I adore One Piece. Granted the anime (done by Toei) is a load of crap that is made for the sake of milking as many episodes out of the franchise as possible, the manga is aesthetically superior to many other long series out there and the story is still mostly interesting, mostly. I've read a few older, completed mangas series recently, and I'm starting to understand why some work, and some don't. HunterXHunter was a load of filler crap by its end, and of course it is technically uncompleted, but unlike Tokyo Ghoul that was screaming for continuation it seem to be on infinite hiatus. Gantz started terribly, but in the end it told an interesting and insane love story that I quite enjoyed, hidden beneath a main plot about an evolving hero whose devlopment became nonsensical after the 'train scene' in the middle. It should have stopped there. I finally read Shaman King's extended ending which gave it rather acceptable closure, just to have that spoiled by the axed Shaman King: Flowers (I guess we have to wait for that to continue too). But no closure from these came as close to what we got from my favourite manga of all time, Konjinki no Gash (or known as Zatchbell in English, which had a terrible and incomplete anime, I should probably study and see how they screwed up such good source material next time).
So that's the problem we need to discuss today - closure. It is not uncommon when mangakas start a story with a certain ending in mind, but sometimes are forced to continue drawing because of the series' popularity. Like the rumour with Bleach of course. *Spoilers for One Piece will follow* The main story of One Piece is about the empty 100 years, and why Robin's home was devastated in the first place; and I guess we more or less deduced Roger's one piece is relating to that. This theme about lost history and the government hiding information, altering public memory would have been an interesting trope 15 years ago when One Piece just started, but by now it just feels so overused. This is the same problem I have with Shingeki no Kyojin; using this trope will require that final exposition, that much-awaited revelation to be epic and worth all our time, if not it will just be another of those series again. I have no doubt of Oda's ability to tell stories, and part of whether a story is good or not depends on how it is being told, but for me this trope's excitement factor had ran dry long ago, with movies, games and mangas incorporating it continuously.
Oda does continue to deliver from time to time, such as the recent telling of Corozan's story, and Bellamy's development. But these moments seem too sparse in between boring narratives that exist purely for filler sake to thin out a story that had been tight for the pre-New World arcs but are starting to fall apart post-New World. Perhaps it is in reaction to us expecting the rest of the story to be as long as the pre-New World arc, since this marks half way on the Grandline, but what Oda seems to be doing is raising the expectation and hype for the end plot so much and leading onto an idea that would have been better if it was used 5 years ago. The entirety of Dressrosa, especially, has been so dragged out and even fails to link back to the main plot like the end of Fisherman Island, where Shirahoshi is revealed to be Poseidon, and that leads to my second problem - I sometimes feel I've stopped caring about that main plot already. It is not helping that One Piece goes on hiatus every other week this year.
To keep it short (unlike One Piece), I think the problem lies with how long the entire project and enterprise has grown over the years. If you need a literal comparison, I think many will agree that How I Met Your Mother would have been perfect if it ended in Season 8, or even Season 1. The length of HIMYM and One Piece distorts the experience and destroyed any possible sensation one would have felt if the story was better paced. In HIMYM I will agree to a small extent it is reasonable due to the main character's characterisation - but we can all agree that some of the seasons were just there to milk the franchise. In Bravely Default I just got so bored that I didn't even bother, the idea was great, the frustration is real, but the presentation was bad causing the experience to be terrible. Let's hope One Piece surprises.
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