This is going to be very long (like the series in question).

I've come to generally "trust" One Piece. There's been many times my enjoyment of the series has been reduced, but it has always managed to pull me back with stuff that makes me interested and impressed all over again. Tomino (Gundam creator), who has talked about OP a few times, once said:

"But, you know, among the popular manga there is manga with very beautiful art and manga with bad art, but interesting nonetheless. And I don’t trust manga with very beautiful art unless it is One Piece.”

I began reading One Piece in high school (2017, I believe) through my school's library, which had an extensive manga catalogue, including what I remember as being most of One Piece. Before that I was a Dragon Ball fanboy (if you stalk my account enough you'll see I used to argue my brains off for DB on r/whowouldwin) who had also tried (though often not finished) other stuff including Hunter x Hunter, One Punch Man (anime and webcomic), Gurren Lagann, and Akira (movie and manga). At the time the manga was in Whole Cake Island. I didn't know much about the series, but I knew it was big and I had seen it referred to as being among the "Holy Shonen Trinity" (now commonly known as the Big Three). When I started it, I found it charming and cool. The concept was appealing, the main characters were likeable, the stories were entertaining, and the SBS section was fun. The art, while very different from most stuff I had seen prior, was also very appealing to me. I remember reading Baratie in band class and loving the action (Luffy breaking Don Krieg's armor was a striking moment to me); it was both cartoony and over the top but hard hitting, kinetic and brutal. When I got to the classic "Help me" moment in Arlong Park I was enamored. I kept reading, very much enjoying most of what I read up until Skypiea, where one or a few volumes were missing in the library. I wasn't as hooked and took a break for a while, and when I came back I made the dumb decision to just read the next volume available, finished Skypiea, and then picked up toward the end of Foxy when I made the switch to digital, missing crucial parts of Skypiea and most of Long Ring. I won't go into an extreme amount of detail of the process after that since I've already talked a lot, but I will say that I enjoyed most of everything that came after, and caught up during Wano. By then it was pretty much cemented as my favorite series. The fact that it was long usually wasn't really a problem to me because I wasn't watching Toei do an impression of a snail and I wasn't clamoring for the series to end.

Over the past several years, One Piece has become highly scrutinized online and has lost a portion of the good will it once carried in the public eye. A lot of this criticism is understandable and expected. There are many problems with One Piece, both lasting and more modern. I myself had become a bit unenthused when I caught up in early Wano, and since then there's been tons of polarizing stuff, including something that Oda can be seen to have anticipated to be controversial, Gear 5. But I also believe that a lot of the common criticism levied towards this series has become a series of lazy, misleading cliches and misrepresentations (largely brought on by the fact that a lot of people either haven't read the series or stopped a while ago). There's an increasingly common perception that One Piece is a low-effort, mass appeal product of unremarkable quality meant to go on forever (a.k.a slop). On the contrary, I truly believe that on balance, One Piece tends to be a high quality series, especially when you compare it to its peers.

First, what are the series' main strengths? I'd say: a knockout main character, a very wide variety of great ancillary characters, strong thematic writing, remarkable emotional resonance, relatively good internal consistency and continuity (especially considering its length and density), great worldbuilding, attention to detail, solid creativity, "vibes," and a story and world that gives a lot to talk and think about. I think that in general, even though these things will waver throughout the story, Oda's skill in these areas remain to this day. I also think that compared to most of the other stuff that would be most likely to be compared to it, One Piece is a monster in these departments. JJK is a high quality series that is absolutely huge, but it would be hard to defend the opinion that Yuji is a a better main character than Luffy for most people who enjoy both series, valid as the opinion may be. Naruto is extremely solid, but I think OP reaches higher peaks and will not have an ending arc as problematic. I got bored with Bleach in a way I didn't with One Piece. I just think it's genuinely distinguishable in quality from a lot of stuff.

Now there's so much stuff I could rant about when it comes to discussion of this series, but I'll get into some prominent topics of contention where I think there are misrepresentations. First, I actually think that One Piece's "politics," or other similar "serious topics," while notable, are not as central to its quality as a lot of the fans will say. There's tons of stuff with similar audiences that addresses that type of stuff, like Fullmetal Alchemist or Avatar the Last Airbender. I'd say in terms of themes, One Piece is actually way more noteworthy "philosophically" or "poetically" than politically. Take the arc of Skypiea, for example (which I went back and fully read, along with Foxy). There clearly are themes that could be called "political," such as claim to land, progress vs. tradition, and the struggle against the erasure of peoples and history. But there should also be talk about the themes of romance (in the literary sense) and dreams, faith, and the human desire for vindication. Don't get me wrong, One Piece has politics. But I think the incorrect framing of One Piece as a battle shonen Communist Manifesto rather than something more like a battle shonen William Blake work actually leads not only to misplaced discussion, but improper criticism! You'll hear stuff like "it's not that deep, One Piece is just dictators bad, slavery bad, racism bad, starving bad" as if the series wasn't saying tons of stuff before the revolutionary themes were even that prominent. As if the most interesting part of Fishman Island isn't that it tells you that racism is bad, but how it explores how discrimination affects a people's spirit, and the paths of healing for that. I mean why, with a series with so much analysis and discussion of parallels to real life, am I the only person I can find who has noticed the possible connection between Shandora (golden city that ascends into the heavens) and the New Jersualem from Revelation (golden city that descends from the heavens)? Especially in an arc with so much talk of "God?" People have pointed out the Israel/Palestine connection in the arc; why not this other possible theme connected to Abrahamic faith and history?

One Piece nowadays often gets flack for its female characters. For example, a viral tweet that has inspired much discourse and many derivatives posited what it would be like if Oda had wrote Maki from JJK. I won't deny that One Piece is primarily a boy's club, and that there's notable fanservice and a repetitive design template for pretty female characters. However, let's look at the actual common claim: that Oda is bad at writing women. Is this really an accurate claim, at least when compared to other shonen, and even JJK itself? When I think of One Piece women, though there's not as many super important or strong ones as the boys, I think of characters that are generally good, if not always in execution, then at least in their construction. Nami, Robin, Vivi, Pudding, Bonney, Big Mom, Carrot, and Hancock are all characters I have positive opinions on. Robin's pre-TS arc would probably be the best character arc in many series, period. People used to directly compare One Piece's relatively good female characters with series like Naruto, though there's long been criticism levied towards designs and sexualization. And with all due respect to Gege, he would have an aneurysm trying to write a character like Kureha. I think it's funny that Maki is used as the example because if you take any other JJK female character, they'd have less prominence, less notable writing, little in terms of a character arc, and likely have a far smaller fanbase. I mean, Gege often got these same "bad women" allegations! As did Horikoshi! I'd sooner accept Oda as a disgusting misogynist than as someone who couldn't write women, because I think that's blatantly untrue. Toriyama has even more direct proof of misogyny ("Lady Red" is pretty insane, content warning), has even more egregious fanservice in early DB, and his series is even more of a boy's club, but I'd he say he can write women too.

As I mentioned before, One Piece will have points where I start to enjoy it less. However, these instances are then punctuated with peaks I just can't get anywhere else. Thriller Bark, which isn't a bad arc in my opinion but is understandably less popular, ends with an absolutely insane sequence when Kuma arrives and is followed by the freaking Sabaody to Marineford stretch. Wano had tons of polarizing stuff, but it also has what might be the best fight in the series, an instant classic Roger moment that redefined what we thought of the One Piece, tons of wow factor, lore stuff, great character stuff for Sanji, and as a whole was a big part of One Piece's new wave of mainstream popularity in the West. Most recently, I personally was not as motivated to read recent Elbaf, though on paper I liked the turns of events. But the recent Sanji stuff is extremely compelling and rewarding, and now I'm really excited for the next chapter. The idea that Oda is just washed and can't make something worth reading anymore is just not true to me, and if you've seen that screenshot of someone ranting on a forum around the time of Enies Lobby complaining that the series had lowered in quality, you've seen that this type of discussion is not new. On that note, when I was reading Naruto a while back, I tended to look up old discussions for chapters after finishing them, as I often do for manga. I already knew that there was tons of criticism, but man, the discussion was brutal. It was very often filled with a significant amount of negativity, even concerning stuff that now is lauded, like Itachi or Obito. This fall from grace posture might just be a feature of the long running shonen space in the information age.

Now, One Piece certainly isn't without its flaws. Some of the main ones I'd point to are:

- Repetitiveness. I don't mean the cliche people bring up about Luffy saving a kingdom/island and princess from a dictator/oppression; One Piece actually deviates from this a lot (many of its most popular or critically acclaimed arcs don't follow this, including Baratie, Water 7, Enies Lobby, Jaya, Sabaody, Amazon Lily, Impel Down, Marineford, Whole Cake Island, Zou, Egghead) and even when it doesn't, the world and wider themes justify liberation from oppression being a common theme. I'm referring to stuff like the narrative forcing the Straw Hats to separate so that they can do a bunch of tasks and maybe have individual fights. Stuff like the forced "Ticking time bomb" element added to a lot of arcs added for tension. Stuff like Luffy conveniently befriending someone from almost everywhere he goes to give him a reason to risk everything for them while the narrative insists he's not a hero. Stuff like gags being repeated without enough variation.

- Fakeout deaths. Self explanatory, though Oda has been killing more people in recent years.

- Decreased focus on the Straw Hats, and a general feeling of flanderization there in general for a bunch of them.

- Bad paneling after the timeskip (though recently it's been more serviceable)

- Art is just not as good anymore. I think the peak of Oda's pen was probably early to mid post timeskip; things were just really sharp and pretty. Understandable; he's getting older. But it's quite noticeable.

- The fight choreo and flow is inconsistent, especially over time. There's some genuinely really good stuff and some really mediocre/bad stuff. Wano actually has some of Oda's best (read 1010 or 1037 again) and then after Wano it's just not as good. This seriously hurts an arc with a good deal of impressive writing like Egghead, because other than that it's largely a mad scramble of fights.

- Related to the fight complaint: the chapters nowadays almost feel like they're intentionally written to be adapted into the anime. As if Oda realized that Toei was putting more effort into the anime, and also that they're only going to adapt one chapter, so the best thing to do was to write them like a storyboard for an episode, bloated with text, and with deemphasized action art. Like he thought "who cares about making my chapter a good comic when the anime will make the actual fights and have cool directing?"

All in all though, I think One Piece is really good for what it is, and I trust that the ending will be good too.

TL;DR: I trust One Piece. I got into the series years ago after already experiencing other series and it captured me like very little before it. I think the increased scrutiny its gotten, while largely understandable, is also kind of inaccurate in ways. Despite its flaws, One Piece is peak battle shonen and will likely stick the landing.

Obviously, if you go outside, most men walking around with their girlfriends or wives are not exactly Henry Cavill or Brad Pitt. Especially if you go outside of any major city, given the obesity rate in the US.

However, the caveat here is they are dating women who do not have unrealistic standards, and are actively looking for companionship and to settle down. These women are rational individuals who realize that a man does not have to fit some arbitrary standard of 6 ft and 6 figures or whatever the standard is nowadays on Tiktok. And that is why these women are in relationships, and tend to stay in long term relationships because their expectations are rooted in reality and not fantasy.

However, most single men are not encountering these types of women on the apps, in clubs, bars, etc. because they're almost always in a relationship. The majority of the girls that are single for long periods of time are single by choice. They either have insane standards in what they want in a man, have an irrational hatred to the entire gender of men, enjoy the temporary validation of hooking up with more attractive men who won't commit, or they just enjoy the attention of entertaining multiple men at once. So, to your average or ugly guy on a dating app, he's not going to find the type of women who will excuse him for being a little chubby, being short, or not having the best style. That type of woman doesn't stay single for long.

Also, I think this phenomenon is why some people will seemingly deny hypergamy, because they see ugly and unattractive guys dating all the time in the real world. That fact doesn't excuse the reality that there is a good portion of women who do have unrealistic standards, and they are the ones who are most likely to be single and who your average guy is encountering on a dating app. The saying that the good women don't stay single long is 100% true.

If this has been discussed to death, I apologize for adding another one to it, but I just wanted to add my two cents.

I find it very difficult to buy into the faceless’ narrative that people in the bending brigade have horrible lives with no freedom or agency. Throughout all 9 episodes, we never see any instance of a bender being tormented by their drill instructor or abused or not allowed to see their loved ones, or anything of the sort.

We are shown people being separated from their families at a certain age which sucks, but we’re never shown them being mistreated full metal jacket style in the brigade like you’d expect.

In fact, nearly every time the bending brigade is shown, they’re all having a great time, theyre well fed, they’re friends, they go and get ice cream together, everyone in the city treats them with kindness and respect, they’re allowed to fall in love and have a family, and they even get days off! Being in the brigade sounds pretty awesome tbh.

At least when Korra tried to do the “benders oppressing non benders” narrative in season 1, we actually got to see bending criminals extorting non bending shop owners, and you can understand why anti bender sentiment is growing in the city.

I do want to find the faceless plight compelling but you have to SHOW ME why being in the brigade sucks. Don’t just tell me about how some family member or friend you had died, show me!

I used to feel embarrassed when I tipped below the prompted 15% or 18% but I’ve come up with mental gymnastics to skip the tip and feel absolutely nothing.

Step 1: Erase the entire concept of tipping from your mind. It’ll take some practice.

Step 2: If your internal dialogue tries to rationalize or guilt you into tipping, start talking back to it.

Example:

A is the pro-tipping intrusive thoughts and B is me responding to it.

A: You should tap the 15% tip button because you’ve always done it. This sushi restaurant makes great food and has great service.

B: What is a tip?

A: A tip is an optional payment you can give the server for their exceptional services.

B: No it’s not. A tip is a psychological trick by greedy capitalists pigs to make the customer subsidize their employees wages so that the employer can pay them less and make more money. If servers want to make more money, they should ask their employer to pay them more. If employers want to make more profit, they should increase menu prices.

A: If you don’t tip, aren’t you afraid that the service you’ll receive next time at the same place will be worse?

B: I’m mainly there for the food and not service. I don’t care about service as long as my food and iced water is being served to me.

A: Aren’t you afraid that the staff will know you as a repeat offender and give you crappy service and tamper with your food?

B: No, I’ll just walk out and go somewhere else. Or cook at home.

A: Ok we’ve gotten a bit sidetracked, let’s focus on the task at hand. The server is waiting for you to select the tip amount on the terminal. The sushi was good, but you don’t like tipping, so how about we compromise and tip them 12%?

B: What is a tip?

Rinse and repeat. Practice makes perfect. Erase it from the mind 1984 style.

Any questions, comments, suggestions, and emotional outbursts are welcome.

Lately the sub has been getting flooded with these kinds of post. And they all have the same answer: play whatever you like, racials are bound to change, it’s only a 2% increase, etc.

Instead of asking specifically about which race to choose, maybe we should encourage people to have discussions about the racials in general? Then maybe we could all learn a bit from these posts.

For the last four years, the Oklahoma City Thunder have built their entire identity around reckless, boundary-pushing perimeter defense, and their fanbase has gaslit the rest of the league into calling it "relentless hustle" while a trail of rival superstars left the court on crutches.

It started back in March 2023, when Lu Dort collided knee-to-knee with Paul George going for a rebound, giving PG a sprained right knee that wiped out the rest of his regular season and the Clippers' first-round playoff series. In the May 2024 Western Conference Semifinals, Luka Dončić was left hobbled with a right knee sprain and ankle soreness after surviving six games of constant dives, trips, and reckless collisions from Dort.

It only got worse the next year: in December 2024, Brandon Ingram suffered a severe left ankle sprain that sidelined him for months after landing directly on Dort's outstretched foot during a third-quarter jumper, and in March 2025, James Harden rolled his foot and took a knee to the thigh in another overly physical regular-season matchup against OKC's perimeter stoppers. Then came the 2025 playoffs, where Ja Morant was undercut in mid-air by Dort on a fast-break layup in April 2025, suffering a brutal left hip contusion that completely ruined the first-round series for Memphis, right before Tyrese Haliburton tore his right Achilles tendon against OKC in Game 7 of the June 2025 NBA Finals.

Even in 2026, the bodies kept piling up: both Luka Dončić (left hamstring strain) and Austin Reaves (back injury) were knocked out for the rest of the regular season in the exact same April 2, 2026 game in Oklahoma City, Devin Booker sprained his left ankle tripping over Dort's foot on a backdoor cut in the first round on April 25, and De'Aaron Fox had his ankle twisted and aggravated in the Western Conference Finals on May 22 when Dort dove straight across his lower leg for a loose ball. Through every single one of those injuries, Thunder players, coaches, and fans smugly told the rest of us to stop whining because injuries are just a natural part of "hard-nosed, physical basketball."

That is why Jalen Williams suffering a devastating lower-left leg injury against the Clippers—getting pushed in the back mid-air by Kris Dunn, contested at the rim by Derrick Jones Jr., and crashing down into an awkward, stretcher-inducing landing—is 100% basketball karma.

You cannot spend four straight seasons cheering on reckless closeouts, undercut layups, and dives at guys' knees when it wins you rings, and then suddenly demand sympathy and flagrant fouls when that exact same brand of dangerous, physical basketball finally comes back around to bite your own roster.

Today in flight 2329, for what seems like the 12th time this year so far for me, after landing we were asked to stay in our seats so those with tight connections could get out.

2/3rds of the plane then proceeds to shove their way out and claim "my flights doors close in 20 minutes".

If we were significantly late in arriving, it would be extremely understandable, but we were literally 4 minutes late arriving.

This was also a common route for UA, going from DEN to ORD. And because I keep my eye on the seat map, I know that this flight was almost full by the end of last week, so this wasn't a case of a bunch of passengers getting pushed from an earlier flight to a later one. In fact, there were plenty of open seats on earlier flights, I looked this morning. These passengers were entirely capable of giving themselves adequate transfer time, most of them likely just didn't want to wake up earlier to get the flight.

The problem is two fold, UA letting passengers book tight connections in the worst hub (ORD) for taxi delays, and passengers for not having a little foresight to book a flight with a healthy buffer when traveling through ORD.

We have all had a tight connection after a significant delay, and I have no problem helping those who are at risk if we are running an hour late getting in somewhere, life happens.

What I am done with is bailing out those with a lack of ability to adequately plan for transfers on common routes. So from now on, on these hub to hubs that are running roughly on time, I will be standing and disembarking as normal no matter what the flight attendants and other passengers want.

A lack of planning on their part does not constitute an inconvenience on mine.

And if people want to book tight connections, thats fine. They can do so and risk missing their flight. I will continue to book myself connections with two hours of transfer time, and look for alternate routing if that is not available.

I will absolutely still stay seated when a flight is running late, or a small group that got pushed to a later flight needs a hand. But I am done with having most of a flight push their way out because they think their time is so much more valuable than everyone elses and they cant stand doing a layover of more than 30 minutes.

If enough of us do this, it might up the number of people who miss flights and have to rebook. And UA keeps track of that metric, and if it skyrockets maybe they'll stop letting people book ridiculously tight connections that require the subservience of every other passenger for someone to make.

Or more people might book first class so they can be one of the first people off, instead of rushing from row 34 on a 737 all the way to the front.

Either way, I'm done helping stupidity, and I hope you are too.

Listen, I'm from Europe. I'm from a European country. Finland, to be more exact. Most houses around here are made from wood, because wood isolates heat and keeps us warm and cozy, instead of all the heat dissipating through stone walls.

I get it. You live in southern Europe or in fucking Baden-Württemberg. In your climate, stone houses make sense. But please stop acting like the entire continent follows your building traditions.

To make this even worse, us Europeans get so pissy whenever Americans generalize the whole continent of Europe and be all smug and say stuff like "No, Europe is not country, stupid Americans." But whenever these people want to shit on something they see Americans do, then all of a sudden Europe is a unit, a blob, an obelisk of uniform culture: "Stupid American are having wood house haha. In Europe we are having stone castle for house. My chatueauax is built before most American born (1440). We are also playing football :D".

Speak for yourself. I'll stick to my warm, cozy, wooden house up here in the Nordics.

Also, we are not all "playing football". I hate that sport, but it's another post entirely.

https://mythicsim.com/wow-forever/races?class=warrior&spec=warrior

over half the specs gnomes/nelf/human are topping the charts and tauren is 2% less dps on some specs. Who ever is in charge of these racials changes are smoking crack

And with that behavior, you destroy dating for everyone.

I mean really--have you read a single bit of feminist literature? At all? Or does your understanding of feminism come from 2016 era SJW crashout videos? Or better yet, maybe you base your entire understanding of an extremely long and extremely complex political movement off of a time some psyop bot rage baited you on social media by saying all men are bad or whatever. Or maybe you found one single thing from a niche 2nd wave radfem that hasn't been relevant to the feminist movement in decades and base your entire view of feminism on that.

At least read some bell hooks. Learn what intersectionality means.

7 games outshining an entire season worth of blood and sweat.