Partner and I have been working through One Piece, about to hit episode 600. Aside from that, mostly we’ve been watching season three of Resident Alien and a lot of Sorted Food on youtube.
Ugh i aught to start in on onepace… The animation and pace of the first couple hundred episodes has me dead on the water after the first 10 or so. Just can’t bring myself to keep watching. Hopefully something more to the point will help.
Yeah tbh when we started it we were sort of just giving it a shot because we didn’t have anything else to watch at the moment. For about the first 30 episodes we kept saying “this is fine, we’ll probably stop it as soon as we have something better to watch.” But then boom, Arlong Park happens from episode 31 through 45, and basically as soon as we finished Arlong Park we understood something had changed and that now we were gonna see it through to the end.
Honestly it’s hard to recommend One Piece to anyone, because it is insanely frustrating at times, especially in terms of pacing, and it’s a legitimate commitment to get into… But goddamn, once it gets going, there’s just nothing like it. The only thing I could even remotely compare One Piece to is not any other anime, it’s literally the goddamn Odyssey by Homer. That’s the kind of scale we’re dealing with here. We’re only halfway through and I already feel like One Piece is one of the greatest and most important pieces in television or animation history, but it is not without effort.
Oh regarding the art style and animation, yeah, One Piece is fucking ugly at time, especially in the first 100 episodes. It does genuinely get a lot better, especially the animation (later fight scenes go crazy), but I have to admit that as much as I genuinely love One Piece, the art is absolutely not one of the selling points. There are hundreds of better-looking anime out there, no doubt.
I watched up to about episode 400 or 500 but just couldn’t keep going. The manga is still going and it feels like the story will just drag on forever. At some point it just got too tedious and I never got back into it.
Super fair. I kept expecting to get there, but haven’t yet. So far I’m still loving it, though I’ll admit there’s been plenty of low times that felt like a real slog. And of course I still have like half the series so far to go, so who knows what the future holds?
Yeah I watched a bit of One Pace with a friend to catch them up and it was pretty great, but my partner felt like we were missing out on something so we switched back over to the full episodes. But in general One Pace is solid way to approach the series. Hope you enjoy it!
The art of one piece is an interesting time capsule, because it has been running so long you can see how the art and technique changes.
It started in 1999 after all.
Absolutely true. In fact, a funny effect that happens is as the show goes on it becomes increasingly jarring when they use flashbacks to earlier episodes because the juxtaposition between the ever-improving art and the genuinely ugly episode art becomes ever-increasingly disparate!
That said, regarding it starting in 1999, while I agree on the time capsule aspect, I have point out that as a 40yr old man who has been watching anime since single-digit age, One Piece was indisputably ugly even by 1999 standards. By this point we already had Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rurouni Kenshin, Ghost in the Shell… Hell, I think Love Hina came out the following year and in terms of appearance it absolutely blows the first 100 episodes of One Piece out of the water, no contest.
So yes, One Piece is a cool time capsule to see how an artist can grow and develop over time, but I’d hesitate to call it an accurate time capsule reflective of anime as a whole.
Partner and I have been working through One Piece, about to hit episode 600. Aside from that, mostly we’ve been watching season three of Resident Alien and a lot of Sorted Food on youtube.
Ugh i aught to start in on onepace… The animation and pace of the first couple hundred episodes has me dead on the water after the first 10 or so. Just can’t bring myself to keep watching. Hopefully something more to the point will help.
Yeah tbh when we started it we were sort of just giving it a shot because we didn’t have anything else to watch at the moment. For about the first 30 episodes we kept saying “this is fine, we’ll probably stop it as soon as we have something better to watch.” But then boom, Arlong Park happens from episode 31 through 45, and basically as soon as we finished Arlong Park we understood something had changed and that now we were gonna see it through to the end.
Honestly it’s hard to recommend One Piece to anyone, because it is insanely frustrating at times, especially in terms of pacing, and it’s a legitimate commitment to get into… But goddamn, once it gets going, there’s just nothing like it. The only thing I could even remotely compare One Piece to is not any other anime, it’s literally the goddamn Odyssey by Homer. That’s the kind of scale we’re dealing with here. We’re only halfway through and I already feel like One Piece is one of the greatest and most important pieces in television or animation history, but it is not without effort.
Oh regarding the art style and animation, yeah, One Piece is fucking ugly at time, especially in the first 100 episodes. It does genuinely get a lot better, especially the animation (later fight scenes go crazy), but I have to admit that as much as I genuinely love One Piece, the art is absolutely not one of the selling points. There are hundreds of better-looking anime out there, no doubt.
I watched up to about episode 400 or 500 but just couldn’t keep going. The manga is still going and it feels like the story will just drag on forever. At some point it just got too tedious and I never got back into it.
Super fair. I kept expecting to get there, but haven’t yet. So far I’m still loving it, though I’ll admit there’s been plenty of low times that felt like a real slog. And of course I still have like half the series so far to go, so who knows what the future holds?
Ok. Finally motivated to try OnePace! Also accepted i just don’t like subs. The dub is actually really good too!
Already feels more modern and mature. Think i can watch it now!
Yeah I watched a bit of One Pace with a friend to catch them up and it was pretty great, but my partner felt like we were missing out on something so we switched back over to the full episodes. But in general One Pace is solid way to approach the series. Hope you enjoy it!
The art of one piece is an interesting time capsule, because it has been running so long you can see how the art and technique changes. It started in 1999 after all.
Absolutely true. In fact, a funny effect that happens is as the show goes on it becomes increasingly jarring when they use flashbacks to earlier episodes because the juxtaposition between the ever-improving art and the genuinely ugly episode art becomes ever-increasingly disparate!
That said, regarding it starting in 1999, while I agree on the time capsule aspect, I have point out that as a 40yr old man who has been watching anime since single-digit age, One Piece was indisputably ugly even by 1999 standards. By this point we already had Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rurouni Kenshin, Ghost in the Shell… Hell, I think Love Hina came out the following year and in terms of appearance it absolutely blows the first 100 episodes of One Piece out of the water, no contest.
So yes, One Piece is a cool time capsule to see how an artist can grow and develop over time, but I’d hesitate to call it an accurate time capsule reflective of anime as a whole.
Nice! Thanks for the write up! I appreciate this a lot more than the “it’s the best ever and i won’t soil anything fur you” response that’s so common.
Good to know about Arlong Park!
I’ve seen the animation style later in the series and that’s just fine. Just have to get past the 4:3 480p stuff