One Piece Arc Review/Rating thread

[Captain Cadaver]

Seeing as how the Whole Cake Island Arc ended a while ago and provides more than enough material for an analysis, I think it's time to bump this thread and have the Zou and WCI Arcs be reviewed together under the moniker "Sanji Retrieval Arc". If anyone is still wanting to review the Pirate Alliance Arc, I'll give them 3-4 days to do so before we move on.

 

[Captain Cadaver]

[mention]Supreme[/mention] You going to add your review for the Pirate Alliance Arc?

 

[SSJ2]

Not capable of writing reviews right now.

 

[Captain Cadaver]

What about you [mention]ahill1[/mention]?

 

[ahill1]

The pirate alliance arc begins with Punk Hazard, which was a nice change of pace to the overall boring fishman arc. It had its moments, with the introduction of somewhat likable characters like Kinemon, had a good introduction with the conflict against Doflamingo, which had presented itself as a charismatic character and had good scenes with good emotional value like Monet and Vergo's farewell to Doflamingo (although that can be ruined if they're shown to be alive). It featured consistency by Zoro, with him reminding Luffy how the new world requires a serious demeanor, but sadly featured Luffy with the same overall childish demeanor he had on part 1, despite all that he had been through in the Paramount arc, which would force a more serious behaviour towards the conflict they were on. Luffy also losing to Caeser the 1st time is somewhat hard to swallow even if the protagonist was taken off guard by his attack, as Caesar overall demeanor and attitude later on implies he is a total weakling to the new world average level. It also featured some moments that, while minor, had you muddling over a bit, as Sanji smoking while on Nami's body, despite the fact that he has shown to value the good health of every crew member, specially the women.

As for Dressrosa, it was an arc that had a good beginning, with the introduction of big tier characters that could make such a well-grounded arc, but failed somewhat on its execution, with such characters serving little more than aid-ins so Luffy could get the final blow against Doflamingo. Luffy's fight in the G4 against Doflamingo also loses a bit of its potential value as we later see that Luffy could have just used his King Kong Gun to make things simpler from the beginning, but decided to hide such an attack only for the sake of dragging the entire thing out and building drama to the closing up birdcage when we already knew by the somewhat predictability of the story that everything would end up in the best way possible at the end. Not to mention that it suffered from repetitions of past plot points, mainly Alabasta, with Doflamingo architecting a plan to take it up in which blame would fall upon the king's shoulder much like the King Cobra situation in Alabasta, featuring characters whose role would be also akin, like Rebeca and Vivi. It loses point on originality. Despite it, I still think that Doffy's characterization was well done in the manga, with him being consistently presented as a sadistic villain that seldom loses its cool.


So, while arcs that didn't fail hard as Fishman Island, it still isn't up to what was presented in the best arcs of part 1.

Punk Hazard - 5/10
Dressrosa - 4/10
Overall - 4.5/10

 

[Captain Cadaver]

Pirate Alliance Arc Mean Score - 3.25/10

Now, both the Zou and Whole Cake Island Arcs grouped together as the "Sanji Retrieval Arc".

The events on Zou were pretty average. I feel a lot of the praise they were given by the fans was purely due to it being better than the terrible arcs that had preceded it since the timeskip making it look far better by comparison. It had some decent adventure points, but they overall mean little when the majority of the arc is merely a retelling of the events that happened prior in a flashback (thus killing any tension that could be found) rather than simply shifting the main point of view to another character and the only conflict that happened in present time was solved in the most anticlimactic of manners. Also, whilst probably a nitpick, the Minks make little sense overall. Being a species of anthropomorphic animals is fine and handled with more in-series logic than Dragon Ball did, but when you have the female Minks having actual breasts, it just ends up feeling like deviant furry pandering (not to mention anthropomorphic creatures in a Shonen series were done infinitely better with the Chimera Ants in Hunter X Hunter).

Moving on to the events on Whole Cake Island, it had a very interesting set up with the reveal of Sanji's past being something that fit without problem and offered the potential to provide a lot of interest and focus on his character...and all that potential is wasted in little time at all with his flashback providing little but boring victimisation and Sanji didn't do much of great importance throughout the remainder of the arc, not to mention the attempt to make it seem questionable if he'd come back to the crew was just a poor man's version of Robin in Water 7.
Sanji's utilisation was far from the mountain of problems this arc had. For one, Gear 4th lost what severity it's use had with Luffy being able to use it twice against both Cracker and Katakuri, thus making it's lack of use prior to Doflamingo even more inexcusable. On the subject of abilities, Katakuri's main ability of having God tier Kenbunshoku Haki overall turned out to be pointless when Luffy ended up able to combat it just by his Haki adapting to it. Luffy even adapted and increased his Haki so much he could take a hit from Katakuri while in base, which is as cheap as Goku adapting to his opponents throughout the ToP as it's neither consistent with what has been shown in prior Haki based fights nor is it balanced in who receives such benefit, thus proving once more plot armour is the only reason Luffy's still alive (especially when the severe injury he took from Flampe played little role in the remainder of the battle).
It also wasn't just Sanji's character who was wasted as most of the new cast were all mediocrities or failures, specifically, those within Big Mom's ranks. Big Mom herself has only a desire to be Pirate Queen to separate her main motivations from Fat Boo's and her backstory just made her seem like a low IQ buffoon. Cracker was an idiot who lost purely due to his arrogance in telling Luffy all about his ability and weakness. Pudding was easily one of the worst characters in the entire series with how poorly her split personalities were handled and lead to her being overly inconsistent, not to mention feeling very stale after we already had Sanji's kindness reforming a villainous female in the previous arc with Viola. Finally, Katakuri had little going for him. He was set up as some major badass of unparalleled ability in his field purely to add some impact to Luffy taking him down, yet it means nothing when it's overall purpose was transparent from the start with how much his family was fapping his abilities. The fact he was only there to serve as a dark counterpart to Luffy made his character pretty hollow and everything about his character in the fight from demanding his ally not interrupt to honouring his opponent by the end made it such a cliche and essentially a far more boring version of Goku VS Tenshithands at the 22nd TB in many ways. It also didn't help that outside of the Sweet Commanders, Big Mom's family/subordinates were overall underwhelming for the crew of a Yonko with how many of it's significant members could be overpowered by Sanji or Jimbe without too much trouble.
Only characters I'd consider to have been handled well in the arc were Brook doing well in fending off Big Mom and getting a copy of the Poneglyph and Bege for his ruthless nature in battle contrasting well with his warm nature towards his family making him the best portrayal of the morally grey aspect of pirates in the series.
It did have some potential in areas such as the intrigue or having actual character deaths, but these mean little when Big Mom's plan to kill the Vinsmokes was a complete failure that was executed in such an overly villainous manner and the deaths of Pound and Pedro meant little when both were pretty mediocre characters.

Overall, the Sanji Retrieval Arc had many promising factors in it's beginning, but quickly fell apart completely and acts as a very bad start to something as hyped up as the Yonko Saga, and it doesn't seem as though Wano is any better in that regard thus far.

1,5/10