I don't necessarily despise One Piece for being a bad manga. I loathe it for being utterly mediocre. The series has a potential in each new arc to be something more, but the author often prefers to choose his tired and mundane formula.

I genuinely don't feel any kind of emotion reading this series. When I first started, I was a bit more younger I admit but there was a thing or two here and there that induced certain emotions, whether they were happiness, sadness, anger, or pride. But right now, reading the series almost feels like a chore; something I feel obliged to do after investing in it for so long. But deep in my mind, I honestly just don't care. Whether Luffy becomes Pirate King or dies unceremoniously to some random fodder, I equally don't care. But now that I think about it, the latter option might be a little more interesting for the sheer reason that I didn't see it coming. Even though it's straight up shit writing, I'd prefer it because it would have succeeded to induce at least something.

The series main's downfall is that it fails to make the readers uncertain. Ninety percent of the events are rehashed that a six-year old could see them coming from a mile away. The other ten percent are quickly glossed over, either in arc epilogues, or in small random portions of info-dump. The side characters at this point are far more interesting than the main ones. You often keep hearing about them, but never truly see how they go about their plans until it's too late. For a series that has gone for so long, you'd expect a respectable amounts of creativity and intrigue, but the majority of the big arcs are the same story, bar the setting and the hero's outfit-of-the-week. Oda tries to force these emotions out of his readers by his dishonest, sometimes borderline manipulative attempts of characters crying buckets of water, screaming their lungs out, or saying "badass" lines. But here I am, all I'm thinking about is that I've seen this exact moment in this and that arc. This doesn't just make the interior plot incredibly easy to guess, but so are the character actions, motives, and decisions.

I could go on and on about other aspects I hate, like the poor fight choreography and writing, but these will just be droplets of water against the core issue, which is that the whole series is incredibly dull to think about.

If happiness is my favorite series, and sadness is things I hate with a passion. One Piece will be depression.