Voting Round 4 One-Punch Man vs. One Piece

Arjuna · Oct 18, 2017

Going with OPM here

Lady pompom · Oct 18, 2017

How did it happen? Why those two had to compete now? Can't we just choose both?

eefrit said:
I vote we combine the two into One Piece Man and let them both win.

what a great idea.

Brandish μ · Oct 18, 2017

I'll toss a straw hat into the ring and declare One Piece as my preferred choice.

Jammin · Oct 18, 2017

Brandish said:
I'll toss a straw hat into the ring and declare One Piece as my preferred choice.

I thought you wanted to see a seinen win Brandish? There are only two of those left in the game and OPM is the one not diving head first into the FMA buzz saw right now.

A vote for One Piece is a vote for shounen victory.

Vici · Oct 18, 2017

Brandish said:
I'll toss a straw hat into the ring and declare One Piece as my preferred choice.

My dear Don and here I wanted to support you in the Wisest Staff Member category and you coming up with something like that :bnah

Brandish μ · Oct 18, 2017

Jammin said:
I thought you wanted to see a seinen win Brandish? There are only two of those left in the game and OPM is the one not diving head first into the FMA buzz saw right now.

A vote for One Piece is a vote for shounen victory.

Oh I was just playing with the whole seinen vs shonen thing in this war.

FMA is a tough one. It's so popular and good that no demographic would be favoured... well it steamrolled a seinen and a josei so far. Maybe One Piece would stand a better chance

Jammin · Oct 18, 2017

Brandish said:
Oh I was just playing with the whole seinen vs shonen thing in this war.

FMA is a tough one. It's so popular and good that no demographic would be favoured... well it steamrolled a seinen and a josei so far. Maybe One Piece would stand a better chance

For what it's worth I do have a strategy in mind for that.

Shobu_Yoruichi · Oct 18, 2017

This is like Katakuri Vs Saitama to me, God Vs Demi God, Mochi Vs Sea weed, Time Prophet Vs Caped Baldy, "Just in case" Vs *Poker face*...

Well... this is hard, because @Jammin helped me with Bleach and that's what a friend does, unlike @syx So, i suppose i won't vote for the moment, maybe tomorrow i see Luffy's comeback and don't like Mochiman as i like him today.

Brandish μ · Oct 18, 2017

Well you'd definitely need one. OP and OPM are probably the only chances left.

Also, sorry Lambu... talking about future rounds with FMA is disrespectful to your nomination.

Zirconium · Oct 18, 2017

Warning: The following content and my upcoming posts for this campaign are dripping with walls of text, sentimentalism and corniness. They may contain traces of effusive love, many recurring adjectives, the inapproriate use of melodramatic words and a few signs of fangirling. The reason for these symptoms could be an overdose of One Piece. I beg your pardon. Also, please consider that you might suffer from nausea or eye cancer, if you can‘t endure to read such things. For your well-being I would therefore recommend you to immediately ignore and skip this post at this point and of course the other comments I’m going to write as well. But if you still insist on reading them, I won‘t stop you. You’re reading at your own risk!
-Best regards Z.

Part 1
(introduction)

I will make a complete fool out of myself now, but if it‘s for One Piece, then I don‘t mind about it. First of all, I‘m really happy that this manga made it that far because I seriously thought that it would already lose in the first bout against Monster. However, I think that this round will be very difficult as well. I haven’t read One Punch Man yet but I might consider reading it, if it could even beat the likes of Neverland or Death Note. Because of such a strong opponent and after coming this far, I decided to use this opportunity to support Organizized and to campaign for OP.

To me, no matter what, this story about pirates is an exceptional case that has a special place in my manga list. One Piece is like a good old friend who is accompanying me for so many years now like none other medium. I grew up with it, I spent my childhood with it and I graduated from school with this manga. Thus it has a certain nostalgia effect on me since I’m sharing a lot of great memories with this story.

That’s one of the main reasons why it definitely gets my vote. Now I know that you can’t hear this lame reason anymore, but please give me a chance to let me explain why it is fascinating me so much. For this occasion, I‘ve made a pro and con list that will lead you to my final conclusion about this manga. Originally, it was planned to post everything as one whole text, but then I realized how much I’ve written…^^‘
So, for a better overview, I decided to divide everything into several parts and I will post the positive and negative points, as well as the conclusion, in seperated posts instead.

But firstly, I like to start with a call to every diehard One Piece fan.

Organizized · Oct 18, 2017

@Zirconium You. You're awesome.

So... I acknowledge that One Punch Man is indeed quite great. So what I'm going to do isn't try to paint One Punch Man in such a bad light, but I will point out the things One Piece does better.
We'll see how much time I have, and how many things I can cover. But let's begin with the most important one:

The World Building of One Punch Man (pretty much)

There are a bunch of cities without much distinguishable features. They're even named "A-City" through "Z-City". Honestly so little is made clear (read: memorable) about these places that I can't tell you where the events of the manga have taken place, except A-City is Hero Association HQ's home base, and recently Z-City hasn't become base for the Monster Association. That's kinda it.
It's not bad, though. The supporting cast of heroes do get their stories told, if only briefly now and then, giving us at least some sense that there's more to this world than Saitama. One thing I really do like is the political play behind the Hero Association. But other than that, nothing really ever seems as detailed and fleshed out as it is in...

The World Building of One Piece

So that's where I'll start off with One Piece:

Politics

Rather, the intricate political plots we get glimpses of from time to time to give us a sense that there’s always something bigger going on “behind the scenes”. At the start of the series we see the marines as the “keepers of justice” and Pirates as the outlaws. But as the story unfolds, slowly but surely we find out about the nobles, the Gorosei, the World Government, Marines, Cipher Pol etc. There's always big events being covered up, big schemes we get small insights into. An example would be the biggest mystery of the series: the Void Century, a gap of 100 years in recorded history, right after which the World Government was created. Robin’s country, Ohara, was on the verge of finding out the truth about it, and was completely obliterated for it.
Who is actually running things, and what is their greater purpose?

And on the other side of the spectrum we have learned of the Yonkou, the four greatest pirates who control the second part of the Grand Line, all with their own territories and islands they control as if real emperors. We have the Revolutionaries run by Luffy's estranged father Monkey D. Dragon, the most wanted man in the world. There's the shichibukai, the seven pirates who have been “uncrinimalized” by the WG to balance out the Yonkou. There's the underworld of slavers, smugglers and black market dealing, to which both sides of the spectrum seem to be connected.

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

One of my favorite things about One Piece is that while the exploits of the Straw Hat crew is what we see most of the time, the above mentioned things are arguably what the story is all about. In the end our protagonists will likely be the ones to solve the mystery behind it all, but for now we get just enough of these of the greater events constantly unfolding to keep things interesting, while the focus remains on the Straw Hats.
Who are really the mysterious clan of D? Are they connected to the Void Century and the great kingdom? How is the Void century connected to the World Government, and what is their greater scheme? What are the Revolutionaries truly after?
And that's not the only things Oda lets slip a little at a time. Let's continue with...

Foreshadowing (and back-referencing)

One thing he’s a master of is foreshadowing; mentioning some tiny little thing which might seem like just another line of dialogue, but actually comes into play hundreds of chapters later.
Some examples which come to mind would be:
• The mention of Jinbe and Fishman Island in chapter 69 (later seen in chapter 528 and 607 respectively);
• The mention in chapter 103 of Laboon the whale once being part of a crew which couldn't take them with him into Grand Line (later revealed to be Brook’s crew in chapter 459);
• The mention (and actual silhouettes) in chapter 133 of the Blackbeard pirates, later introduced for real in chapter 229. That's not such a big gap, but what’s impressive here is that even way back then Ace (whom we didn't know at the time) was chasing after Blackbeard to avenge him killing one of Whitebeard’s crew (although we only found out about this much later as well), and he didn't actually catch up to him until chapter 440, which later lead to him being executed and the whole Great War saga.
Granted, there are times when it feels rather like Oda has been reading back on his own works looking for small loose ends to tie up, for instance the dwarf country of Green Bit which was mentioned in chapter 292, then actually shown in the Dressrosa arc, about 500 chapters later.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Even so, it does add to creating a sense of greatness to the world, a feeling that Oda isn't simply making shit up as he goes along (even though he obviously must be in some cases). He has created and vast world a little at a time, constantly connecting dots we didn't even knew existed, and he never stops creating new dots to connect.

The actual World Design

So far we've mostly been on the topic of world building in the sense of creating a “bigness” and a sense that there really is an entire world out there where everything is connected one way or another. Arguably this is what Oda does best, but he’s also very intricate when it comes to how this world is actually designed, and goes into fine details for each place/island like history, climate, political status, social circumstances etc.
First of all, there's the entire friggin' world, and the way it is ingeniously designed to fit the "heading in a straight line is the only way to reach your goal" type of story that One Piece is.

Honestly, the Calm Belts parallelling the Grand Line and Reverse Mountain being the only way to enter it was the first time we got a sense of how wonderfully complicated a journey we were on, along with the Log Pose navigation system (where each island has a magnetic field to navigate by so you can't just blindly try to sail through the whole thing).

But I'm not going to go into every little detail seeing as this post is way too long already.. however, I will at least give some visual examples of the stunning places we get to see, and you'll surely be reminded of (or if you don't read the series, try to imagine) of the detail in which these places are fleshed out while still keeping the focus on the story.
Skypiea - Sky Island

Another example of great adventuring coming simply out of the means of traveling on is the Knock-Up Stream which takes you to Skypiea

Water 7 - The Island of Shipwrights

https://imgur.com/Z69PvTM.jpg

The "Lands of the Tarai Current"

Enies Lobby - The Judicial Island

Impel Down -The Underwater Prison (based on Dante’s 9 circles of hell)

Mariejois - The Holy Land, capitol of the World Government and the home of the Celestial World Nobles

Also worth mentioning the way these three are directly connected by the Tarai Current.

Thriller Bark - the gothic ship/island of Gekko Moriah and his zombies, located in the Florian Triangle (based on the Bermuda Triangle)

Amazon Lily - the amazon island of women

Fishman Island - an island of fishmen enclosed inside of a great bubble - the ("illegal") gateway into the New World

Zou - the ever moving island located on the back of a giant elephant

It's up to each and every one of us to say if we like the art of One Piece, but I personally can't imagine how people aren't just taken in by how each and every one of these (and almost all other) places just scream "ADVENTURE!", and want to learn more about them.
I guess this post is my attempt to remind people of what I think is the best thing about the series, and get non-readers at least slightly intrigued.

We'll see if I have time for another post today. But I covered what, to me, is the very best thing about the series. And I don't see any manga series, and definitely not OPM, topping it in that category.

Hermit · Oct 18, 2017

Going OP, because @Zirconium 's post? That's how you fucking call out to the hearts of fellow brethren.

GrySun · Oct 18, 2017

Voting One Piece. Amazing manga which I still never find it in me to permanently drop, always coming back eventually even when it pisses me off. And that in and of itself is remarkable I suppose.