(just for the record, this is a slight alteration of my anime review)

One Piece was for many years unnoticed by the majority of the anime community. Many claim that the first arc is boring but I disagree; for a perpetual on-going shonen series One Piece is fine since the very start. But hey, it takes more than that to have a good show and it does deliver elsewhere as well. For example, its characters are quite colourful and likable for shonen material and they are constantly making lots of jokes with their personality quirks. Seeing each one of them individually may seem like very little but seeing all of them together interacting in various ways is just wonderful.

The setting is also quite imaginative as it seems to blend all sorts of themes and eras, with each area having its own unique features and climates, style of life and social standards. It even makes various tributes to fairy tales, real life pirates and actors and historical cities. By the time you get fed up with the same jokes repeating in one area, the cast is sent to another place, where you are again kept interested just to see how they will adjust there. In a way, this hides the fact of the cast being the same since the first arc they were introduced, as it constantly introduces many more, who also have their own quirks.

The show does have its problems of course, the most obvious of which are how the pacing has dropped considerably and how later missions seem like rehashes of the first. All that are explained better when you get to see each arc individually.

- The first arc is called East Blue and it is pretty much the introduction with the main cast. The main hero starts alone and along the way his core crew joins one after another, for various reasons. All that happen in a rather small amount of time and you also get all sorts of villains standing in the way of their journey. It may feel like it is simple at points but the amount of time it offers on each character makes it all worthwhile. Very few parts feel like they were pointless action or aimless strolling; most are about the characters getting to know and trust each other. It is a fine arc as far as shonen shows go. Mark: 9/10
- The second is Baroque Works, where the crew is thrown in the midst of a grand-scaled conspiracy, set in motion by a shady organization that seems to work for the good of the world but in reality it is nothing but a bunch of heartless thugs. This arc drags the plot pointlessly at times (especially during their stroll in the desert; that part is overkill). If you take out those boring parts, this arc is also very good as we are introduced to various political and social notions of the world, and how the journey is not about dealing with random autonomous villains but with organized multinational hidden agendas. Mark: 8/10
- The third is Skypiea, where the crew is now taken on a world above the clouds. This time we are introduced to mostly idealistic notions that are not exactly relevant to the main story. For example, many pirates are now planning to create a new world were the sensation of a journey in order to find treasure and adventure will be obsolete but this part is thrown to the side as the heroes pretty much beat everyone and move along. Then it is about some sort of world in the stars and weapons of mass destruction but again nothing is shown completely, as most are hinted but never shown. Some say they are foreshadow for later arcs but leaving them aside for hundreds of episodes feels kinda weak. Plus this arc did not introduce new crew members or sides of the world. Skypiea is pretty much isolated from the rest of the world and it seems they don’t even care about the land bellow them. What was this entire arc about is kinda blurry. I did like the setting and the broken powers of the main villain but it is otherwise a kinda pointless arc. Mark: 7/10
- The fourth is CP9. The themes are again about a shady organization but it is hardly as interesting as the one in the second arc. They were never mentioned before, never mentioned again, and were just there to flesh out one of the characters in a fashion that felt similar to the last part of the first arc. So in overall it was a just above average part of the show. Mark 6/10
- The fifth is the Whitebeard War. Although it spiced thing up by making the crew get separated, as well as killing important characters for the first time (yeah, it took all these chapters for that) it still felt like a dragged to infinity plot with lots of pointless action. And bringing most of the old secondary characters together while introducing a hundred more only made it look like a poor gathering of cameos. Mark: 5/10
- The sixth is Fishmen Island. A completely pointless arc that exists purely to show off the new powers the characters got after a 2 year time skip. Other than that it had no interesting stories or characters. Mark: 4/10

It is still an overall very above average show but it is not like they couldn’t speed up things. The characters are another point I would like to address. I definitely like them for their weird looks and weirder behaviours; they are very humorous and memorable. That still doesn’t hide the fact they hardly evolved since the beginning. And I am not talking about getting stronger or changing clothes; these don’t count as development of personality. The show doesn’t even bother killing them, no matter how injured they are. And we are talking here about a whole lot of injuries! A few days in bandages while eating meat is all it takes to be completely healed. And sure, I know, many characters die in flashbacks and two major ones died in an arc, all of which happened just because the author felt like building some drama and not because they couldn’t possibly have survived.

This is of course still a shonen series and it still is to its core immature and unrealistic and one should never try to reason it too much. But it also lasted for over a decade and it will last for a lot more, which eventually is more than enough to tire anyone. Especially when it is NOT as interesting or as fast as it began. I am not saying it is now an unreadable show; hardly from it. I could say that for Naruto or Bleach but not One Piece (yet).

I admit that in overall it is still far more enjoyable and well thought of that any other perpetual on-going shonen. Yes, better than Dragonball and Hunter X Hunter too. Its action is full of wacky ideas and interesting choreography and each island is like a world of its own. But I am not going to spam 10s all over the place because it is not perfect and I don’t enjoy it as much as I did. It lost a lot of its magic along the way.