Discussion Unpopular Opinions

[McNuss]

Sanji definitely is a perv though

It's still a long jump from pervert to serial rapist.

I would actually like to know what's behind that statement, since Peanut Jelly Butter seems to be a Fairy Tail fan and Fairy Tail has undeniably Ecchi elements, in fact if I had to link Mashima to any One Piece character, it would be without a doubt Sanji.

 

[Ellenate]

Despite popular opinion...

Oda isn't a god at world building. In fact, he's actually pretty bad at it.

Oda comes up with good ideas but seems incapable of putting them together in any cohesive manner.

Exhibit a.

The sloppy haki retcon, that some fans refuse to acknowledge happened. Pre timskip feats shouldn't even be brought up in debates. Haki DID NOT exist, to the extent that it does today, back then.

Exhibit b.

Oda's overuse of "the guise of mystery" to (in my opinion) avoid having to explain anything.

You can't even talk about half of the stuff that goes down in this manga because there is no proper context for any of it.

How did black beard get two df abilities? Who tf knows, a thousand chapters in and we have learned little to nothing about them. So why hide blackbeard stealing whitebeard's fruit? Even if the whole thing was shown, it wouldn't have spoiled anything. In my mind it was because he himself doesn't even know how the stuff he comes up with works.

Exhibit c.

Poor implementation of story elements.

This has been pointed out many times before but if sea water is the major weakness to these guys. There should be more attempts to fight people on the open sea (naval battles, traps, ect...)

Seastone's continued under-use considering its effectiveness. Smoker is the only person in the manga that has been shown using it as a weapon (there's probably others but i don't recall anyone using it routinely).

The only reason the above aren't flushed out is due to an inability/unwillingness on Oda's part.

Exhibit d.

This one is more of an opinion but-

I think the reason he has such issues with editors is because, he just comes up with wacky ideas, and forces them to glue it all together. Eventually they see he's just full of it and the relationship grows thin.

...


Quality aside, the writing has always felt off to me. If oda is just coming up with ideas while cracking the whip on someone else writing, that would explain a lot.

 

[Fox666]

How did black beard get two df abilities? Who tf knows, a thousand chapters in and we have learned little to nothing about them. So why hide blackbeard stealing whitebeard's fruit? Even if the whole thing was shown, it wouldn't have spoiled anything. In my mind it was because he himself doesn't even know how the stuff he comes up with works.

It is never going to be shown how Blackbeard stole Whitebeard fruit due to its gross nature.

Like Big Mom inherited Caramel's fruit by eating her, Blackbeard ate the insides of Whitebeard's body through the injuries left by Squardo and Akainu.

 

[HereNThere]

It is never going to be shown how Blackbeard stole Whitebeard fruit due to its gross nature.

I think it will be shown, or at least explained, but I imagine that all the secrets of Devil Fruits are being saved for when Vegapunk finally appears.

--- Double Post Merged, Jun 24, 2020, Original Post Date: Jun 24, 2020 ---

The sloppy haki retcon, that some fans refuse to acknowledge happened. Pre timskip feats shouldn't even be brought up in debates. Haki DID NOT exist, to the extent that it does today, back then

I don't mind the retcon, but I'm moreso bothered by the fans who believe he had the idea planned out since the start, when we know Oda didn't expect One Piece to go beyond 5 years. I think he integrated it into the series as best he could retroactively.

While on that topic, while I think Oda is indeed an excellent storyteller, I don't think each and every thing he does is apart of some genius narrative master plan, as some seem to. He's only human. He literally just admitted he looks at wiki pages to recall move techniques.

 

[Franz]

I will probably go against the opinion of many, but the arc on Wano is not convincing me much.

Basically it is because of the chaos of the narrative, but also because of the fact that this island seems to me almost a sort of mental "masturbation" of the author.

Previously, each environment of the manga was inspired by various cultures and places in the real world, but these elements never went to overwrite the plot, probably due to the fact that Oda himself did not know very much of this culture and location.

Here, however, we have a total filling of its natural element, this arc does not look like One Piece with a Japanese-themed island, but rather it looks like feudal Japan with elements of One Piece.

All this makes the arc often complicated to follow, due to a whole series of historical-cultural references that are perhaps immediate for the author, but not for me.

In essence, now that he has been able to make the feudal Japan-themed island, he has completely let himself go, giving me that unpleasant feeling of really reading something else, not very accessible and confusing, for those who do not know the context.

In no other arc, whether I liked it or not, I had this feeling of Oda who gets carried away by writing something that fascinates him, exaggerating.

 

[kkck]

Despite popular opinion...

Oda isn't a god at world building. In fact, he's actually pretty bad at it.

Oda comes up with good ideas but seems incapable of putting them together in any cohesive manner.

Exhibit a.

The sloppy haki retcon, that some fans refuse to acknowledge happened. Pre timskip feats shouldn't even be brought up in debates. Haki DID NOT exist, to the extent that it does today, back then.

Exhibit b.

Oda's overuse of "the guise of mystery" to (in my opinion) avoid having to explain anything.

You can't even talk about half of the stuff that goes down in this manga because there is no proper context for any of it.

How did black beard get two df abilities? Who tf knows, a thousand chapters in and we have learned little to nothing about them. So why hide blackbeard stealing whitebeard's fruit? Even if the whole thing was shown, it wouldn't have spoiled anything. In my mind it was because he himself doesn't even know how the stuff he comes up with works.

Exhibit c.

Poor implementation of story elements.

This has been pointed out many times before but if sea water is the major weakness to these guys. There should be more attempts to fight people on the open sea (naval battles, traps, ect...)

Seastone's continued under-use considering its effectiveness. Smoker is the only person in the manga that has been shown using it as a weapon (there's probably others but i don't recall anyone using it routinely).

The only reason the above aren't flushed out is due to an inability/unwillingness on Oda's part.

Exhibit d.

This one is more of an opinion but-

I think the reason he has such issues with editors is because, he just comes up with wacky ideas, and forces them to glue it all together. Eventually they see he's just full of it and the relationship grows thin.

...


Quality aside, the writing has always felt off to me. If oda is just coming up with ideas while cracking the whip on someone else writing, that would explain a lot.

I wouldn't go as far as saying oda is outright bad at it but he definitely is not a god at it.

Haki wise, to me its a stretch that it didn't exist early in the story. Rather, oda decided haki would be a thing from relatively early on BUT as the story progressed and got longer (than he foresaw) he made changes to how it would work an look. That's why hardened haki, which is pretty common in mid tier new world fighters, was not seen once during marineford. I don't take issue with haki itself being uncommon outside the new world for that matter.

As for BB.... Us not knowing why BB was able to get two fruits is not a world building failure. Not its problematic to the story that after all this time we still don't know. BB hasn't even been a significant part of the story since marineford. It'd be different if the manga never addressed this or the explanation did not make an iota of sense but that's not a thing yet.

Sea stone wise, the series has not been overt about anything but there are several hints as to the context around it. The implication so far seems to be that sea stone is difficult to work with, with the implication being that only in wano can sea stone bullets be made. And I'd bet its pretty damn expensive. An interesting bit here is that vegapunk allegedly invented sea stone but recently we learned that it originated in wano... So that's either a plot hole or something to look forward to.

Plot wise, my main issue with oda is that the story relies on consistent extraordinary coincidences to move forward. Whenever a strawhat is just wandering around he immediately runs into the plot even if the odds of it are one in a billion. Like when luffy just stumbled into zoro in wano...

 

[Ellenate]

It is never going to be shown how Blackbeard stole Whitebeard fruit due to its gross nature.

Like Big Mom inherited Caramel's fruit by eating her, Blackbeard ate the insides of Whitebeard's body through the injuries left by Squardo and Akainu.

why would cannibalism be off the table?

they showed oden being boiled alive....
two crucifixions (one with a kid)...
whitebeard's face blown off...


it seems like a weird place to draw the line, to me it just feels like he is needlessly hiding things.

I wouldn't go as far as saying oda is outright bad at it but he definitely is not a god at it.

That's all i'm saying.

 

[thedude]

I think Oda is great at world building. He is terrible at pacing.

The retcon you mention is real, but I dont' think it's bad world building to later flesh out a concept in a story spanning 2 decades of writing. I feel he's great at world building because so much of the world feels lived in, like it doesn't depend on Luffy and co to arrive before the people start living their lives and fighting their battles.

Deciding later on how haki works fully doesn't really feel bad to me, he had the basics of it (allows you to sense enemies, allows you to "hold" onto a DF users real body and hurt them), he just hadn't fully fleshed it out.

On pacing, I said it in another thread - he had a recent chapter where Kinemon and others, in the span of 14 pages, gave Oden's complete history, including how he recruited his Scabbards. We knew the story then. A few dozen chapters later...Oda retold those 14 pages over 14 chapters, in painstaking, pointless detail. We barely learned anything new. We spent 6 months on a character who is dead and whose story doesn't actually advance the current plot at all.

That's my...popular opinion I'd guess lol. Can't say it's unpopular.

 

[Azure Warrior]

Very controversial unpopular opinion.

Foxy is far from the worst One Piece character.

 

[goldb]

Exhibit b.

Oda's overuse of "the guise of mystery" to (in my opinion) avoid having to explain anything.

You can't even talk about half of the stuff that goes down in this manga because there is no proper context for any of it.

How did black beard get two df abilities? Who tf knows, a thousand chapters in and we have learned little to nothing about them. So why hide blackbeard stealing whitebeard's fruit? Even if the whole thing was shown, it wouldn't have spoiled anything. In my mind it was because he himself doesn't even know how the stuff he comes up with works.

This part sounds more like personal frustration in not getting what you want out the story when you want it. There are problably better examples of overuse of mystery but Blackbeard's ability isn't one of those.

The way I see it is this, the mystery surrounding his ability to get WB's devil fruit )without any visible change to his dead body) will be clearer once we know how the backstory behind devil fruits themselves. Not to say there's a direct correlation but we'd at least be able to venture an educated guess beyond cannibalism, which doesn't seem to be case as there was no sign of any further changes to WB's body.

That's assuming we don't just find out about Blackbeard beforehand, but my personal theory is that we'll find out about devil fruits before Blackbeard's story is revealed to us.

Besides this, @kkck and @thedude covered what I consider my current thoughts/annoyance with OP.

 

[Fox666]

why would cannibalism be off the table?

they showed oden being boiled alive....
two crucifixions (one with a kid)...
whitebeard's face blown off...


it seems like a weird place to draw the line, to me it just feels like he is needlessly hiding things.

I don't know why he draw the line with cannibalism, but he does.

It was never "confirmed" that Big Mom ate Caramel and the other kids either.

 

[hokageji]

I dont think Big Mom eating Carmel counts as cannibalism either, its the equivalent of a vegan eating a salad with a bug. She didn't intend to eat them but in front of her meal, they're just like bugs....

Cannibalism in One Piece: closest is Big Mom eating her kids' soul..

 

[Ellenate]

This part sounds more like personal frustration in not getting what you want out the story when you want it. There are problably better examples of overuse of mystery but Blackbeard's ability isn't one of those.

I'm not that invested in the story, personally i think it's going to end in a train-wreck. Now naruto, i was invested in that, and wasn't going to stop reading until i got the pay off of naruto becoming hokage.

anyway-

The point wasn't to outline the overuse but that he does it to cover up (he literally covered it up) for not knowing himself.

The way I see it is this, the mystery surrounding his ability to get WB's devil fruit )without any visible change to his dead body) will be clearer once we know how the backstory behind devil fruits themselves. Not to say there's a direct correlation but we'd at least be able to venture an educated guess beyond cannibalism, which doesn't seem to be case as there was no sign of any further changes to WB's body.

That's assuming we don't just find out about Blackbeard beforehand, but my personal theory is that we'll find out about devil fruits before Blackbeard's story is revealed to us.

Has oda ever given answers to any of his mysteries...? He's revealed unknown unknowns but i can't think of many known unkowns he's come forward with.

 

[afromarco005]

Unpopular opinion:

1-Franky Brooke and Robin with strong Haki = Sanji

2-Shanks is way overated and is the weakest yonko.

3-Chopper is by far the worst strawhat and his new "kawaii' design and attitude rubs me the wrong way to say the least. He is pathetic and mostly useless (even more so since the introduction of Law)

4-All supernova captains are roughly equal in strenght with Urouge being the strongest of them all.

5- Monkey D dragon is a coward.

6- Big mom is the deepest and most interesting yonko also the second strongest after Kaido.

7-Jimbei> Luffy right now.

8- thanks for reading

 

[McNuss]

I'm not that invested in the story, personally i think it's going to end in a train-wreck. Now naruto, i was invested in that, and wasn't going to stop reading until i got the pay off of naruto becoming hokage.

That sounds exactly like there is personal frustration involved.

Naruto is exactly the opposite of One Piece, it is a story that places politically on the right wing spectrum. It is about a boy trying to become the military dictator of his village, which he achieves thanks to his superior Gene pool.

The main character doesn't fix the problems of society, rather everything returns to how it used to be after an external (and in this case literally alien) threat is finished.

One Piece is exactly the opposite of that. It is about the main character becoming the most free man in the world. While giving a damn about political correctness, One Piece is highly progressive and meant to educate you in such a fashion.

I could imagine that not sitting well with Naruto fans, because after all that Manga is about uniformity and eugenics.

However I think many people unable to see this will be disappointed by One Piece in general.

Because while Naruto only shoe-horned in the prophecy and alien threat at the end, so you could get the typical right wing "End is well, all is well" ending, One Piece has always likely included both.

Naruto only needed Kaguya as the external source of all problems, because otherwise the story would have needed to fix these problems, e. G. with Madara or Obito as the final villain.

On the other hand, after a year of research and reading One Piece for over 20 years, I am convinced that One Piece is some kind of crazy "anti-bible".

Dreams, treasure, lies, depression, food, racism, rivalry, health, kings, war, water, land, God, friendship, life, death, slavery, sex, family, hatred, children, loyalty, gender... The list of ethical topics that One Piece touches is very long, where other Shonen stop at never giving up and the power of friendship, Oda tries to educate you about something every single arc.

The Strawhats are idols and not saints, a large part of the meta-story (Chaoskampf) is pagan, and it is not about worshipping or following kings or prophets, but about becoming a "King".*

But yes, (part of) the One Piece is likely a prophecy about the return of Joyboy (=Luffy).

Also something in space is already inside One Piece (Birka on the moon), and if we go by basic symbolism, the "Celestial Dragon" in Tenryubito (=people) should be the Milky Way.

But fear not, despite superficial similarities, it won't be like Naruto at all. Luffy will always just be Luffy, but the world will be fixed and the end will certainly involve some kind of "enlightenment" or message, just like every substory of it does.

*used in a very broad context, but the Freest Man in the World, and the King of the World, are two sides of the same coin and Oda is already going that route with Im and Xebec, also I don't use this exclusive for Luffy but all the Strawhats instead.

-----------------


If you reply to this, take it to the crazy theories or mega convo thread.

 

[thedude]

Naruot

That sounds exactly like there is personal frustration involved.

Naruto is exactly the opposite of One Piece, it is a story that places politically on the right wing spectrum. It is about a boy trying to become the military dictator of his village, which he achieves thanks to his superior Gene pool.

The main character doesn't fix the problems of society, rather everything returns to how it used to be after an external (and in this case literally alien) threat is finished.

One Piece is exactly the opposite of that. It is about the main character becoming the most free man in the world. While giving a damn about political correctness, One Piece is highly progressive and meant to educate you in such a fashion.

I could imagine that not sitting well with Naruto fans, because after all that Manga is about uniformity and eugenics.

However I think many people unable to see this will be disappointed by One Piece in general.

Because while Naruto only shoe-horned in the prophecy and alien threat at the end, so you could get the typical right wing "End is well, all is well" ending, One Piece has always likely included both.

Naruto only needed Kaguya as the external source of all problems, because otherwise the story would have needed to fix these problems, e. G. with Madara or Obito as the final villain.

On the other hand, after a year of research and reading One Piece for over 20 years, I am convinced that One Piece is some kind of crazy "anti-bible".

Dreams, treasure, lies, depression, food, racism, rivalry, health, kings, war, water, land, God, friendship, life, death, slavery, sex, family, hatred, children, loyalty, gender... The list of ethical topics that One Piece touches is very long, where other Shonen stop at never giving up and the power of friendship, Oda tries to educate you about something every single arc.

The Strawhats are idols and not saints, a large part of the meta-story (Chaoskampf) is pagan, and it is not about worshipping or following kings or prophets, but about becoming a "King".*

But yes, (part of) the One Piece is likely a prophecy about the return of Joyboy (=Luffy).

Also something in space is already inside One Piece (Birka on the moon), and if we go by basic symbolism, the "Celestial Dragon" in Tenryubito (=people) should be the Milky Way.

But fear not, despite superficial similarities, it won't be like Naruto at all. Luffy will always just be Luffy, but the world will be fixed and the end will certainly involve some kind of "enlightenment" or message, just like every substory of it does.

*used in a very broad context, but the Freest Man in the World, and the King of the World, are two sides of the same coin and Oda is already going that route with Im and Xebec, also I don't use this exclusive for Luffy but all the Strawhats instead.

-----------------


If you reply to this, take it to the crazy theories or mega convo thread.

Can we just say...Naruto post time skip was way worse than anyting Oda has done since his, and the never ending Shinobi War makes Oda's pacing look absolutely speedy by comparison. Lol, that thing started Chapter 516, all the way to 700. 184 chapters of just pissing off fans with bad story telling, nearly as long as the entire pre-timeskip chapters combined.

Oda's pacing ain't what it used to be, but he is still worlds better than whatever happened to Kishimoto back there.

 

[Ellenate]

Naruto post time skip was way worse than anyting Oda has done

Is there an appropriate topic for this?

I'll reply there.

If not. Naruto > one piece, I'm out.

(though technically, it is an unpopular one piece opinion, so it would be on topic)

It is about a boy trying to become the military dictator

And one piece is about a sociopath terrorist.

 

[thedude]

Is there an appropriate topic for this?

I'll reply there.

If not. Naruto > one piece, I'm out.

(though technically, it is an unpopular one piece opinion, so it would be on topic)



And one piece is about a sociopath terrorist.

Lol, it's an unpopular opinion, so i think it's on topic! And dear god was Naruto awful at the end. Given that the war arc took up a ridiculous 25% of the chapters of the series, it's safe to say that it really ruined it. I think pre timeskip, it's great, my first manga series. Post timeskip, it gets messier and messier and then falls apart completely.

One Piece was great pre timeskip (which ended at chapter 580 lol, that's basically nearly the end of Naruto's entire run). Post time skip it's been spottier, but still hasn't fallen apart and become about random things the way Naruto did at the end.

No contest, Naruto not even close to OP.

 

[Ellenate]

Lol, it's an unpopular opinion, so i think it's on topic!

I guess if i keep it in the context of "naruto > one piece"...

Post time skip it's been spottier

In terms of time skips naruto's was way better.

Unlike with one piece's, where everyone just got a new outfit, the characters in naruto grew.

Naruto became what oda likes to portray luffy as; someone you could depend on. The idea of him being hokage, wasn't just some empty battle cry, he grew into the role. Anyone watch naruto's "the last" movie, beautiful shit (I could never see luffy having a moment like that, he's dying at the end).

Also, while underused, naruto's side characters were more than one liners. The strawhat crew had so much charm in pre. In post, you can't even get them to interact natural. It's a huge ship, why are they always in the same spot, saying the same catch phrase? Not to mention that oda refuses for all of them to be together. Their victories would be less bs if he'd have them all working together as a unit more often (like we've recently just saw).

Luffy beating kaido? bs
strawhats beating kaido together? believable

Oda really refuses to allow them to fight together. Anyone watch stampede? Why couldn't the strawhats take down the big bad as a crew? It was so weird how boa/sabo/smoker/law became luffy's makeshift crew, when his real one was right there. Luffy doesn't have to be the trope shounen mc, he doesn't have to be the strongest, the crew could do it together.

The crew have just become shadows of what they once were and the worst part about it is that oda refuses to take the spotlight off of them. There's so many more interesting things happening in the world of one piece. Why must we have a 24/7 live feed on everything the strawhats do?

In naruto we got to follow saskue. Got to see him build up a squad, then got to see said squad get effortlessly stomped by killer b. In one piece you only get to see the beginning and the torn up battle field that resulted if it has nothing to do with the sh's.

The list of ethical topics that One Piece touches is very long

Most of It is shallow, barely playing a role in the plot... outside of flashbacks.

The Strawhats are idols and not saints, a large part of the meta-story (Chaoskampf) is pagan, and it is not about worshipping or following kings or prophets, but about becoming a "King".*

If it's a message, it should be loud, and clear. Not some obscure references that have to be inferred.

With naruto-

there were trials with loneliness, being rejected by society.

The idea of hate being passed on from generation to generation. That it's never going to stop, until someone just turns the other cheek. (In other words, the famous talk no jutsu speech to pein. It wasn't as crazy of a moment as some make it out to be, naruto had already won. The speech was the equivalent of "you got anything to say for yourself".)

Naruto's themes are front and center; in which the plot and characters reflect.

...Unlike in one piece where characters continue to follow these leaders off a cliff. Whitebeard is idolized by the fandom, instead of being seen as a cult leader, who led his people to slaughter. If oda is trying to convey these hidden meanings, he's doing a horrible job at it.

But fear not, despite superficial similarities, it won't be like Naruto at all.

yeah, i think it's going to be more like bleach. Especially considering all the lose ends Oda has to clear up.

 

[thedude]

All that talk and you didn't address the elephant in the room - Naruto's horrible ending, which took 25% of the chapters, and was just about 100% Irredeemable! "Oh, all those training arcs, nah, forget it, here is a power up for you two to fight my mom...an alien...sure". If Oda loses the plot that bad I'll be pissed.