 This video is sponsored by Skillshare, which I greatly appreciate, thanks. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review Source for everything One Piece, and today we are going to take a break from our usual sycophantic worship of this godly piece of media to offer a bit of criticism here and there. And you know the words hate and One Piece, well, they should never really be paired together with the singular exception of saying, I don't hate One Piece, but even then that's just a very roundabout way of saying I love One Piece, so what's the point? Well, the point is that I asked all of you wonderful people of the Grand Fleet to tell me what you hate about this series or what you wish was done just a little bit better, maybe even a lot better. And we have some pretty interesting and very legitimate responses to go through that may leave you in a state of shock, disgust, or even the occasional, yeah, fair call. About as fair as hitting the subscribe button for the Grand Line Review, which will result in consistent injections of One Piece culture administered straight into your YouTube feed. Our fleet now numbers over 400,000 members, so let's continue our quest of world domination, and please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member, welcome. But as for our first piece of hatred to digest, we have the following. I honestly hate how Oda made the Blackbeard Pirates really nasty and ugly looking. I know it's intentional, but because of how monstrous and ugly Blackbeard and his crew are, it is harder to root for them. And I have to say, I think that not rooting for the main antagonist, kind of the point. I for one really enjoy the Blackbeard and his band of aesthetically impaired minions present themselves as anything but your standard villainous design tropes. To demonstrate the flip side of that, I have a very minor problem with Black Clover, for example, where the current series of antagonists are these beautifully sculpted devil wielders. And whilst they do look admittedly amazingly cool, they're just a bit too perfect to the point where it becomes kind of immersion breaking. Whereas in One Piece, your main villain is this overweight alcoholic from Samal here, and I'm just like, yeah, you know, I can see that. And what's even better is the Blackbeard, despite his design can strike pure fear into you. It's definitely an acquired taste though, which does go for One Piece as a whole. I certainly didn't start the series liking the designs of characters such as Blackbeard, Usopp, and Jinbei. But if anything, as a result, those characters become the most capable of surprising you because your expectations of such a wacky design just aren't anywhere near as high as seeing, say, Dracula Mihawk. But once again, these designs, well, they're definitely not for everyone. It drives me insane that Oda refuses to kill off any characters. Pell should have died. There are just situations where people survive these massive explosions or beat downs and that's it. So here's a classic grievance over death, which is a fairly ironic grievance really because generally we should be celebrating life. However, when it comes to One Piece, it's quite the opposite. And some of the times where I've praised Oda the most are when he actually kills someone like the all important ace situation. Outside of a flashback, that is 100% the best use of death in the series but it's very much an aberration. And on the other side of that, the fan named Will of P is a great example of a list of characters who really just should have stayed dead. Pell, Pagaya, Pound, but hopefully not Pedro. I think what really kicks fans right in the other narrative balls is the idea of giving characters a death scene and creating all sorts of artificial drama only for that to be rendered retrospectively bankrupt. And you know what the funniest thing is at his core, Oda agrees because in an interview performed as recently as 2019, he said the following, I hate the revival of the dead. If a mangaka ends up reviving the dead, then they shouldn't have killed that character in the first place. And what can I say? I couldn't agree with you more, Oda sensei. However, you are undoubtedly the leading offender on this matter. But as for our next point of contention, it is Enniru, not Enel. And look, you're both right and you're wrong. The official English name is of course Enniru. However, his Romanized name in the One Piece of Evia Cantata book is Enel. So basically just say whatever you want. And I'm going to go with Enel because it sounds like anal. And rather awkwardly, that will be the transition into the sponsor of today's video Skillshare, an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and or curious people. Explore new skills, deepen existing passions and get lost in creativity. For example, you could take classes in animation, photography, graphic design, music, marketing business, a whole ton of incredibly useful and valuable topics that I cannot even come close to exhaustively listing here. There's even a whole bunch of classes dedicated to making content for YouTube specifically. One of which I checked out was the YouTube thumbnail masterclass taught by the budgeteers, which is actually quite fascinating. I mean, I've been doing this five years now when there was still some very enlightening stuff in there. And with Skillshare, unlike YouTube, there are no ads, meaning that you can stay focused with an annual subscription of less than $10 a month. Plus the first 1000 people to click the link in the description will get a free trial of premium membership so you can explore your creativity. So just do the thing, it'll be fun. Almost as fun as our next hated thing about One Piece, the way women are drawn. Now I got this response a lot. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that this was every second comment. I actually am probably exaggerating a bit there, but every third comment was something along these lines. And I think that we as a fan base, well, we pretty much universally agree, don't we? There's just this very stark contrast when you look at a group image of, say, the straw hats. You see Luffy with a funky, goofy rubber body. Then Zoro, who is adorned with just slab after slab of meaty muscle. But then we see Nami and Go. That's just tits on a toothpick, which wouldn't be a problem in isolation, but this model does get cut and paste into roughly 90% of female character designs. And yes, there are exceptions to this, like Big Mom, Katerina Devon, the Gorgon sisters, or at least 66.6% of the Gorgon sisters. They are the exceptions that prove the rule though. And for every one of them, you could probably name 20 characters of the more tooth-picky variety. So you know what I'm saying? Let's just give it a go. Nami, Robin, Vivi, Rebecca Viola, Toshiki, Perona, Bohankok, Riju, Hina, Kalafa, Nojko, Alveda, 2.0, Bonnie, Baby Five, Koala, Pudding, Monet, Stussy, and Yuri. That's a quick 20 right there. And we have not even begun to exhaust the female character roster. And even if you do remove any and all aesthetic objections to the design, the fact is that it's just boring to see almost every woman in One Piece have this exact same cookie-cut figure. But what else do you all hate about One Piece? The fact that there is basically no bounty hunters in the series. And I love this point actually. I've been reading One Piece for like half my life. And look, when you're in your early 30s, that's quite a lot of time. But even I frequently forget that bounty hunters even exist. This is despite the fact that I am hyper-aware of bounties themselves. I mean, the most famous bounty hunter in the series is actually a pirate. And he has been ever since like chapter six of 1,000. The last time we saw an actual bounty hunter would have been Jean-Angle on Dressrosa. And wow, what an impact he had. Moreover, if you wanted to find the last bounty hunter before him, you'd need to look for Minoruuba who appeared in pre-time skip days during the first Sabadiak. But honestly, the best bounty hunter in One Piece is probably Shirai from movie four, which is sad because he is far from canon. But he is easily the best thing that One Piece has ever done with the concept. And even with him, they didn't do much. And it's all just so weird because the entire bounty system is almost entirely irrelevant without people to actively seek those bounties. Because Marines can't claim them, apprehending pirates is their job. They didn't get paid extra for that. I simply hate off-screening. Yeah, I don't think you'd be alone there either. And in case you're unaware, this user is referring to a narrative device that Oda makes use of, which basically amounts to playing out fights off-screen. And he does this in order to keep the story moving because One Piece is down at that point where we simply cannot get bogged down watching each and every fight play out in full detail. Sanji versus page one is a good and often cited example. There was a bit of it in the manga, but it was left off-screen and then the anime expanded it. And personally, I will admit that I am a bit of a fan of off-screening because I just don't think it's necessary to see absolutely everything. In the Sanji versus page one example, we were led to believe that Sanji was quite comfortably going to win. And once that feeling was imparted, there was no more point in staying other than simple spectacle, of course. But if a fight has nothing else to offer except, you know, an outcome, then let's just get straight to the outcome. Because if we took the time to play out every single conflict in this story of literally thousands of characters, then this series would stagnate and move even slower than people already complain about. And speaking of complaining, where are the naval battles? Which is very interesting actually. It's kind of like the bounty hunter's point because for a world based on sailing and piracy and that kind of stuff, we really don't see all that many sea battles. Which is, you know, almost exclusively what pirates would have engaged in. There have been a couple, though. Hawkeye Islands notably did a pretty good job focusing on naval fights. And if we go all the way back to East Blue, then Baratier had a nice aquatic concept happening as well. And at the same time, I understand that it's very hard to consistently do interesting things at sea. I know that would rather play on his funky creative islands. In regards to the ocean, though, why doesn't Kuido just jump into the water if he wants to die? It really seems more of a curious question than something you hate about the series. But lately I do think we found a good answer or two to this though. Without giving too much away for anime only watchers, Kaido is not so much obsessed with killing himself as he is with the idea of attaining glory, general glory. He wants to die in a glorious way, like say jumping off a sky island and simply throwing himself in the ocean to drown. Well, that would be seen as a pretty lame exit by him. Although come to think of it guys, with what we know in the manga, is it even possible for Kaido to drown? I'm not so sure. But before we dive too deeply into that, let's have some more hate. Sanji and Zora rivalry is too toxic. It should be more healthy would make the characters cooler then look stupid all the time. Hmm, I'm not so sure about this. I feel like those little moments are very important to add some interactive diversity within the crew because just imagine some sickening utopia where everyone was friendly all the time and they just wouldn't be the straw hats that we know and love who get comically annoyed at each other to great effect. Zoro and Sanji I suppose just happened to be that most volatile pairing. It's also very valuable though because it makes those brief moments of respect for one another hit extremely hard. The only thing that really makes the Zoro, Sanji rivalry toxic is the fan base. So us, we are the problem. Meanwhile, on a similar note, the entire crew not all being together more. All right, so here's a shocking statistic. I sat down and worked this out one day because while I was curious, but throughout the entirety of one piece, the straw hats have been separated for a grand total of 331 chapters. And this includes the pre-time skip stuff after Sabati as well as the second crew separation on Dressrosa. And because Sanji wasn't present during the Zoro reunion, we actually have to turn all the way to Wano to find the crew together again. And all of that in total is 331 chapters. 331 out of just over a thousand at the time of this recording, which means that for roughly 30% of the series, the straw hats have been separated. And the large majority of that has definitely been in the new old era. So I can't blame anyone for feeling that way. And going forward, well, he is hoping they don't get separated again. I wish Ace got more screen time and I'm not talking a bit when they were little. All we really got to see of Ace is when they were at Alabasta and Marine forward and that's a bit it. Whenever Ace comes up in some kind of fan conversation, there's always this era of extreme sadness. Sadness that I have to admit, I didn't really feel when he died. I'd describe it more as raw shock at the fact of death happening in one piece because I didn't really know anything about Ace. He was a cool character who appeared once in Alabasta, then had this funky milk related cover story and then he just got captured and killed. I do get really emotional in retrospect though because I have the context of his flashback, but it didn't do much for me the first time around. What really does sell it though is Luffy's reaction because we know him and seeing Luffy like that was simply heartbreaking. I want more short arcs like Reverie. Ah, me too, Reverie was fun. One piece is just a bit too beyond that at the moment. It's gotten far too big for things like that and the only reason why the Reverie could even get away with it is because when you think about it, it didn't tell, you know, an actual story. There was no introduction, there was no conclusion. It was just a glimpse into somewhere of the middle of a separate story. It was happening in tandem with whatever the Straw Hats were doing, but there's no way we could have a short arc with an actual story like say, Orange Town in One Piece probably ever again. The paneling is way too much crowded. Fair enough, this is another aesthetic preference. Although I do personally love the wildly detailed panels because it forces me to slow down and take in everything that's happening, especially knowing that Oda likes to hide all sorts of fun Easter eggs in them and it also just makes the world feel so full and alive, you know? Real life is crowded, very crowded even with all sorts of people and other very annoying things. But I think that's one of the many reasons why the One Piece world feels as expansive as it does because just like real life, these panels are flooded with detail. More shanks. This really is more of a request than something you hate, but sure, here's some shanks. Although if you'd like to see some more of shanks then please do check out the Essentials of Shanks playlist which includes some pretty massive news that Oda dropped about him at Jump Festa so I look forward to seeing you over there.