you as a friend to your face for over 2 years, and refuse to give up? (Naruto)

Situation #2: If you were bleeding to death would you refuse blood from the one you hate the most? (Fisher Tiger)

Situation #3: How likely are you to want to heal someone who just tried to kill you 5 minutes ago? (Orihime)

Situation #4: How likely are you to always walk around wanting to kill everyone in your way IF your brother slaughtered your family? (Sasuke)

Situation #5: How would you react if you did everything you could to save your brother from a fatal situation, but you failed because he did the same for you? (Luffy)

Situation #6: Would you ever threaten to beat someone into teaching you something? (Ichigo to Vizards)

P.S. I hope nobody takes offense to my critical portrayal of Bleach/Naruto. Just tryin to make a point here.

The point I'm trying to make is.....chances are, more people can relate directly to One Piece characters on many levels than the others even in the most extreme cases. They're more human in their character/personality than in almost any other manga you can compare with and they behave like how normal people would behave if they were plucked out of this world and placed in the world where One Piece exists. On top of this, Oda uses satire to make characters humorous all the while making them realistic: i.e. Nami's obsession with money and Sanji's obsession with women. I'm sure more people than not (as funny as it is) know at least one person that behaves like Nami and/or Sanji around their respective vice.

But character development isn't the only bonus in One Piece. As many have already mentioned, the world Oda has built is superb and has everything from geographic, cultural, and historical detail which he doesn't rush through or allow any inconsistencies on to the point that it makes it believable as far fetched as it can be (sky island). And the main theme of the story is something that drives every human on an instinctive level: freedom. The fact that freedom isn't based on good and evil means anyone who appreciates freedom will also appreciate the story of One Piece for its portrayal of it. Most other mangas tend to concentrate on things like good vs evil or peace vs war to the point that sometimes they tend to forget what drives people to choose one over the other....it all goes back to freedom.

 

[Carlito]

I think that a very interesting part of OP, as a shonen manga, has been well expressed in here (http://karaconner.com/blog/?p=225) through :

Skipping over the battles would be skipping over a lot of what makes One Piece engaging, though. You’ve been ruined by Dragonball Z ... Battles are fought physically, but they’re also fought psychologically. The heroes and villains believe in very different sets of ideals, and a lot of the combat is over different political and philosophical views of the world, and which ones are better. And it’s not just “I’m going to rule the world!” versus “No you aren’t!” There are complicated issues, such as the role of government, the rights of the individual, and the meaning of freedom. Third, it’s not just a matter of exchanging laser beams or swordplay that’s so fast that you can’t keep track of the movement. It’s superpower versus superpower done with great imagination.

I'd even say that there aren't really any good heroes and bad vilains. There are only the heroes/main characters and the anti-heroes (which aren't even clearly defined), all with there own ideals and goals which might end up to conflict one another.

 

[benelori]

Obviously the story and the setting of the story...
Many mangas abuse the traditional japanese elements like samurais, ninjas, hi-tech stuff, or even the concept of ki to no end...OP is a breath of fresh air as it creates a shell for all this to be present, however these elements are not the starting point...
For example HxH or Psyren where they use mental power, which is a variation of ki, or magic power in FT and other mahou manga, start from the premise that he main characters will enter the story because they have some sort of ki that will enable them to fight.

In OP the concept of powerful is approached from a different view, I don't think I have to give examples...not to mention that Oda's imagination just adds to my idea

Combine this with the wonderful world, which incorporates all sorts of legends of myths from different places, not just Asia, the setting is clearly one of the most powerful arguments...just the fact that the main characters are not robots, samurai or just walking atomic bombs, but pirates IMO is the most important when we talk about the setting

And as I said the story...just the idea of seeking treasures, be free on the sea is appealing, not even mentioning the impressive twists, and character backgrounds...

PS: oh and I forgot the humor...the humor is good, even though I find the recent exaggerations a bit old now...we used to have much more intelligent humor in previous arcs

 

[Black Hawk]

The big Point is the History behind ODA and the equality from DB and OP.
The leading man, Ruffy, really don´t care about nothing. He act wild and free, some young reader, fans Followers or growing youth can understand and follow this. That make the Headleader sympathetic.

Another big fact is growing feature, grow with it. Grow with the people growing as friends. So u can look at yourself. How u change by yourself and growing. When your favorit character are like u, make it more likely. U can see it also by other series like Bleach or Naturo, KHR.
When we speaks about characters there a planty of it in Op. Also the bad Guys are most Time stronger as the Headleader. They become a Background and get good time of introducing. That give Fan´s the chance, to stay at One Piece. As an Badguy Fan and anti Fan. XD

Next Point the simple Story structure. For new reader is easy to read and understand. For some older MangaFans ODA works with surprise. When u think u know whats coming, a new flashback or actor move in. That make it interisting for me.

Another thing is like me, that always the comedy or dramatic moment are important then any new ability. So it always keep the emotion in the frontline.
That make for me also Beelzebub so funny.

That are my arguments, why OP or other serious got so many Fans.

 

[exacta]

Thirdly, it's more mature than some other series.

Spoiler: Spoilers for Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach

As others have said, you don't always have the main character pull a power-up from out of nowhere to win against characters who are actually stronger than him. Luffy lost to Crocodile twice, lost to Magellan, lost to Kuma, etc. It's not like Naruto, where he beat Pain, but we're supposed to somehow believe he's going to have trouble beating Sasuke. And Ace and Whitebeard, both good guys, have died. It's not like Bleach, where Yamamoto can get hit by the flames of Ryuujin Jakka and use a sacrificial kidou and still make it out alive, or Hiyori can get literally cut in half and still survive.

Whoa there buddy. I agree with your first two points, but I have a few problems with your third one...

First of all, there are plenty of instances of characters in One Piece surviving things that should've been impossible, just like most other shounen. For example, Whitebeard being able to fight after getting stabbed in the chest with a giant sword and having half his FACE RIPPED OFF. Not til he got shot several times after did he die. And Franky got hit by a train when he was a kid and lived through that.

And lets not forget Pell carrying a freaking nuke into the sky and somehow surviving the explosion unscathed, with no explanation.

If anything, One Piece takes the whole living through absurd injuriers things further than Bleach does. At least Bleach actually outright states that the body of a Shinigami can handle alot more punishment than a human body can.

One Piece has had its fair share of asspull powerups too....one that I'm thinking of in particular is Zoro vs Mr. 1. Zoro was getting his ass handed to him because he couldn't cut through steel, and then all of the sudden he remembers a proverb his teacher said to him and then all of the sudden he cuts through Mr. 1 like butter. Definitely an asspull. Plus, Naruto had alot of help in the fight against Pain, and Sasuke has plenty of room to gain more powers, which he did after the Pain fight anyway, so thats not an asspull really.

And One Piece isn't really into the habit of killing good guys very often, also just like most shounen.....Whitebeard and Ace were the first two good guys to die that weren't part of a flashback, and it took more than 500 chapters for that to happen. Hell, One Piece doesn't even really kill its bad guys...coupled with its art, and I don't really see One Piece being more mature than other shounens really.

 

[pyogenes]

Popularity of manga is strongly tied to the quality of the anime. And anime tends to only be as good as its filler episodes. One Piece filler episodes aren't great, but they usually aren't totally horrible either. They also don't go on for years at a time...
Naruto had 2 whole years of absolutely unwatchable fillers before Shippuden started.
Bleach painted itself into a corner and had to do fillers that don't come even close to fitting in the storyline.

Bad filler --> lower anime ratings --> lower manga popularity

 

[Oni Giri]

why, you ask? it is because one piece exists

 

[Aikidoka]

And One Piece isn't really into the habit of killing good guys very often, also just like most shounen.....Whitebeard and Ace were the first two good guys to die that weren't part of a flashback, and it took more than 500 chapters for that to happen. Hell, One Piece doesn't even really kill its bad guys...coupled with its art, and I don't really see One Piece being more mature than other shounens really.

I agree with most of your points, exacta, except for the last one (quoted above). Death of characters doesn't necessarily imply maturity, nor does a mature story necessarily have to include lots of deaths. If you read American comics, we can use as an example the "Dark Age" of comics during the nineties. Writers and artists saw how popular Watchmen was, and tried to copy its "dark" content; we ended up with lots of crap comics that had excessive gore and death, but almost no intelligence at all. On the other side of the coin, sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov's stories dealt with a lot of mature themes (artificial intelligence and its implication of free will and rights), but rarely had death in any of them (except for the detective ones).

What I'm trying to say with those examples is that it's not so much the superficial (read: visible) aspects (the art or death count) that make a comic/manga/film/whatever mature, but the themes that it deals with. Bleach has nakama, Naruto has the "cycle of revenge", and One Piece has nakama and in recent years racism. Outside of the "big three" we even have some manga with unique themes like Soul Eater, which deals with chaos vs. order, and the very concept of insanity. Based on themes alone, I'd rank the big three from lowest to highest Bleach, Naruto, then One Piece. But of course we know the maturity of manga is based on so many more factors than that.

You might not have meant that the deaths (or lack thereof) were the main reason that you believed One Piece wasn't more mature than the other manga, or even a very significant one; I just wanted to point out that in terms of how mature a manga is, death count is probably one of the less important factors.

 

[kidopitz27]

the answer why OP is still #1 is OP's story-line makes is top notch. Yes some of the chapters are slow but that slow pace makes you understand the story better and last but not the least "in my point of view" Trolling does not exist in OP

 

[jorped]

The best way I can explain why I think One Piece is number one is with a thought experiment:

If you take a survey of random people on the street and ask them "If you were in these situations, how are you more likely to act/react?"

Spoiler

Situation #1: Would you chase after someone who has blatantly rejected you as a friend to your face for over 2 years, and refuse to give up? (Naruto)

Situation #2: If you were bleeding to death would you refuse blood from the one you hate the most? (Fisher Tiger)

Situation #3: How likely are you to want to heal someone who just tried to kill you 5 minutes ago? (Orihime)

Situation #4: How likely are you to always walk around wanting to kill everyone in your way IF your brother slaughtered your family? (Sasuke)

Situation #5: How would you react if you did everything you could to save your brother from a fatal situation, but you failed because he did the same for you? (Luffy)

Situation #6: Would you ever threaten to beat someone into teaching you something? (Ichigo to Vizards)

P.S. I hope nobody takes offense to my critical portrayal of Bleach/Naruto. Just tryin to make a point here.

Very good questions, and i kinda understand the results that come from that answers, but only if i think that NarutoUniverse is the same as ours.
Naruto World is very different from ours, and what people fail to realize is that their actions, though they might not be normal in our world they are much more normal at Naruto World.
When people fail to realize this, and start judging a manga, comparing it to our world, of course it will make a lot of things seem stupid.
People, that don't understand why Naruto is still after Sasuke, failed to realize what Kishi really meant with the story.

---------- Post added at 03:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:12 PM ----------

the answer why OP is still #1 is OP's story-line makes is top notch. Yes some of the chapters are slow but that slow pace makes you understand the story better and last but not the least "in my point of view" Trolling does not exist in OP

Oda is indeed a very skilled mangaka !
About the trolling , i remember one !
Crocodile was clearly trolled , there wasn't possibly for him to be defeated by Luffy, on that time !

 

[Anduren]

...Naruto World is very different from ours, and what people fail to realize is that their actions, though they might not be normal in our world they are much more normal at Naruto World.
When people fail to realize this, and start judging a manga, comparing it to our world, of course it will make a lot of things seem stupid.
People, that don't understand why Naruto is still after Sasuke, failed to realize what Kishi really meant with the story.

That is exactly the point i was making Although I dunno if it's fair to say it's the general public's fault for not understanding what it's like to live in a world that is different from the world they live in when the people living in that other world make decisions based on unfamiliar rationalizations. Since we're talking in reference to why One Piece is more popular, it goes to show how much the characters in one piece are easier for normal people to relate to without having to think outside the box....which doesn't come naturally to a majority of the "general public".

EDIT: I also wanted to add that its a matter of idealism vs pragmatism that makes a big difference in the reader's mind. It's all good in an idealistic sense to think that you can talk and wish your way out of war and violence (Naruto) or to think that if you train yourself enough you can beat any opponent or organization single-handedly (Bleach) but the reality is that pragmatically, evil must be confronted the way the strawhats don't back down against what they think is wrong: which earns them respect in the eyes of the reader; but at the same time, its not a situation where you're all powerful because you're the main character: there's a good possibility that even by the end of the series, the strawhats won't be the strongest characters in the One Piece world because to be pirate king doesn't mean to be the strongest/able to "conquer" the grand line. They just want to achieve their dream and be free... which is a universal human yearning anyone can relate to.