One Piece...Is Really Getting Bad (SPOILERS)

The decline of One Piece is surreal...

This was something I used to hold up as one of the ultimate examples of worldbuilding. Now...I'm embarrassed by it as I retroactively analyze the story from as far back as Marineford.

While my love for this series has always been declining and I definitely has some breaking points during Wholecake and Wano...I always wanted the story to get better. The start of Egghead seemed promising because there seemed to be actual momentum with the story and things were happening. But that soon fizzed out and we were subjected to another melodramatic backstory with...Bonney. It seems most of the OP fanbase loves this arc and considers it peak fiction. I hate it.

And I hate it for a number of reasons, but one of the highest points is how I hate the character of Vegapunk. This guy is a villain that Oda tries to convince us is a good guy- mostly through tear-jerking story about Bonney and Kuma. Let's just forget the history we've already been shown about this guy doing the worst things with the worst people for one of the worst factions in the world. Oh, the smartest guy in the world thought the Navy was good? Kind of like how Albert Einstein is excused for his role in the creation of the atom bomb because he claims to have not known what the research was being used for? No wonder his character model was swapped from the superior original to the goofy Einstein-esque joke it is right now.

Aside from that...this is supposed to be the worlds smartest man. Prior to Egghead I was convinced that a meeting with Vegapunk or Shanks was going to lead to a large amount of questions being answered because these two guys would know A LOT about a lot of things people have been wondering over time. What we actually got was pathetic. More like infuriating in a way. Honestly, this story is TWNETY FIVE YEARS LONG and still incomplete. And Oda is still bread-crumbing information to the readers. Still introducing more questions and more characters. It's fine time for Youtube creators because they can sit around posing theory videos about what this or that eye twitch means, and this constant mystery box scam bait can generate near-endless content for them.

For a long time I held back my own criticism because I thought I was probably just being too critical over what was ultimately a dumb cartoon but there's just a point of no return where ignoring the BS becomes impossible. After all...as a person that actually takes an interest in history and psychology I know that fiction has much more of an effect on society than people try to play off. This might seem like light-hearted nonsense to people but imagine millions of kids cheering and clapping this nonsense. I mean...just the worst stuff that keeps getting even worse. It betrays a severe lack of reading comprehension. But it also reflect HOW these kids think, how EASILY they can be influenced and lead to believe in and defend objectively bad content, and how these things might play into the decisions they make as adults... Like what policy to support.

Consider that people consider Vegapunk a great character...this evil weasel is a great character. They're defending this view. No...hold that side by side with what you see in our current society. How people believe a fictionalization of things. How people can excuse the outright evil of a group if the propaganda paints them as heroes. There's people who still think the Marines are good. There's people who think Garp is a good guy. The lack of comprehension is just astounding. I get that Garp isn't complete tail-and-horns evil 24/7. Yes, he has feelings for Luffy and such. But he STILL WORKS DIRECTLY FOR ONE OF THE MOST EVIL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE WORLD. He's done so for decades. Just because he has a few pet issues that he makes exceptions for does not excuse this. Just because he ejected and Admiralty does not make him any cleaner. It's what you call a petty reproach- a petty rebellion. Something to present an image of disagreement, but your actions remain in compliance with what you supposedly disagree with. To put it plainly he's as bad as Kizaru. Conflicted, sure, but as bad if not worse.

This is just sad to me because, currently, I guess I've undergone a series of disappointments in people and things around the world and the awareness of it leaves me really dispirited and bleak. I never read Hunter x Hunter but I heard the story got a lot darker to reflect the authors own darkening idea on the world and if that's true I can see why.

Not to say that One Piece should have gone my way, but...

When I first read One Piece...and I saw Shanks sacrifice his arm for Luffy's bold and reckless act driven by a desire to accomplish the ideal he is DREAMING about...I thought the story was going to be one where this blind optimism in pirating that Luffy had was going to come crashing down with the cold hard reality of the world he is in. That in order to be powerful you have to be brutal- even evil. I thought this was going to reveal that Shanks, himself, had to be like this but Luffy couldn't see it yet because he was so blinded by his fanboying. I got the feeling that freedom was a "dream" that could only be a dream, but it was a dream that people have tried to achieve for generations, despite the reality of the world. And that, ultimately, Luffy was going to end the series being another person who tried and failed to achieve that dream, but passed on the desire to at least try and achieve it to another person. That the ancient kingdom was probably as evil as the current one- which is what prompted rebellion against...a KINGDOM (how can you have a free people when you have a king???) and that the never-ending illusion people have of one day realizing a Camelot, a Paradise, a civilization of peace, honor, virtue, principle, and morality...was a never-ending one. These were all things I had in mind in the beginning because I like those kinds of philosophical thoughts AND I thought Oda might be just like that in his own way.

Either way...One Piece has become a huge let down and at the moment I simply don't care what the One Piece is. I don't care about Zoro's mystery because I'm pretty sure there's nothing deep or interesting about any of it. It's probably- if ever- just going to be more power. One Piece will probably be some generic mash-up of an idea people praise as peak-something. And you just can't refund time spent can you. What a real let-down... But, jeez, even the fights in this story tend to be garbage so you can't even really just numb yourself to everything but FIGHT PIECE. Like...I love Zoro as a character, but his fights are TRAAAAASH. This dude barely classifies as a swordsman, anyway. He's more like a sword mage. His swords might as well be magic wands. It's just terrible. It's just so sad how this illusion falls and the revelation comes crashing down almost all at once.

I've heard about Elden Ring. I...want...to give it a try. At least it's a story that has an end? Or is it just more hype-driven drivel? I know this game called Genshin Impact is also hype-driven drivel that's also a HUGE scam within scams that its fans defend to the death. I mean...that thing should be illegal, and yet it's one of the most popular and profitable things on the market. What can you trust these days??? The story I've seen so far is just more bread-crumbing mystery box shenanigans, but handled way worse because the gacha aspect of the game does not allow for a natural unfolding of story with different elements moving concurrently. Stories and people and places only really unfold with the official release of said characters and such and it's really just a brick as you walk story that's obviously contrived around the market motive. Just bad...

I've begun just looking for shorter books. Single stories and NO more series. Things that can be completed within a reasonable time. I just finished "The Fisherman". I can't say it's the greatest story I wrote. But it was such a fresh air and I thought it handled it's cosmic horror aspect in a pretty cool way. It didn't have to be great, though. I'd recommend it to anyone. It was a nice read that didn't take even a month to get through. It was able to tell a complete story. I'm so sick of long fiction I've begun seeking out things like Aesop's Fables and shorter flash fiction pieces in magazines. Or if I do read a series...it's a complete series like the some of the SCP Foundation stuff on Youtube. (watch, for that...)

Probably my longest post, but, god darn, when a pillar of your ideological foundation breaks in such a way...it kinda sucks. I haven't felt this dispirited since realizing exactly what I did in the US military when I pushed the button to fire a bunch of missiles on a civilian city in Operation Shock and Awe. Us One Piece fans might realize this as something similar to a Buster Call. And just like pretty much all One Piece Buster Calls...it was NOT done for moral reasons.

Checking out for today. I'm tired...