One Piece is in a new Golden Age

Hi dudes,

So, I don't watch much anime these days. I know it's totally a "medium" and not a genre, but I fell out with it. Which is weird, as I did my entire degree about anime (My thesis was about Posthumanism in Sci-Fi Anime), but I honestly kinda fell out of love with it. Modern tropes/cliches and the general switch to more mass market appeal stuff like those stupid Isekai shows and shows with titles like "I was a hot 16 year old female student but I fell in a pit and now I'm a human fridge" honestly just drove me away

HOWEVER

I have found a shining light in One Piece. I read it religiously for about ten years (From about Skypeia to Dressrosa) and I was totally in love with it. I don't even know what happened, but I just stopped reading one week.

I picked up the anime at Egghead, and oh man, I'm invested

The animation itself is sublime, the story is brilliant, and I really like it.

Honestly, I'm not that into this awakaened Devil Fruit stuff. It seems like power level creep and a false way of making crappy people powerful. I mean I know Rob Lucci is back? Isn't he from 20 years ago?

Is anyone else watching One Piece right now?

@sombre: I have been a reader for 24 years now and it's had it's ups and downs with the story. I will admit to not reading regularly from about the beginning of the Wa no Kuni arc until the books hit their 100th volume, then I binged until I got caught up again. But I'm back in all the way now.

I have my opinions on power creep but I don't wanna go on a rant. It's is just something that you gotta live with with battle manga from Jump Comics. It's unfortunate that it's there but the numbers gotta keep going up.

Egghead is good stuff and while I don't watch the anime all that regularly, what I saw from the Wa no Kuni arc was some real good quality animation. If that's the norm for One Piece now then it's a lot better than a lot of what's out there for sure.

I agree with your thoughts on Isekai IP. Every once in a while a story will catch my eye because of the initial premise. It'll be good for a little bit because of the gimmick, but it gets stale real fast.

Frieren is the good shit now for me. It's one of the few instances where I'll read the manga and watch the anime regularly. If you haven't watched it yet I recommend it.

I've felt largely the same about anime these days. I've started a few things and fallen off pretty early on. I was actually quite enjoying PLUTO but only watched the first few eps and haven't returned. Been thinking about trying out Jujutsu Kaisen again since it seemed a little more interesting than most of the action stuff out today. I really need to be in the mood these days to watch anime. And I agree wholeheartedly about the current state of it. There's still gems here and there. I kind of like to check in once a year or two and see what's caught on.

As for One Piece, yes and no. You may have seen my posts in a couple threads awhile ago how I started it then stopped it and then started binging the crap out of it. Its still sometimes a background show since it does drag and some of the arcs are just less interesting. Weirdly enough I stopped right in the middle of the Marineford arc, which is arguably the best arc in series. I tend to agree so far. I did watch a ton at a time to get that far so I think I was just a bit burned out. At least when I return I'll get to jump back into some of best stuff. But ya, the mood fell off hard.

It still wild to me that there is gonna be a reboot of One Piece. I sorta wish I hadn't started the old show but I'm too far now to care to wait.

Sidenote: I did really like Blue Eye Samurai, even if it isn't an actual anime. (Peaches? lol)

I started watching episode 1 at the start of the pandemic to help me sleep. My partner ended up watching with me around skypiea/the introduction of Nico Robin once I compared it to Avatar the Last Airbender. We're now on episode 521. We've watched 200 episodes in the last 2 months (Impel Down/Marineford really fucking moves, huh?). It's completely consumed her and basically any time we're both home and want to watch something, that's what we watch.

I'll second Frieren as a top recommendation. It's phenomenal and my favorite new anime in years.

JiuJitsu Kaisen is the anime that I see people recommend the most, but the first season didn't grab me, personally.