The Shrine

I've seen a lot of stuff that defies logic or common sense in the world of manga, but I think One Piece finally throws something that is so far out there that it makes stuff that defy the laws of physics look tame. After wasting like 2 volumes or so of stuff trying to convince readers that Boa Hancock is beautiful (she's not, no female character in OP has ever sniffed the list of top cute/hot manga characters), now OP goes one up its ridiculous assumptions by saying that Luffy D. Monkey is really some sort of chick magnet. I mean you can argue the whole Boa Hancock stuff might be a parody since all the people who thought she was beautiful were totally unimportant fodder guys, and she's obviously drawn in a way to attempt to be beautiful even if OP isn't in the same universe as what people typically define as beautiful female characters in the world of manga.

But Luffy? Take all 10 of OP's female readers and ask them if they think Luffy D. Monkey is hot. I have no problem if female fans find him to be cute, but clearly the entire Shojo manga genre has been wrong for the past 50 years if someone like Luffy is attractive to the female population.

I realize this is just one character's opinion, but that's also someone who supported the original Pirate King and everyone knows if you're with the Pirate King you're part of the Good Guys (TM) in OP. They even mentioned that the Marines will never figure it out and we know the Marines are the Bad Guys in OP, and clearly the Bad Guys are always wrong.

OP is taking a path that is reminiscient of Evangelion. My roommate who was a huge Eva fan said that a lot of people speculate that because Eva was worshipped by rabid fans like him, toward the end the director started just throwing out random stupid stuff (like the 1 minute still scene with Kaworu) and see how much stuff people can tolerate and still worship the series. Well if that was true clearly Eva is intentional, but OP is not. Just because OP is widely successful doesn't mean any new thing he's attempting has to work. It reminds me of the episode in Excel Saga where the theme was 'Serious', except in Excel Saga everything still turned into a parody anyway since that's what Excel Saga is really about, and it's clearly intended that way. OP, on the other hand, apparently thought you can do the equivalent of having something founded entirely on parody and do a 180 switch to serious stuff.

Gum Gum no Penis sir, Gum Gum no Penis.

I noticed that part even that doesn't make him handsome.

What, you don't like the One Piece girls? Nami and Robin are both rather fetching, and that one fat chick who got all skinny is pretty cute too. Vivi looks a lot like Bulma though, which kills any hotness points she may have.

I dunno. Have you ever considered that you may be overthinking it all a little?

Did you seriously just ask if Don might be overthinking something?

I checked the SBS/author notes and he sounds like some guy who just hit it rich without any coherent plan or idea of what he's doing. When they have the interview with the Bleach or Naruto guys at least those guy seem to have some plan for the worldview but I can't see that in OP. It reminds me of how people say Jin Yong is the American Tolkien even though his writing is about the same level as otaku Anime (no matter how nerdy you are there are always hot girls who will like you for no reason whatsoever as long as you can throw fireballs).

He IS making it up as he goes along. He said he'd originally planned for it to be a self-contained, five-year series, but he's had so much fun and made so much money and got so much fans and made so much money...

The inspiration just FLOOOOOWS!

Of course, Manga has a terrible fucking habit of taking forever to resolve ANYTHING, so this is all just part the course.

I can guaranteed you if I was the one making this stuff up it'd be a lot more coherent than whatever is going on in OP. But of course I can't draw so no one's going to value my opinion very much since it's still the drawing ability that drives the series' popularity. It's really an insult when people bring up OP and compare it to say, Slam Dunk, or even Dragonball, just because they have similar sales volumes. I don't fault the guy for trying to cash in as much as he possibly can from unexpected success. Sure at some point people are going to say 'you know OP could've been great if they stopped at volume 40 instead of 140.' but he'll make about 3 times more money if the story ends at volume 140 instead of 40 so you can't blame him for that.

But it's really embarssing seeing OP basically humilating itself. The whole Ace arc is just utterly pointless. I assume there's supposed to be a moral to the story except OP is never about moral to the story. It's supposed to be about just punching people until they fall down which is what it's really good at. You basically have a battle that makes absolutely no sense from any strategic point of view whatsoever, including people who martyred in a fight and then later turned out to have not died at all. And here's the weird part. OP is at its best in these mega epic battle for no reason whatsoever, so this is where its strength is at. But by trying to have the battle being some kind of turning point on Luffy's ascension to the Pirate King the whole thing just becomes a farce, because if this is supposed to be life lesson it'd be like: "Yeah back when I was young I was a fool and did a lot of dumb things that no sane man would have done." And that's not exactly a very useful lesson on life.

I don't know if OP has potential to be great, but it was pretty smart about not exposing its weakness, which is serious story telling. The way OP works is that you got a bunch of guys punching each other and then someone starts crying and they win in the name of friendship. One of the sites I went to that used to comment on rise and fall of OP (it's fallen so far they stopped commenting on it because it'd be unfair) saying the essence of OP can be captured in Luffy versus Mr. 3 battle. You got Mr. 3 with his wax clones and Luffy has to find the right one or he gets countered and dies (yeah right). So you see Luffy just walking up to one and punch it and of course that was the right one, and Mr. 3 couldn't figure out how Luffy figured out which one was the real him, and Luffy just said, "It's instinct."

OP's philosophy is basically "I punch therefore I am." There's no fancy psuedo-intellectual planning and if you punch someone hard enough it eventually fixes the problem. And now OP is not content with what made it work and apparently want to involve things that might resemble reality, and it just doesn't work. When you got stuff like World Government and Celestials that clearly indicates there are some giant all-powerful forces behind the scenes you can no longer have the same philsophy. Indeed when Luffy punched a Celestial he and his crew should have all died and they had to pull some totally freak coincidence to save him.

Gou Long has a book that stars this hot-headed and dumb hero who was actually calm and smart, so in the book his fans ask him if you're so smart why not be the smart and level-headed hero? And he says if I did that people wouldn't look up to me anymore because there are only a few zillion smart level headed heroes out there but he's the only dumb hero around. That's Luffy there. He's pretty much the only dumb hero in the world of manga and that's what makes him special. If he didn't punch the Celestial nobody will think that means he has grown as a character because nobody is impressed for your ability to restrain yourself against a guy that can call the equivalent of a nuclear strike on you. So Luffy has to punch the Celestial and yet he doesn't have the power to stop the said nuclear strike equivalent so the only conclusion you can get is that he was a fool.

With the way the series is going it seems like Luffy's lesson from all this is that he'll train himself harder and then he can punch a guy who can call a nuclear strike, and then punch his way through a nuclear strike. But then that's not "I punch therefore I am" anymore, it's more like "I punch because I can." and if he wants to abuse people because he's the most powerful guy in the world, then he could just join his dad who certainly has no shortage of super powerful beings under his command.

But it's really embarssing seeing OP basically humilating itself. The whole Ace arc is just utterly pointless.

For who? Sometimes I agree with what you say, for instance if you were to simply say "the Ace arc was more serious then usual, and the author doesn't handle that really well", then I might stop and agree with you. But you go off on these tirades about how awful you think the series is as a whole and how it should fit perfectly into the mold of what you and some other people have made it out to be without deviating and then stop @ chapter 30 so it stops "embarassing and humiliating itself", etc, etc, etc, and I don't know what kind of dialog you expect to happen between you and those of us that happen to like said series. It's like you want something to end and you don't even like it, why? Why even read it in the first place. I'm so confused.

It takes very little effort to read a manga especially when you don't have to buy them (though I end up buying most of the stuff anyway).