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The bastard offspring of Fist of the North Star, 80's American Metal and He-Man, Bastard has staggeringly little identity of its own.
The show (and I assume the manga as well) understands its audience perfectly. Teenage boys who want a powerful bad ass lead, with a harem of indistinguishable women. Dark Schneider is left blank enough so that the teens can project onto him and have a good time. He's a very effective Mary Sue with his endless dark magic powers that make him the most arbitrarily powerful sorcerer in a world where the magic system amounts to little more than laser blasts with a ... metal reference used as their invocation.
So it's bland and a bit repetitive, but what aspects of the show made it that way?

Story:
The world ended four hundred years ago, magical kingdoms sprung up and an evil cabal of wizards intend to conquer the world using the power that ended the old world. Insert Dark Schneider, our reluctant hero, have him fight the lieutenants and generals of this dark cabal one after the other, and voila you have the entire story of Bastard. There are few surprises along the way, and little foreshadowing of future events. This story format is very indicative of Bastard's origins as a weekly series, with little time in the original production being allocated to filling out the story. While this can make an interesting read week to week, when stories like this are adapted to other mediums later, the issues in their story structure become readily apparent when there isn't a week gap between chapters. Each episode feels identical to the last, and as a result characters start to blend together and their conflicts lose impact. By episode three or so the formula has been established, and just repeats ad nausea, becoming progressively more dull.

Characters:
Dark Schneider: A typical shonen jump edgy boy mary sue. He's an effective audience surrogate with little in the way of characterization other then some basic Shonen tropes. He's selfish, self aggrandizing and horny, overall a perfect reflection of a fourteen year old boy.

Yoko: The main harem girl. The joke is that she's horny for dark Schneider, but won't admit it to him. That's it, that's all she's got, and they do the tsundere joke every second episode.

Arshes: The secondary harem girl. Dark Schneider's old main love interest frkn his previous life. She's a half dark elf whom Dark Schneider adopted and raised, becoming her lover......... Ewww.....

Arshes' Generals: Two of them are girls who are quickly added to the harem after being defeated. I cannot tell them apart and it doesn't matter. The third is Dio. He's the best part of the show.

Beyond that, nond of the characters really matter much. Garra, Abigail and the other one are all standard mustache twirling one dimensional villains. They're all fine, but are not particularly memorable.

Animation:
This show is going for a Fraz Frazetta style, with the colour palette of the 80's He-Man cartoon. And overall it's fairly effective in evoking these influences. However the show is held back by two key issues, it's overall budget and its digital colouring. The show is cheap, with an overall reliance on static frames used to pad the run time, which results in a lot of fights boiling down to two opponents standing roughly twenty feet apart, yelling their spells while light effects are dumped on screen to give the illusion of animation. This issue, along with the uninspired digital colouring which leaves every shot looking flat and sterile, ensures that show looks drab and unenergetic compared to its influences.

World building:
The magic system is barely explained. It's mostly just spoken spells, some of which only specific characters can use, like Dark Schneiders Venom spell, but the limitations of these spells aren't explained. How magic and monsters came into the world after the attack of the God of destruction four hundred years ago is also not explored in any great detail, with orcs, goblins and etc existing solely for the narrative purpose of having cannon fodder to be mowed down by Dark Schneider with little consequence.


Was Bastard worth it in the end? It's definitely a product of its time (derogatory), but it lacks any real identity of its own that makes it stand out compared Yu Yu Hakusho, Dragonball, JoJo or any other title in Shonen Jump around the same time. It was alright background noise to have on while I was assembling furniture, but it's definitely not good enough to warrant sitting down and focusing solely on it.

One Piece is for children. From its chaotic tone, on the nose character writing, simplistic art style and broad themes its clear that One Pieces’ target audience is children. But that’s not inherently a bad thing. Anime and manga have long thrived in meeting the needs of preteens and older teens in a way that western media frequently fails at. One Piece isn’t a success due to having shocking content for kids like Attack on Titan or presenting stylish characters like JJK or Bleach. Instead Oda chose to make One Piece a consistent work that understood that it was targeted towards younger audiences, filled with ... likeable characters, an interesting world and a generally light tone that has allowed it to bridge the gap from being simply children’s media, into being media that multiple generations of young families can share. In doing this, Oda ensured that One Piece would age well with its audience, never becoming something that audiences would eventually find cringe inducing like so many works that target older teens, where the edge of characters and the forced writing can alienate fans as they grow older. One Piece has very few peers in that regard.
Due to the length of One Piece, I’m going to briefly cover the major story arcs and several key characters, before going over the themes presented, the worldbuilding and art work.

Romance Dawn: The inaugural chapters of OP function like the vast majority of introduction arcs in manga published through Shonen Jump, with a structure that feels heavily editorialized and therefore is a bit lacking in its own identity. We meet Luffy and several key members of his crew, broad goals are established for each, several key aspects of the world are introduced like the Grand Line and the Marines, and eventually the plot culminates at Arlong Park. Arlong Park is a standout in the realm establishing arcs of SJ manga, almost entirely due to Nami’s growth as a character, and how her first character arc is used to solidify the Straw Hats as a team. Its rare that the SJ editorial team allows major supporting characters to have full character arcs early in their narratives, as their publishing mandate overwhelmingly focuses on slow paced character arcs that are used to tantalize readers with mysteries to come, usually at the expense of cohesive early character work. Just look at Bleach for example, where Orihime, Chad and the Quincy kid all have basic character setup in the first arc, but with little actual growth alongside Ichigo. Instead their Stories are delayed far into the future, long after they had individually been relegated to bit players in the plot.
In contrast, Nami’s development into a person who can acknowledge her own weaknesses and need for support is achieved within the first eight volumes of OP, and this allows her and the rest of the Straw Hats to enter into new relationship dynamics as the story moves into the grand line. There are of course weak points amongst the cast in these opening arcs, Zoro is a blank slate with little to do in the narrative other then stand in as the requisite “cool guy”, and function as the patsy for introducing larger concepts like the seven war lords into the story. Sanji’s initial characterization has also aged poorly, being little more than a letch in these opening chapters. But do to the overall strength of Nami’s early character arc, Romance Dawn has held up relatively well.

Baroque Works: Baroque Works is the first real “saga” in OP. The threat of the shadowy organization is introduced early, soon after the Straw hats have crossed into the Grand Line with individual members of the cabal being introduced as the Straw Hats move closer and closer to Alabasta. This escalation works well for the arcs pacing, with the one reprieve being Drum Island, which has nothing to do with the overarching threat of Baroque Works.
Oda introduces multiple key concepts and characters over the course of this arc, Laboon & Croqus, the giants, Bon Clay, Mr. 3, Ace, Crocodile, the void century. But the three key introductions are Chopper, Nico Robin and Vivi. Chopper is of course an important element, as he is a member of the crew, but he also ensures that the Straw Hats retain a certain sense of innocence. From a writing perspective, he acts as the crews younger brother, naïve but well meaning, a character that is easy for all the existing crew members to love and try to protect from the horrors of the world to a certain degree. Robin is introduced almost as an opposite idea. She’s worldly and powerful, defeating the Straw Hats easily in her first encounter with them, escalating the sense of danger that the crew will encounter in the Grand Line. While simultaneously functioning as an exposition device, investigating the hidden secrets of the past in Alabasta. Out of the three though, Vivi maybe the most important (in this arc). Vivi’s character functions similarly to Nami’s in Romance Dawn, where its her own involvement in Baroque Works machinations that ground the crew, and her attempts to save her people that the audience connects with. She was an excellent temporary addition to the cast, and has been missed ever since, despite her characters story coming to its logical conclusion.
However, despite all my praise, there are several issues in Oda’s writing that really begin to form during the end of this arc, specifically how he writes fights and the issues with balancing his burgeoning cast of characters during their respective climatic fights. Luffy’s multiple fights with Crocodile go on for several chapters too long, with his final victory feeling a little forced, especially viewed retroactively with how OP’s magic system has evolved over time. Simultaneously, the multiple Straw Hats have individual battles drags out the finale and distracts from the thematic focus on Vivi. The adversaries introduced for each crew member feel like filler, with most of them introduced quickly with little context, with the one exception being Bon Clay, who was set up before they arrived in Alabasta, has their own character arc, and has a function in the plot after Baroque Works is defeated.
Despite these flaws, Baroque Works remains a beloved part of the story, and I can see why. It broadens the world, introduces multiple fan favorite characters and introduces the first overarching villain into the narrative.

Skypeia: Skypeia kind of sucks. Oda struggles with giving the narrative effective grounding as the crew are incredibly removed from the threat facing Skypeia, and the narrative fails to introduce an effective POV character amongst the inhabitants of sky island. As a result, the arc feels incredibly long, with little character development or growth amongst the main cast members, and almost no relevance to the ongoing plot. There are some key concepts introduced, like the debatably planned appearance of Haki in Enel’s “Omniscience”, Black Beard’s introduction and the first appearance of the personified Going Merry.
Also as a personal note, going up to Sky Island and crashing back down is definitely what cracked the keel on the Going Merry, so fuck Sky Island.

Long Ring Long Land: People’s opinion on this arc is incredibly split. To many, it’s the worst arc of the series. To some, it’s a pleasant diversion. I’m in the second camp, because I, much like Oda, enjoyed Hana-Barbara’s “Laugh-O-Lympics”. If you like 70’s cartoon antics, you will like this arc and if you don’t, then you’ll hate it.
The arc is mostly harmless fun, with pleasant little character interactions between the Straw Hats, and acts as a nice reprieve before the emotional gut-punch that’s coming immediately after.

Water Seven/Enies Lobby: This is where OP gets good. The arc manages to balance distinct arcs for Usopp, Franky and most importantly Robin, while organically fleshing out the world, and finally focusing on what makes the world government such a threat. There are of course issues with the arc. Including the abysmal sea train portion, and the endless deluge of CP-9 agents introduced during Enies Lobby who are there to be quickly dispatched by the Straw Hats, as well as Luffy’s two visually indistinguishable power ups that show up back-to-back. But the arc allows both Usopp and Robin to find their true places among the crew, and lets Franky grow past his childhood failings, so the character work trumps the bland Shonen crap sprinkled in to pad the run time.

Thriller Bark: Thriller Bark is an odd mix of Oda’s worst aspects as a writer, and his love for old Hammer horror movies. Aesthetically, I love Thriller Bark. Its European Gothic atmosphere is distinct from the arcs that came before it, and the Frankenstein inspired Doctor Hogback, with his stitched together monstrosities are wonderful. However, there are several key flaws with the arc, particularly how Brooke’s character arc is handled. Most of the narratively fulfilling arcs in One Piece up until this point have used at least one character to the centre the conflict around. Nami in Arlong Park, Vivi in Baroque Works, and then Water Seven had distinct arcs for Franky, Usopp and of course Robin. Brooke is introduced here to act in a similar fashion narratively, but the issue lies in how his conflict with Moria is divorced from his own character arc. Brooke’s failures as a Captain and his broken promise to Laboon take place roughly forty years before he meets Moria, and as a result Moria stealing Brooke’s shadow (and his effective freedom) feels disconnected from his actual arc. Its an obstacle for the Straw Hats to overcome before he can join the crew, but its not an obstacle that’s dependent on Brooke’s growth as a character, like Usopp’s inferiority complex or Robin finally finding the belonging she always needed, its simply a physically obstacle, like moving a tree branch off a pathway. Since Moria has little thematic importance to the story, he fails to make much of an impression, so much so that he immediately gets written out of the seven warlords in the next major arc. This issue with Moria as villain, along with Oda’s continued issues writing compelling fights and juggling his cast ensures that Thriller Bark ends up being pretty forgettable, other than Brooke’s wonderful backstory, and the brief introduction of Kuma.

Sabaody/Amazon Lily/Impel Down/Paramount War: These arcs, viewed together as a single extended saga, are the strongest OP has ever been. Up until this point, one of the weakest aspects of OP had been Luffy himself. He had been portrayed as vapid, violent child with few moments to redeem his self-centred actions, being almost wholly dependent on the charms and skills of his wonderful crew to get by in the world. But here, Oda takes all of them away and forces Luffy to grow and face his own failures. The major theme connecting all four smaller arcs is Luffy’s inadequacy in facing the challenges presented in the New World. This is immediately shown because of Luffy punching St. Charlos at the slave market, as his rash decision immediately results in the Navy deploying Borsalino, an admiral with light-based powers that the Straw Hats are not equipped to face. They’re defeated easily, but spared death by the intervention of Kuma, sending all of the Straw Hats off to different island, and forcing Luffy to handle himself on his own for the first time in almost fifty volumes. And he immediately almost dies but eating parasitic mushrooms on the island of Amazon Lily. Here he encounters the sixth Warlord of the sea, Boa Hancock the most beautiful woman in the world, and wins her heart, not through martial prowess the only thing he had excelled at so far in the series, but by acting the defend the honor of Boa’s sister. While being executed in combat by Hancock’s sisters, Luffy covers the exposed slave tattoo on his would be executioner, while she’s trying to kill him, solely because Hancock had told him that they could not show the mark to anyone. With almost no context, Luffy understood Hancock’s point of view, and respected it so completely that he was willing to protect the honor of someone who was trying to kill him. And this is where Luffy clicked for me. There had been hints of this before, like his declaration of war against the world government for Robin’s sake, and his conversation with Brook while lying the piano, but this was the first time where Luffy’s respect for others freedom and lives was directed towards someone outside of his own chosen family. And with that, Luffy’s desperation to save his brother Ace, finally came into focus.
Impel Down follows Amazon immediately, and acts an act two for the saga, bringing back numerous characters from the previous fifty volumes, and introducing a few new mainstays to the series like Jinbei and Iva. There’s not much to the arc narratively, its effectively just one chase scene through Dante’s Inferno, letting the audience get reacquainted with characters like Buggy, Mr. 3 and Bon Clay, while reinforcing the idea that Luffy isn’t prepared for the challenges of the New World by having Luffy lose his third major fight in a row against the gooey Warden Magellan.
Finally, the saga culminates at the Paramount War. The Marine have gathered en mass, awaiting the inevitable appearance of Whitebeard. The Paramount War is a very successful culmination of the series up until this point. Most major players are present (with the exception of the Straw Hats), which allows for an almost egregious amount of fanservice to be present, but not feel forced. But where the arc really shines, is in how it covers the central theme of the series, found family and what it means to the respective characters. White Beard arrives with his full force, to save his adoptive son, personifying the ideals that had lived his life for. Being a pirate was never about money or power, it was about the family he created and died defending, and the Marines’s failed to understand him and his symbolic victory, even as he died at the hands of his one misbegotten son. Ace’s death sacrificing himself to save his brother, and his subsequent confession to Luffy, as the unwilling inheritor to the legacy of Gol D. Rodger and how that closed him off from others for so long, only for him to find love from Luffy, White Beard, Sabo and the rest of the White Beard Pirates, and how much he appreciated that love, reaffirms Luffy’s love of his own crew, and allows him to reassess both himself and his crews capabilities in the face of his own failures, as they move forward into the New World.

Fishman Island: Fishman island is a perplexing arc. On one hand it covers some of the most complex topics in OP, including intergenerational trauma, slavery, personal ideological failure in the face of systemic racism and the persistence of revenge on a societal level. But on the other hand it has some of the stupidest shit in the entire series, like Sanji’s constant horny nose bleed that causes him to be anemic, and the dumbass with the homing missile fruit. One of the most effective aspect of this arc is Hody Jones, the main villain. Hody is a new Fishman Pirate, taking the moniker from the Arlong, as a sign of reverence to a man he’s never met. His actions are justifiable from the lens of the oppressed lashing out at their oppressor, but therein lies the main contradiction in Hody Jones. He has not been the oppressed, he’s co-opting the rhetoric of a man who was literally enslaved and using a societal expectation of racism to garner support, and victimizing his own people in the name of justice against oppressors he’s never seen and cannot conceptualize. His story is that of a rebel who has inherited a generational conflict that he did not bear the brunt of, but has been raised in a society reflective of it. He cannot conceive of an effective method to grow, and overcome the damage that has been done to his people, and instead chooses direct militarization, despite not have the power or influence to actually make change through force. He’s pathetic, in an understandable way, clawing for power that he thinks will justify his own existence. Unfortunately, this is a kids comic, so these concepts are explored briefly, juxtaposed against Jinbei’s experiences and actions and then are cleanly wrapped up, with Jones and his co-conspirators thrown into prison while they quickly age out of being a threat, due to advanced aging they’re experiencing due to the powers they took on. This is disappointing, as the Fishman are by far the most interesting of the subspecies presented in OP, as they are the one’s who have had the most time devoted to how they have shouldered the burden of the world governments oppression. Characters like Tom, Jinbei, Hacchi, Hody, Arlong and Fisher Tiger all present excellent avenues to explore the effects of this entrenched racism, but the series is frequently too timid to follow up on the more difficult subject matter it introduces, and as a result will always remain media for children, simple, inoffensive and easy to consume. This is the arc where I can fully understand how people could age out of One Piece for a while, before they return to it as something to share with their children.

Punk Hazard: This is a personal opinion, but I believe that Punk Hazard is the worst arc in One Piece. Oda is a writer who wears his influences on his sleeve, and unfortunately here he’s pulling from the X-Men. Ceaser is Mr. Sinister, experimenting on children in a vast underground laboratory devoted to replicating superpowers. Unfortunately, as a story structure, this gets repeated in X-Men comics every couple of months, so when it gets redone in OP its played out, uninspired and incredibly dull. There’s not much else to say about the arc unfortunately, Ceaser is a dull megalomaniacal mad scientist who doesn’t present much of a challenge to over come, and as a result the arc feels like its little more then drawn out set up for Dressrosa.

Dressrosa: Its Baroque Works….. again….. but longer….. This arc was a massive let down. Donquxoite is essentially just Crocodile with actual development, which isn’t an inherently bad thing, it just comes across as uninspired. His pirates manage to take over a sovereign country, the Straw Hats help the populace of the island defeat him, the navy lets them get away. There are excellent parts however, including the back stories for Traffy, Donquxoite and Senior Pink, and Oda almost solves his cast balancing issue by removing half the Straw Hats, but flounders by introducing ten new pirates from the gladiator arena that he then has to give time to during the big final fight. As a result the climax drags on for multiple volumes. Its nowhere near as bad as it is in the anime, but it still feels like Oda is spinning his wheels and wasting the audiences time.

Zou: Zou is a quick and effective set up arc for both Whole Cake and Wano. It’s pleasant, introduces Skypeia 2.0, but this time it has an actual function in the plot.

Whole Cake Island: It’s a whole arc centred around Sanji….. Great…….
Whole Cake is centred around the legacy that parents force upon their children and refuting the legacy. It’s the most effective use of Sanji that Oda has ever managed, with him struggling under the burden of his families wishes as a means of protecting Zeph, his chosen father from harm. This is paralleled with the struggles and machinations of several of Big Mom’s children, as they seek to define their place within her hierarchy that she enforces upon her children or begin to openly rebel and find their own path. This all culminates in a spectacular Godzilla style rampage by Big Mom, though it has to constantly cut back to Luffy whose trapped in the mirror dimension figting some guy for the majority of the back half of this arc. Overall it’s a massive improvement over Dressrosa, presenting new ideas, and finally giving Sanji some development and actual room for character growth.

Wano: Wano is long. It is so god damn long. It had been set up for around eight years before it began, and plays like a very effective feudal Japanese revenge story. But I’m unsure if the pay off was worth the amount of time it took to set up the arc. Some of the issue lies with shared power between Orochi the Shogun of Wano and Kaido the last Emperor of the Sea to be introduced. The Shogun is set up as a conniving and treacherous man, and his downfall is cathartic and well earned, as most of the suffering of the people of Wano is a result of his actions. But Kaido presents a narrative issue, as he is the power behind the throne, but he serves little narrative purpose other than being Orochi’s muscle and an obstacle for Luffy to overcome. Kaido ends up functioning similarly to Big Mom’s son who fought Luffy during Whole Cake, a distraction to help remove Luffy from the actual plot. While I won’t deny that Gear 5 is definitely my favorite of Luffy’s power up’s over the course of the series, it would have been a little more narratively fulfilling if it had happened during a fight with an antagonist who is more important to either the overall narrative, or simply more integral to the plot of the arc they’re in.

Egghead: This arc has been fun so far. Kuma’s tragedy porn backstory was sad, and it really does seem like Oda is trying to escalate towards the ending with the involvement of the elders.

Characters:

The Straw Hats: All the Straw Hats will be ranked in descending order, 1/10 being the best, 10/10 being the worst.

Luffy: For the most part Luffy is perfectly serviceable Shonen protagonist. His back story at the end of the paramount war along with Oda allowing Luffy to actually fail has allowed him to be much more dynamic than a lot of peers. But unfortunately, it took almost sixty volumes for his character to be developed and begin growing. Ranked 5/10.

Zoro: I have to be honest, most arcs I forget Zoro is in the story. He’s incredibly dull, and there’s been so little to his character over the years, that if he was removed, I don’t think I’d notice. His terrible sense of direction is funny though. Ranked 9/10.

Nami: The lynch pin of early One Piece, and one of the most important “adult” members of the crew. Most of my opinions about her were covered in the “Romance Dawn” section. Ranked 4/10.

Usopp: The everyman that the straw hats need to remain believable as people. Usopp’s arc in Water Seven/Enies Lobby remains one of the series best. And his resulting confidence has allowed him to find such an effective place in the crew over the subsequent arcs. Ranked 2/10.

Sanji: For the vast majority of the series Sanji was incredibly one note. He was a homophobic lech, with little in the way of personal growth or development. And then Whole Cake happened, and his development basically became “Well at least he’s not a Nazi like his family”. Yeah, that was really great, and least he’s better than his dad. Ranked 10/10 the absolute worst, I’m not just annoyed because he’s the OP character who has the same birthday as me.

Boku Wa Doctor Tony Tony Chopper: I love Chopper. I think his role as the “little brother” in the group is needed as a means of softening the Straw Hats, and his resolve to become a brave adventurer over the years has been sweet, despite him failing to become tougher. Ranked 7/10.

Robin: Early on, Oda struggled to make Robin anything more than an exposition device. And than Water Seven happened, and she became one of the most important characters connecting the Straw Hats to the actual plot, while also growing as character. Now she gets to live an actual life surrounded by the people she loves. Ranked 1/10, the peak, we cannot get much higher.

Franky: Franky’s introduction and backstory are great. But he hasn’t had much to do since then, other than his wonderful fight with Senior Pink. Also, his post time skip redesign is just awful. Ranked 8/10

Brook: Oda uses Brook very effectively to explore the theme of living with your own failures, albeit extremely literally by making him live a ship with the corpses of his dead crew for fifty years. But the story is for children, so being overly literally isn’t the end of the world. And his backstory is still one of the most compelling in the series, and I look forward to his pay off with Laboon. Ranked 6/10.

Jinbei: Jinbei finding a reason to live through Luffy, at the behest of Ace hits like a gut punch. Mix that with the thematic conclusion of Fishman Island where he actively moves past their racial trauma in support of Luffy, and Oda has finally introduced something the series was lacking for a long time. A responsible adult man, who makes an excellent pairing along with Robin as the crew’s responsible adult woman. I know Jinbei isn’t particularly popular with the younger fans of One Piece, but he’s a character who is very reflective of Oda’s growth as a writer and his own maturity. Don’t worry if you don’t get him now, you’ll understand when you’re older. Ranked 3/10.

Villains of Note:

Buggy: The true Clown Prince of crime. I sincerely hope that Buggy fails his way to being King of the Pirates.

Arlong: The first intimidating villain in One Piece, where his actions are effectively tied to one of the main characters. He’s more compelling on a second read through, where the context of his history is already known.

Crocodile: Crocodile is an effective enough megalomaniacal villain, even if his motivations aren’t adequately explored. He comes across as a first draft for what Donquixote would end up being.

Eminem: Skypeia sucks, Enel is boring. I hope he stays on the moon forever.

Foxy: Foxy is great, if you’re not stuck up your own ass about taking a comic for children incredibly seriously.

Rob Lucci: He comes across as a character that a teenager would’ve written in fan fiction. Pointlessly edgy and incredibly “badass”. There’s not a whole lot to him, so I find him incredibly boring. So, its very fitting that he was brought back to fight Zoro during Egghead.

Moria: The worst of the Seven Warlords. Thriller Bark would’ve been much more effective if Hogback had just been the main villain.

The Admirals: Kuzan is the one I’m most interested in due to his relationship with Garp, allowing Robin to escape as a child and his defection to the Black Beard pirates. I hope he’s explored more in the future.
Akainu is of course easy to hate due to him killing Ace, but beyond that, he hasn’t really done anything.
Borsalino is great. He has my favorite devil fruit, his drip is top notch, his relationships with Kuma and Sentomaru have added some nice development to him. And his line about the death of the laws of physics was amazing.

Caesar Clown: He’s Mr. Sinister. Mr. Sinister is one of the worst X-men villains. Much like Minister Sinister he sucks.

Donquixote Dolflamingo: What if Crocodile had been developed as a character. Well than you get Donquixote. His back story makes him an effective villain, but Dressrosa’s awful pacing stop him from really being anything spectacular, as his fight just drags on forever.

Big Mom: Big Mom is a wonderful abyssal horror, and that makes for a wonderful contrast with her aesthetic. Her Kaiju rampage at the end of Whole Cake is fun, and her return in Wano feels justified.

Kaido: It’s a great shame that Kaido seems so passive in Wano. He’s built up as a massive threat but ends up being an incredibly reactive character. None of the plans involving his fief are his own, and as a result he comes across as little more than a powerful lackey for the shogun.

Blackbeard: Blackbeard has been fun as a foil to Luffy. A man who shares similar philosophies on personal freedom, but without the firm belief in family that Luffy has makes him easy to hate but easy to contrast with the lead. Hopefully he does something again soon.


Supporting Characters Who I can Remember well enough to have an opinion on, and were not covered effectively during the story portions:

Ace: Ace is a very effective vehicle for Oda to explore themes of legacy. From Ace’s resentment of his father, both his father and mothers’ efforts to protect from his father’s legacy, Garp’s attempts to mold him into something else, White Beard embracing Ace for who he is, and both Luffy and Sabo living their lives reflecting Ace’s choices and eventual sacrifice makes Ace a very thematically resonate character. Shame that he’s not in very much of the series.

Sabo: Sabo feels a little like Oda killed off Ace, immediately regretted it, and then wrote him back into the story. That’s not a terrible thing, and Sabo is an effective POV character for the audience to follow during chapters focussed on the revolutionary army. But that hasn’t really topped him from feeling like a hastily conceived replacement.

Iva: Iva has the second best devil fruit in the entire series, the gender affirming surgery fruit. Also they’re just a camp delight, and I’m so excited anytime they’re on panel.

Kuma: One Piece is famous for its tragedy porn back stories, and Kuma’s might be the most overwritten of all of them. Still fist pumped when he saved his daughter though.

Boa Hancock: I’ll forgive anything she does, because she’s beautiful.

Kinemon: My GF has pointed out that I have a very specific type when it comes to fictional men. She calls them “disasterpieces”, men who are so wholly pathetic, that they have nowhere to go but up, and the more they reek of middle age desperation the more I’ll love them. Buggy is like this, and so is Kinemon, the man that no one should have trusted with the heir to the thrown of Wano. His accidental fuck up about the invasion time of Onigashima which ends up saving the entire armada is one of my favorite moments in the whole series.

The Entire Staff of Impel Down: The intense public hatred the vice warden has for Magellan is wonderful, and his vindictive treatment of the rest of the staff is hilarious. Magellan’s portrayal as a long suffering bureaucrat is hilarious, and I hope all of them come back at some point.

Fisher Tiger: He presents an excellent moral struggle for Jinbei to overcome, as a folk hero who will act in the interest of innocents who are from the same ethnic groups as his oppressors, but cannot overcome his own justifiable prejudices to save his own life. He’s great, and he really helps flesh out the world.

Mihawk: Goth daddy, need I say more.

Traffy: Traffy is a fun foil for Luffy, and the panel of Chopper being tied to his head is one of the best reaction faces in all of One Piece.

Jaggy: Jaggy is not as an effective foil for Luffy as Traffy, but he’s also had significantly less time devoted to him in the story. He ends up being an effective rival archetype, like Gary in original Pokémon.

Bepo: I love Bepo. I love his annoying voice; I love his insecurity. And I love Polar Bear Karate.

Garp: I wish he’d tie me to balloons and float me off into the jungle, then I could be a real man.


Themes:
One Piece excels when it covers personal themes based around family, friends, living with personal failures and legacy. However, it struggles when covering larger societal themes like racism and civil disobedience as it struggles to make a cohesive point about the evils of its world without devolving into cartoonish villainy. As a result, the series remains thematically simple enough for kids and can teach them effective lessons to help them through middle school, but won’t be relevant as they mature.

Art:
Oda has taken a lot of inspiration from old American daily strips like Popeye, and multiple works by Tezuka. His style is exaggerated and cartoony in a way that’s incredible rare for a series from SJ, avoiding the common manga “house style” you see in so many of his contemporaries. There are several key advantages to the use of this style, like distinct character designs (for men) that can be replicated from multiple perspectives effectively, ensuring that characters remain on model consistently. It also allows great flexibility for design modification, allowing his to change characters outfits and hairstyles arc to arc without much visual confusion. This clean style also ensures that he rarely runs into issues with line weights and inks, characters are usually clearly definable, and rarely conflict with the backgrounds. Luffy’s powers also make him particularly well suited to foreshortening, allowing for Oda to pose him effectively and dynamically in fight scenes.
However, where Oda truly struggles is with layouts and lettering. He has terrible page economy, with cramped panels filled with excessive amounts of texts, and sluggish layouts that force the reader to re-read pages frequently or assess panel layout as you begin each page. This has also gotten progressively worse over the years as his cast has ballooned, and he struggles to find space for all the characters involved in scenes. Fortunately, his skills as a writer are enough to overcome his technical failures as an artist, but its frustrating to see, especially in a magazine that has hosted artist like Takehiko Inoue and Akira Toriyama, both masters of page layout and flow, but unfortunately the controlling hand WSJ editorial department did not take the correct lesson from them.

World Building:
I hold a somewhat unpopular opinion among OP fans, that Oda is not as good a planning and foreshadowing as is publicly accepted, but is in fact a master of retconning. They key issue I have with his world building is his multiple magic systems, particularly Haki. Haki as a system comes across a late addition meant to address power scaling issues present by Logia fruit, particularly how each Logia user would require a specific environmental factor to defeat. Crocodile’s defeat comes basically out of nowhere, especially for a man who is effectively impervious to harm, and surrounded by the material he controls. Luffy’s confrontation with Smoker is solved simply by never explaining how Dragon stops him (it can now be inferred via retcon that Dragon used Haki). And Enel is defeated solely because Luffy is rubber and is effectively grounded against Enel’s attacks, though at the voltage presented in the story, its more likely Luffy would’ve been ionized. Haki simply solves that environmental condition issue by simply stating that Haki user can damage Logia types. Why? How? Soul damage I suppose, but it’s a poorly explained system that allows OP’s magic system to be dumbed down considerably over time.
Haki is also reflective of several abilities presented before including Shank’s intimidation of the sea beast, Enel’s Omniscience and CP9’ array of of body hardening and sensory techniques. I’m curious as to when Haki was formalized as a single system in Oda’s mind, and how these other systems played into it, because Haki’s absence in the first half of the story leads to some minor, but annoying character discrepancies. Both Crocodile and Moira were able to challenge Emperor’s of the sea, and walk away still breathing, which seems unlikely in Crocodiles case where White Beard would’ve simply been able to stab him with armament Haki, and Moira’s case where he managed to fight Kaido and live. There’s also issues with Arlong not knowing Haki, despite the Sun Pirates being versed in it, CP9 being ill equipped to fight any major pirates, despite being described as the strongest operatives the world government has. All of these are small issues that are indicative of retconning, which isn’t a massive issue, but introduces logical inconsistencies into the world building.

Final Thoughts:
One Piece is a messy series, most things that last this long are. But it is a charming one, with enough variety over the years to keep it feeling fresh and exciting, while never having dense enough lore to scare off potential new readers. It’s a simple series and probably a good choice to read with your kids or nieces and nephews.

This review was inspired by another wonderful review that I am just in awe of. It's structure, it's perspective and it's total lack of flow was just riveting, and I decided to write my own review in that style.

I almost never write reviews.....occasionally write reviews.... but this show has been so delightful that I felt compelled to on this occasion. I hope my review can inspire someone else to use their time wisely.

This is a pretty good fantasy show, that has begun to develop an interesting world. Don't skip it to save yourself some time, let the story and world unfold naturistically, instead ... of having a big exposition dump at the beginning like most modern "fantasy" anime.

Main Review:
This might just be the least boring show, I've had the pleasure of watching, in the last 2 years. (That is definitely an exaggeration).
I decided to watch this because I like fantasy shows but I struggle to  find anime that dont suck all the fun out of fantasy. Lets start with the character designs since they actually look distinct. Pretty much every character design in this series looks decent in one way or another, despite occasionally falling into some basic fantasy tropes. Take Chilchuck for instance. His oversized ears are a clear indicator of his above average hearing abilities, while also helping to differentiate him from his cast mates. Unlike most standard anime fantasies where every character is just another anime waif, with little to differentiate themselves, except for hair colour, Delicious in Dungeon actually usues character design to show the different abilities and character traits of its cast. Contrast this with an awful example of fantasy character design; Sakura from Naruto. Because it's fantasy she eventually became strong enough to the destroy the ground with a punch, but her arms  remained slender and twigish. Theres no change to her character, the powerup is not visually significant, and seems to have come with no character development. Its bad writing, leaving Sakura as a dull fantasy character.

Now on to the music and OST. The soundtrack is decent, if not a particular stand out. The OP is better, this may be Bump of Chicken's best ever performance.

The story is primarily about cooking monsters found in the dungeon and the way it's presented to the viewer is pretty intesresting, allowing the world to be developed through the ecology of the dungeon itself. The characters are charismatic and interesting. Marcille has to be the best though as she acts as an audience surrogate for exploring the dungeon, she was one of the reasons why I continued watching the show. The side characters like the elf in the painting add additional story hooks to be explored, and bring an air of mystery to the world. The show understands character driven comedy. The comedic moments in this series work best when theyre used as moments of characterizationbetween the main cast. Now you might think after all this that at least the action might be good, but it's alright. The staff at trigger are good at using exaggerated character movement, but havent had a real chance to shine yet. I have been surprised by this series, and look forward to continuing it.

Do you have five to ten hours to burn while being on a plane flight? And you want to experience something that will have the exact level of engagement that you need when you're stressed from dealing with airlines and have a bit of a pressure headache? Then Demon Slayer might be for you. It was for me, and it made a flight to New York a much more bearable time. Demon Slayer is well meaning, if a bit vapid story that has a great attribute that incredibly few successful manga have. The mangaka knew that dragging out the series was a bad idea, and ... just ended the damn thing. Demon Slayers brevity is probably its greatest strength, as it ensures that the reader simply doesn't have time to delve into its world, reflect on its characters and ponder its themes, because if they did have the time, they might be filled with questions that the mangaka simply isn't interested in addressing. But that's alright, because Demon Slayer is a fun little roller coaster ride aimed squarely at teenage boys, and it doesn't really need to have much in the way of depth to connect with its target audience.


Story:
The broad strokes of Demon Slayers story are very simple. An ancient race of monsters terrorizes Japan and are locked in an endless struggle against a secret society of warriors devoted to stopping them. Not much else going on.

The first few arcs (Everything up to the spider mountain): We meet Tanjiro and his loving family, minus his father who has apparently died of a chronic illness somewhat recently. From that, we can infer that that Tanjiro's mother is probably a power top, due to the number of siblings Tanjiro has, and his fathers poor constitution. His family is then tragically murdered, he meets the forgettable water hashira, and heads off to train. These arcs are all short and to the point, just how I want battle shounen to start. Tanjiro motivation is established, we're introduced to the villains, the power system is establish and the major supporting characters like Inosuke and Zenitsu are introduced. Nothing great, but its a solid introduction to the story.

Spider Mountain: The first longish arc of the series, and where the repetitive story structure of Demon Slayer really starts to solidify. The three lads head up the mountain, get separated and fight some demons. One of Demon Slayers crucial flaws is an unfortunate trope in Japanese writing, where villains motivations are revealed after they've been defeated. Its an issue, as it makes them flat characters during the actual conflict, simply a cackling uber powerful menace that has to be defeated for the sake of righteousness. Then as they lay dying, their philosophies are laid bare, and the audience is supposed to retroactively assign these new found motivations to their previous actions, attempting to get a knee jerk emotional reaction out of the audience at the last second. It's acceptable, if not particularly compelling character writing, if it happens once in a story like Toguro the Younger or Funny Valentine, but if it happens with every single major villain in a series, at best it comes across as lazy tragedy porn, and at worst it comes across as the writers inability to show opposing character motivations in a single scene, and inability to develop characters. While this had happened before Spider Boy, his death was the first that got a prolonged flashback and was a harbinger for the rest of the series.

Mugen Train/The Red Light District/Sword Smith Village arc: All three of these arcs are basically the same. Tanjiro and crew head out, meet a hasira or two, get accosted by a demon, learn the hashira's back story, kill the demon and get the demon's sad backstory. Rinse and repeat, but at least they're all short arcs, with Mugen train and the Red Light District being impactful enough that their repetitive nature isn't a major distraction.

Hashira Training arc: We get some fun character interactions, and have some time to reflect on the characters growth in terms of physical strength and then the demons attack. Its a fun little set up arc that doesn't overstay its welcome, and I have no idea how UFOtable will make more than four episodes out of this.

Infinity Castle/Whatever the last battle is called: The demon Slayer Corps invade the demons strong hold, both Zenitsu and Inosuke get some last minute character development so that people can claim that they had character arcs, and then Tanjiro fights a giant baby. Some of these final fights are horrifically laid out, and you can really feel the authors rush to wrap up the series at this point as the characters deviate from model repeatedly and backgrounds are frequently ignored. But, most of the main cast and supporting characters get at least one moment to shine so its a fun little ending.


Characters:
Tanjiro: He's a quintessential anime good boy with a secret family heritage that makes him secretly super powerful. If the archetype isn't broken, don't fix it.

Inosuke: Who needs character development when you're this hype. He's my absolute favorite character. He's a dickhead, annoys every person he's around and is needlessly beautiful. Best boy, the arcs he wasn't in were absolute torture.

Zenitsu: King of the simps. He gets a little bit of character development near the end which is nice, but he mostly feels like a filler character that's there to ensure that there's a shounen trio.

Muzan: The Demon King, arch enemy of the Demon Slayer Corp. There's not much to say about him, he was an awful person, became a demon and continued to be awful. He's flat as a board and not particularly charismatic, so he's kind of a bad shounen villain.

Mr Rengoku: The best hashira. His backstory is relatable (I hope that doesn't say anything about my relationship with my father), and he's open to others experiences, making him one of the least dickish of the hashira.

Tengen: the 2nd best hashira. he's the first character in manga or anime whose had a harem where I actually understood why his three wives actually would want to be with him.

Mitsuri: The 3rd best hashira. Her sad backstory ending up being that she actually just needed to find a place in society that would accept her physical strength, and that the Demon Slayer Corp was a place that valued her for the attributes that she had been shamed for in her home life, was actually quite pleasant. Also those thigh highs are a 10/10.

Obanai: He gave Mitsuri her thigh highs. 10/10.

Mr Haganezuka: The 3rd best depiction of autism in all of manga.


Art:
The art in Demon Slayer is messy to say in the least. Line weight is frequently an issue, with foreground and background elements frequently blending together. The layouts are also frequently an issue, with multiple fights having distinct issues with how they flow panel to panel. There's one particular fight towards the end involving Tanjiro and the water hashira, where the water breathing visual effect leads the reader all over the page, with little clarity on what's actually happening in the fight.
Despite the technical issues with the art, stylistically the series is quite strong. The hasira are mostly visually distinct, despite sharing a uniform, and most of the demons have somewhat different designs.


Themes:
Its a battle shounen. Strength from your friends, perseverance, be kind to all even those who have wronged you. Its not ground breaking, it doesn't need to be.


Final thoughts:
Will I cherish my time with Demon Slayer? Probably not, but I do appreciate it as comfortable reading for a plane ride. Its not life changing, but its solid. The characters are fun, the power system is both simple but flexible enough that the fights are rarely boring, and its not long enough to feel overly dragged out. Having said all that, I do feel like I've forgotten something? Or someone? from the series. Oh well, if id did I'm sure that thing or person was barely involved in the story and clearly wasn't memorable.



........oh yeah, it was Nezuko, oh well....

Ah Bleach, the most middling of the big three. What can be said about Bleach that hasn't already been said? It's dragged out, repetitive, kind of a rip off of Yu Yu Hakusho, has a bland magic magic system, and Ichigo isn't what most writers would call a compelling character.
So what does it have going for it? It's cool factor? I was a teenager when Bleach was coming out, and managed to miss it at the time, so I don't have any nostalgia for its particular style, but my girlfriend watched it as it was broadcasting, and she just cringes whenever she sees the character ... designs or hears the dialogue now, so I'm not sure how well it's coolness has aged.

Story:
It's Yu Yu Hakusho. Boy gets spirit powers, fights demonic entities, fights other spirit detectives, etc etc. As for the arcs themselves, they vary wildly in terms of quality.

The 1st one (spirit detective): You get introduced to the characters, Ichigo gets his call to action, learns some new skills and eventually Rukia's brother shows up and drags her back to spirit society. It's pretty bland overall, but it's fun for the most part. Some characters like Kon and Ichigo's dad drag it down, but over all the arc is made up of small stories that generally build well off each other.

Soul Society: It's in the second arc where cracks begin to form. It's long and it all takes place in a single location that has very little in terms of visual identity. My girlfriend remembered it as being "the part in the maze", and I can't say she's wrong. Volume after volume of fights in the same corridors, with low white walls, fighting characters with samurai swords wearing black robes. It's tedious at best, soul grinding at worst. The plot here is dependent on the leader of the Soul Reapers being a complete moron, an issue that will be exacerbated in later arcs, with him just blindly following edicts from a poorly explained governing committee that he never actually interacts with. Eventually the secret villain is revealed, Ichigo gets a new costume, and Rukia is saved.

Hueco Mundo: it's Soul Society....again.
They go to hell to save Orihime who was kidnapped, just like Rukia in the last arc.
We meet all the Arancarr captains and fight them, just like the Soul Reaper captains in the last arc. Ichigo gets a new costume and power up to beat the guy who kidnapped the girl again. The big bad was Aizen, again (but at least this time his motivations are revealed). This arc is brutally bad. It's a longer version of Soul Society but without the conspiracy plot to occasionally switch up the pacing. So instead it just has more endless fights in sterile white rooms against enemies who all wear white robes (unlike the black robes in Soul Society).
This the arc where I had to fully accept that I didn't get what people liked about Bleach. It's style didn't work for me, it's characters were boring, and it's magic system was filled standard shounen powers (if I have to see unlimited blade works in another anime or manga, I'll die.)
In the end, Ichigo beats Aizen, loses his powers, and the series wraps up most of its plot points. I was content, not happy, but content that the series was over.
"Nope" said my girlfriend, with a sadistic gleam in her eye. "There are two arcs left."
"Impossible, the main villain was defeated. Ichigo's character arc sort of finished. Anymore would be pointless."
She laughed at my ignorance. "You have roughly 30 more volumes to read."

Full bringer arc: Ichigo gets his powers back. Chad's powers get explained (unlike Orihime's powers)....... There's not much else to say about this arc. It was quick at least, so I didn't have time to get bored. It's the second best arc of the series.

Thousand Year Blood War: This arc starts so strong. Soul Society gets crushed by Nazi's led by Jesus and fire captain gets killed like a chump in the best fight of the series. And then it keeps going and going, and just repeats the exact same formula of Soul Society and Hueco Mundo. Ichigo gets a new power up and new costume. A black robbed soul reaper fights a white clad Nazi in an empty void, and once that's done another set gets to do the same thing. And then they introduce the way to kill Jesus five chapters before the end.

And so Bleach ends on a whimper, much like it's more successful competitor Naruto.

Characters:
I'm going to focus on main characters and supporting characters who left an impact. For the sake of authenticity, I will use the nomenclature my gf and I use while discussing the series.

Ichigo: ichigo suffers in comparison to his equivalents in the other two of the big three by not having much in the way of a goal. Now having a repeatedly stated goal isn't exactly subtle writing, but in media aimed at children it does allow for an effective baseline of characterization. Ichigo starts with a basic goal of avenging his mother, but that plot point is solved without him long after he had stopped being concerned with the average Hollow on earth. As a result, Ichigo comes across as as an incredibly reactive character, being pushed and pulled by the whims of the plot with little agency of his own. He's a bit of a marysue, allowing the audience to imprint their own personality onto him.

Aizen: Aizen is a genius manipulator, with his genius predicated on the stupidity of everyone around him. However as the end goal of his plan is to kill God, he is able to fulfill basic anime tropes to a level I found kind of entertaining.

Ywhach: Jesus, but he wants to kill God (hey that's what Aizen wanted too). There's not much to his plan, as he and his Nazi cosplayers are just going to brute force their way through Soul Society. But I can't argue that he has presence. His character design really stands out compared to a lot of shounen villains.

Chad: deserved better. He had to listen to Ichigo's dumb speech about being persecuted due to his strawberry hair, while being a mixed race person in Japan.

Rukia/Orihime: To be honest, I kept forgetting that these two were separate characters. They both exist to get damselled, and beyond that have little identifiable character or impact on the plot. They're both basically the worse version of Sakura from Naruto.

Bucket hat: the best mad scientist of the series. And he's got a fun hat.

Fire Captain: I love characters that are repeatedly said to be the strongest character in their organizations, and then lose every single conflict they're involved in. He gets beaten by Aizen strategically in Soul Society, physically beaten by him in Heuco Mundo, and then folded by Jesus in thousand year blood war. The guy is pathetic and it's hard to take the Soul Reapers seriously due to their reverence of this moron.

Rukia's brother: his Bankai is Unlimited Blade Works. I wonder if people die when they're killed by it.

The Soul Reaper Captains: the big guy who thinks bankai are pointless is a stand out, I really feel his vibe.
The big dog is definitely a big dog.
The guy who dress like samurai had a pretty fun bankai, the children's shadow tag game was very different from the rest of the captains.
The ice kid is so forgettable that my girlfriend was convinced I was trying gaslight her about his existence. She had no memory of him whatsoever, and refused to believe she had forgotten a fan favorite character like him.
The rest of the captains are there, not much more to say about them.

The Arrancar/Quincy Captains: they're the soul reaper captains, but in white and are (debatably) more evil. Most of them are introduced to be killed off in a few chapters, and most of their gimmicks aren't that memorable.

The Cat: 10/10 no notes, 2nd best character.

Pesche: G.O.A.T. I love him. I read this series for him. I made a mood board that was just images of him. He should've been the lead. I relate to him because I also find Ichigo forgettable. Also he's voiced by Dio in the anime so he has a sensuality that you wouldn't expect from a hollow.

The rest of the characters could probably be removed from the story without much change to the plot.

World Building:
The world building in the first arc is pretty good (until we find out that hell and Hueco Mundo are apparently different things). Each little story introduced something new, and we get a good handle on the balance between Soul Reapers and Hollows.
And then Soul Society happens. Soul Society is the afterlife (for only Japan?), run by the Soul Reapers. The Soul Reapers are also eventually revealed to be a different species from humanity, which begs the question where do their souls go when they die. In Soul Society, Soul Reapers just police the slums inhabited by the souls of humanities dead, who eventually reincarnate back into the human world. It's a poorly explained version of feudal Japan, and the Soul Reapers are Samurai. It also makes them massive dick heads, a problem the series never recovers from. Every villain that wants to destroy them is justified, tear down the system and build something new.
By Hueco Mundo, Kubo had given up. It's basically the neither world from Beetlejuice, hollows eat each other until they become sentient, and then they go to the big Arrancar tower. There's no depth to this.
The Quincy empire is so oddly explained. Is it in a pocket dimension? Did they conquer part of earth five hundred years ago in Nazi outfits? Kubo doesn't care and neither do I.

Art:
I'm going to cover this real quick. I don't think most of the character designs work real well. The Captains of the respective factions mostly blend together since they all share a basic aesthetic. A lot of Kubo's faces are incredibly similar, and his backgrounds are at best lazy and usually just white empty voids.
However, Kubo can actually draw black people, which is almost unheard of in Japan, so I was really impressed by that.

Themes:
The main issue with Ichigo being such a reactive character is that hypothetically his motivations should change arc to arc predicated on whatever external conflict he's faced with, however due to Bleach's repetitive story structure, he basically just repeats the same character arc four times. Become strong to defend your friends and protect the week. This isn't an inherently bad theme, but there's not much in the way of exploring it, making Bleach feel a little Hollow.

Final thoughts:
Do I think Bleach is particularly bad? No, it's fine as it doesn't excel at anything, but also isn't especially bad at anything other than pacing and repetitive story structure. I don't know if I would feel differently if I had started reading or watching Bleach when I was a teenager, but I have to admit that I doubt it, due to Bleach's greatest issue. It's far too long for what it is. It doesn't have the depth to sustain 74 volumes. If it had been shorter, 20 to 30, it would've been fast enough to keep me engaged, like equally simple series such Demon Slayer or JJK. But as it is, it's a slog to get through.

I am re-writing this review to appease the draconian sensibilities of the MAL review moderation team. (I'm kidding, the original review could definitely be fleshed out a bit)

An introduction:
Be a child circa the mid 2000's, in North America. Your favorite toy commercial *ahem* cartoon about a children's card game, has been running strong for several years, and suddenly is supplanted by a vicious pretender to its throne. A spin off, a filthy and vile thing, warping the majesty of the authors artistic integrity........ that's a little dramatic, it is just a commercial for konami's card game after all.
Most of my general dislike of this ... show is YTV's fault, particularly how they started to slot this in to regular Yu Gi Oh's timeslot before Yu Gi Oh was actually finished. But that's not a fair reason to dislike something, so as an adult man I decided to give it another shot.
GX shares most of OG Yu Gi Oh's flaws, constant ass pulls, characters who are flat as boards, abysmal animation. But unfortunately, it lacks the charms of its predecessor, the rival is boring and cannot even approach Kaiba's beautifully asinine levels of dickishness, none of Jaiden's friends are as dopey and fun as Joey, and the villains are forgettable.

Characters:
Jaiden: I refuse to believe that Jaiden (Bite me, long live 4kids supremacy, i will never use his Japanese name) could ever beat Yugi in a duel,Yugi is the king of games. I do like Jaiden's little trademark magnet robot cards though, they're fun. Jaden doesn't really have much in the way of a character though. He struggles to defeat villains, relies on the power of friendship, etc etc. He's Yugi 2.0, but unfortunately without the Pharoah, which definitely robs him of having an interesting hook to his character. Jaiden is just a kid going off to boarding school, and not much else is going on with him.
Chaz: Chaz is just boring Kaiba. He tells Jaiden he'll never be as good as him, wears a cool jacket and has an emo hair cut.
The rest of the characters are all regular shonen arctypes, nothing special or particularly bad, they get the job done, showcasing new cards for my then adolescent mind to hyperfixate on.

Story:
I like the school. I think it's insane that there's an elite boarding school that Kaiba started only teaches duel monsters. But also that fits beautifully into Kaiba's insane priorities, and the pecking order of the hogwarts houses is a wonderful bit of characterization for Kaiba. As for the over arcing plots themselves... They're fine. All of the Yu Gi Oh shows struggle with finding ways of tying whatever evil cabal is threatening to destroy the world this week to the titular card game. The shadow dragons? Riders? Are probably the best, and the show never gets as bad as Alexander the Great and capsule monsters from the original show. But it's never particularly compelling.

Animation:
It's real cheap. All the Yu-Gi-Oh shows are. The franchise lends itself well to quick an easy production cycles, since it is just about characters standing still playing a children's card game. Unfortunately, the show suffers from poor direction, making the duels badly paced and a chore to sit through.

Themes:
Engage in capitalism kids.

Conclusion:
GX is fairly unoffensive toy commercial, much like the rest of the franchise. But by being the one that immediately replaced the one where I started, it's where I began to see the cracks. My reaction to GX is simply a reflection of aging. The excitement I felt with the original couldn't be replicated, and due to my experience, began seeing tropes repeat themselves and began to understand the necessity of the shows existence. It served the brand, as did the original, but now that intent was plain to see, and it just felt so hollow to me.

Gantz may be one of my favorite train wrecks. It's trashy, deep as a puddle, and ends terribly. From its nihilistic character writing, open disdain for women and impactless violence the whole thing reads like an incel's wet dream. And it's all the better for it.

Story: it's a death game where the characters are saved from their original deaths to fight aliens hiding throughout Japan. This continues for 280ish chapters until the author decided he needed an actual ongoing plot to help wrap up the series.
At this point the audience is informed that an alien invasion is coming. Is it it related to the ... aliens Kei and his.... friends..... have been fighting for the whole manga? No of course not, that would be stupid, these are totally different giant horse looking aliens. They conquer the world, the plucky humans fight back, have a brief conversation with "not god" who sent the Gantz balls, and then beat the aliens.
The last arc is awful, but it can't really ruin a series that was already pretty gloriously shit.

Art: I'm pretty split on Gantz's art. On the positive side a lot of the alien designs are pretty damn cool. But unfortunately, they used a lot of 3D cgi to make human characters and a lot of aliens and tech in the final arc.the cgi is atrocious, the characters are stiff with odd proportions and a lot of the cgi in the final arc are just unfinished grey blobs, making it difficult to tell what's happening in the cramped frames they're featured in.
The pinup covers are also a mixed bag. About 40% of the time, they're pretty good and the rest of the time they're some Rob Liefeld level shit, with twisted inhuman proportions that make me question if the artist has ever actually seen a woman naked before. Somebody should've told him he could've just typed "boobs" into Google to get some reference before he started drawing.

Characters: I have to be honest, when I started this manga, I really didn't expect there to be multiple main characters who are mass shooters. Subverting my expectations is something I applaud.
Kei: kei is a standard collection of incel tropes. He's misanthropic, almost constantly considering raping whatever woman he's around and generally incredibly boring. I did not miss him during the arc that happened when he was dead (This was the best arc in the series).
The guy who Daisuke Ono played in the CGI movie: standard good guy anime character, but significantly less cringe then Kei.
The sex dolls: there's 3-ish main female character. The suicidal one who is sexually assaulted immediately when she's introduced. Kei's plain but devoted gf who somehow manages to spend the entire finale arc naked and pissing herself. And the model who makes herself a sex doll replicant of Kei.... for some reason. All three are basic blank slates who exist to have occasionally good pinups drawn of them. I have no notes 10/10.
The mass shooters: there's two mass shooters, one who shoots up a school, and one who dresses up in black face to go postal in Shibuya. They're both incredibly edgy, obessed with playing the death game and fancy themselves as rivals of Kei, despite Kei being basically a slice of white bread. They're both incredibly cringy and add nothing to the plot.
The cast introduced after the first mass die off:
The psychics are there to introduce superpowers into the narrative. This will never be expanded upon.
The old man is around to introduce a modicum of humanity into the plot. He's great, 3rd best character.
Lone wolf and cub are the only two characters who I was legitimately invested in. Cub's back story is legitimately sad, and lone wolf finding some actual purpose in life protecting the kid is actually pleasant to read.

Themes: Humanity sucks, aliens also suck,maybe open yourself up to the people in your life sometimes. And of course give long winded monologues about humanities purpose and incel shit. It's a true masterpiece of stuff I would've thought was deep philosophical shit when I was 13-14.
Finally, the most important theme introduced in the last arc, and the creator would continue to explore in Inuyashiki, that liking "One Piece" makes you a little bitch who deserves to die violently.

Pacing: arcs are wildly inconsistent. Some of the death game arcs fly by and then you hit an arc where the alien has anime regeneration powers and the fights drag on forever.
Plot points and characters are added and removed from the story at a break neck pace. I had almost completely forgotten that Kei's brother is a vampire, or that there's a whole society of vampires that seem to know about the Gantz balls and the aliens. But they vanish from the plot 2 arcs after being introduced, and have no bearing on story afterwards.
But the absolute best bit of pacing is when they decided to end the series. The whole Gantz death games all wrap up in one battle arc in Rome that's only two or three chapters long, and then there's a couple chapters with a random reporter who has the whole big secret of the death games explained to him (& us the audience) in one exposition dump. And then the horse aliens invade and Kei spends most of the next 40ish chapters chasing down his shivering piss stained sex doll. It's a hilariously abrupt shift in the story, and devalues the arcs that came before it.

To wrap it up, is Gantz good? Fuck no, it's written with the thematic and emotional complexity of a school shooters manifesto. It's completely unconcerned with having any sense of cohesive world building. It's characters are designed to be as unlikable as possible, and the author has a fetishistic obsession with rape that makes me hope that there are no women in his life.
But the series does have some of the mid 2000's edgy sci-fi juice that makes it occasionally cool to look at, even if your eyes are constantly rolling into the back of your skull every five minutes while reading it. Or you can be a little bitch and read One Piece instead.

I love trashy shit. The dumber and edgier something is, it's likely that I'll have even more fun with it.

Unfortunately Akame Ga Kill commits the greatest sin of dumb edgy shit, it's just kind of boring.

I was promised a violent, dark shounen that would not not be able to handle the themes that the creators wanted to cover, and I just got the latter.

Plot: Evil empire, plucky rebels, struggle for the future of the common man..... look it's an incredibly common plot, it's basically written on autopilot.

Worldbuilding: the imperial arms are incredibly anachronistic. They were made 1000 years ago, why hasn't technology progessed?
Why don't ... we ever see the rest of the rebel army in the first 18 episodes?
Why are Akame and her sister in Japanese school girl outfits and everyone is is in sort of vague medieval cloths or WWII fetish gear?
Essentially nothing is thought out, and the narrative needs to charge on at breakneck speed so no one notices.

Characters: I was really confused that Akame doesn't really seem to do anything, since her name is in the title.
The rest of the rebels are all standard archtypes, and I have forgotten all their names.
Esdeath is camp perfection. She's an utter moron, her motivations are hilariously underwritten, and I love her. She's at Frieza & Dio levels of camp. She is the best part of the show by a mile, and every second she isn't on screen is utter torture.

Pacing: the series just Flys through plot points with wild abandon. Characters die before you get to know them, are replaced, and then their replacements die. It's a truly numbing experience, mixed with the drudgery of endless bland shounen fights in the same old anime forests and canyons.

If this show had been from Esdeath's perspective it could have been a classic. Not a good classic, a classic like Freddy got Fingered, a classic of trash. But instead it was another bland battle shounen.

What if you took Chainsaw Man, and decided to take some of the Manga's influences, *particularly Reservoir Dogs* and just make that.

I'm not sure why I'm supposed to be impressed by an anime that's just stylistically copying an independent American movie from the 90's.

Just like Tarantino's first film it has a cheap & amateurish feel to its shot composition and lighting. The framing is basic and scenes and shots tend to linger long after their point has landed.

If it had been a live action student film, it would've been a little impressive, but in animation it comes across as very limiting, ignoring the freedom ... of animation in an attempt to emulate a very basic style of live action film making.

Props to the director, maybe he can try again after he's finished his second year of film school.

But hey, it's still Chainsaw Man, so it's alright.

The One Piece anime is a lot like Berserk (2016), yeah it looks terrible, and is badly animated, but it's still One Piece.

I've been watching this loveable train wreck for almost twenty years, and I have to admit, I don't understand people who decide to watch this now that it's over 1000 episodes in. It takes 17 uninterrupted days to watch this, who has the time?

Toei may be the bain of my ability to watch anime. Slam Dunk and Dragonball, both are great manga with terrible adaptions. One Piece is a pretty good manga with an even worse adaption then the aforementioned Toei disappointments.

And what ... are the shared issues between all three, that cause them to be poor adaptions? The horrible weekly schedule, which leads to poor direction, bad pacing and terrible production values.

Arcs get dragged out for ludicrous amounts of time, deflating the tension week by week as we wait for something to happen.

Story: it's One Piece, it's looney tunes lord of the rings for kids and their families. I'm generally fond of the story, I mean I haven't stopped watching it yet.

Characters: due to its length, One Piece characters do tend to feel very static, but they're charming enough to usually get you through whatever meandering plot thread is being covered in the episode you're watching (and the subsequent 20 that plot will run through).

Themes: don't trust the government kids, treasure your friends and help out when you can. Good simple themes to teach kids and remind adults about.

Animation: AHAHAHAHAHA.....it varies wildly, arc to arc, episode to episode... shot to shot.....
Overall, it's pretty bad.

Music: It's an anime by toei, you're going to hear the same 5 pieces of incidental music so many times that they will be permanently etched into your brain.

Pacing: Luffy fought Kaido on the roof on Onigashima for over a year....... as a child, I thought those five minutes it took Namek to explode felt like forever, but that was only five episodes. Why is toei doing this to us? (So that TV tokyo's ad revenue isn't devalued during One Piece's time slot)

In the end, do I think One Piece is worth it? I guess, if you've been watching it for decades, or if you want to share it with your particularly patient offspring. But it feels like a cheap product, made to broaden the reach of One Piece's market saturation, allowing the production committee to make even more money.And that just feels hollow. I'm looking forward to the remake, hopefully it addresses my issues and let's people who are intimidated by the length try out the series. But in the mean while, if you want to try out One Piece, just watch the live action show or read the manga.