One Piece is the most overrated piece of fiction I’ve ever read. It’s mostly about a roaming crew of do-gooder clichés that travel the high seas. Each character has a dream (which they will never achieve because this cash cow will never end) and of course a tragic backstory to go with it. One Piece is somehow popular while having the worst character designs in anime, includes countless scenes of characters sobbing like crybabies, and will drag on to the point no one will care anymore. Honestly, if you want a shonen that doesn’t insult your intelligence and make you feel like you’re reading something written by a smarter than average 10 year old, then don’t pick this up.

Story: While there are some decent dramatic moments here and there, they’re almost always forced as much as possible and accompanied by over the top water faucet tears or something else as corny that makes you want to punch a hole in the wall. Not only that, but it’s the same thing each time.

Straw Hat crew arrives at an island, the people are friendly but something is wrong. We then meet the villain who is doing stereotypical villain things. Luffy hotheadedly decides he is gonna save the day and starts yelling. Luffy takes on the boss and his crew mates take on the underlings. They are stronger than expected, but through the power of friendship and encouragement from the people of the island they will themselves to victory with their new attacks they just invented. With everything said and done, celebration is had, and the Straw Hats leave as the citizens thank them and promise to always remember their kindness. Repeat for hundreds of chapters. If that sounds boring to you, then good, it’s very lame.

Let me add that people harp on about how great the world building is, but the world is just a nonsensical LSD theme park with clouds you can stand on and other magical stuff that never gets a good explanation and you’re just expected to eat it up and suspend your disbelief.

Art: Not much needs to be said here, One Piece’s art hardly looks like anime at all, but rather doodles from a 3rd grader’s math textbook.

Character: Characters are terribly developed and never really change. Usopp remains a cowardly person forever, Sanji remains a scrawny Johnny Bravo knock off that is impossible to take seriously, Luffy remains an unlikable annoying man child "who always stands up to the bad guy with no fear" (that's all his character amounts to though, lol and there is no originality), Zoro is your cookie cutter “badass” character, etc the characters are bad, have no actual depth, and are uninteresting.

Enjoyment: Clearly some people enjoy this, but I certainly didn’t. I read it in bursts, people kept trying to drill into my head how great it was so I kept going back, forced myself to read another 200 or so chapters, then got sick and put it back down. Now I write this review to tell you how lousy I think this comic is.

Overall: One Piece is poor. Yes, Naruto, Fullmetal Alchemist, Attack on Titan, Death Note, and many others are great shonen stories that I encourage people to read and enjoy.