I'd like to see Brook do some more fighting. He's another swordsman but you only see him perving off. Granted its a 2 year time skip, you cant expect everyone else around them to have stayed at their same strength level as well.

Yeah I miss it when Brook did stuff...
He was always too fast to see move, but giving him Ice Powers on his sword doesn't really, to me, seem like much of an improvement..

He seems like he's more for recon and such. In all honesty, I'm hoping they add viola to the crew or rebecca. They need another female on the crew or something

Ew not Rebecca.. Can't stand her outfit.. And in the tournament she's avoiding everyone's attacks because supposedly she doesn't wanna hurt anyone, EVEN THOUGH in an episode earlier she was going to stab Luffy so she wouldn't have to fight him later on.. No sense made..

Yeah...I don't know its hard for me to see this manga doing anything more. I'm more on Bleach right now. Its actually a somewhat interesting arc right now

I thought they finished the Bleach anime with the non Canon arc after the defeat of Aizen.

Yeah there was a side arc that dealt with mod souls and what not and then there was one more arc that deal with Ichigo trying to get his powers back

Yeah in the Anime the whole FullBring shit is non canon. The Manga continued with Ichigo getting his powers back for real, but no FullBring.

Which I think they should really bring back the anime. They can still do lots with it

The Dressrosa arc is really dragging along in the manga. Luffy and Doflamingo are not even fighting yet, it's just that too much is happening. Even I believe Sanji could take on Doflamingo.

One Piece lost me when the devil fruit abilities literally became of an apocalyptic nature. Instead of characters who can use their wits and resources to beat the odds, the only way they know how to have the characters deal with problems is to "get stronger" or "increase their powers."

Which, in turn, requires even more powerful villains just to keep things interesting. And then the protagonists get stronger to beat them, and so on and so forth until, just like Dragon Ball Z, this shit is going to get so far out of hand that the threat of planetary destruction is going to become mundane.

I believe they already reach the Planetary Destruction powers with Whitebeard..

That's exactly who I was thinking about when I said they had literally become apocalyptic.

And he's not the only one. Blackbeard and Borsalino also fit the bill IMO. And those are just current antagonists; the new batch is going to be even more overpowered.

So as far as I'm concerned, One Piece is already dead. It had a good run, but it's become tiresome and grown stupid.

Dude, they're setting up Blackbeard to be one of the BIG big bads. He's the guy towards the end of the journey :) Similarly, Borsalino is one of the top people in one of the strongest organizations in the world... He's meant to go toe to toe with said biggest big bads. He's meant to be crazystrong because he has to be crazystrong.

The existence of incredibly strong people doesn't automatically mean that stronger people will come along later.

"Dude, they're setting up Blackbeard to be one of the BIG big bads."

....

"Similarly, Borsalino is one of the top people in one of the strongest organizations in the world..."

So you admit there are likely others.

It's assumed stronger people will come later, however, because this is how One Piece has progressed season after season: With the uber Marine and/or pirate captain popping out of the woodwork to make life Hell for the Straw Hats, them getting their asses kicked and one of them learning he needs to "get stronger" from the experience, and finally doing so just in time to kick said Marine and/or pirate captain's ass.

Of course there are others... They've outright said so :) The One Piece world right now hinges on a power balance between the pirate Emperors on one side, and the World Government/Marines on the other side. The strongest people on each side ARE the strongest known people in the world.

Mind you, Borsalino could probably wreck pretty much everyone if he wasn't such an airhead.

I'm not gonna deny that the "getting stronger" Shonen trope doesn't apply to the One Piece crew. But here's the thing that makes me prefer OP to a lot of other shonens: You don't see a lot of free/hidden-power-from-within upgrades, and the fights (usually) don't boil down to "my punches aren't strong enough oh wait now they are" so much as them just figuring out how to beat whoever's been giving them trouble.

Of course, Zoro is a bit of an exception... He's usually the one having the straight-up "strength beating out strength" fights because Oda still has trouble drawing an exciting technique-based swordfight. "Shit, I can't cut steel yet. Okay, now I can."

If you want to see it done BADLY, then, well... DBZ, Yu Yu Hakusho, Naruto, (sometimes) Fairy Tail. The powerup-asspulls going on in Naruto are amusingly staggering right now, and while Fairy Tail has a lot of creative fights, too often they boil down to "I'll throw out my strongest attack and you'll throw out yours and we'll see who wins".

That's how it used to be. Originally, they didn't get new powers so much as figure out new tricks with their already-existing powers. . .

But they did keep adding new crew members to the ship, each new one being more ridiculous than the last. Last I checked, they had four devil fruit users (and I've seen spoilers suggesting Sanji will become a fifth). So while they didn't individually pull better powers out of their asses, they did randomly come across new crew members.

Then, shortly after they added Brook, the powerup-asspulls began.

^ This

Your also forgetting that Sanji picked up a skill from the CP9 fellows. That air stepping thing. Considering he can essentailly fly, whilst Luffy cant, that puts him more on par. As the guy was shown to use it as well, when he was headed for Caesar's lab island. Though I find it questionable that if he can do that trick, why cant sanji pull off those sockwaves from his kicks like the CP9 guys did. I forget the name of the techniques proeprly. But I think you might remember em.

But anyways I agree with ye in general. Though I can point out a few possibilities to explain some of the inconsistencies. Like Sanji's form of Haki. As far as we know he isnt trained in its use yet. Luffy has been trained in the Emperor's Haki. So knows how to fully utilize all 3. Meaning he would likely be training his crew in it. Another point is that Doflamingo's threads are undetectable and such by most means apparently. I mean before the time skip, the guy caught Crocodile off guard.And if he handly trained himself to react on pure instinct as he had, for his Logia abilities, he woulda been made a head shorter. So that makes it plausible for how his strings go undetected by an untrained haki user. I havent seen this far just yet. I left off with the blind admiral or whatever he is, showing up to arrest the group on the beach. But regardless. I agree Sanji seems like he should at least be even matched against the guy.

Law detects the strings well enough when he's running away from Doflamingo. And Doflamingo doesn't use Moon Walk, he attaches his strings to clouds and jumps along them.

Law is a surgeon, and has that ability where anything in a certain radius is completely under his power to manipulate as he wants. So he should be able to, theoretically slice and dice the crazy bird man. Whose scarf makes me think he saw Sesshomaru and got jelous. Anyways. All Law needs is a little time to use his 'Room' trick, and then he could slice and dice Don into little cubs and such. Or even take out his heart and kill it. But then thatd be way too simple and easy to win the battle, wouldnt it?

As for your point about Gohan below this a bit. He was the strongest up till Cell.Least somewhat. Now if he hadnt given in to his harpy of a mtoher and kept training, I bet he woulda made Buu, even Kid one, shit himself. Just imagine how strong he would be if he went level 3. Or if he trained level 2 like he did level 1. Seriously, the ruined the best character in the whole of DBZ with the post cell BS. But then thats what happens when that whole saga was rushed because the creator's conrtact was running out and they wouldnt renew it.

But regardless at least OP isnt as bad as what Im hearing Naruto is turning out to be. Sasugay, I mean, Sasuke, seems to be a deus ex machina. Able to take on anything/one, and if someone seems stronger than him, its only temporary before he ets some BS power boost. And makes Naruto look weak in comparison, sage mode or not.

You're forgetting that Gohan received training from Old Kai to become Mystic Gohan, who was stronger than Evil Buu, who was stronger than SSJ3 Goku, but not as powerful as Kid Buu.

Actually, that doesnt really count. And Evil Buu wasnt really stronger than Level 3 Goku. Just level 3 Gotenks. Whom despite being a fusion, wasnt particilarly strong. Or smart. If Goku's time hadnt run out he might have been able to handle the Evil Buu. Least that is my opinion. As for the Mystic training, that was really just a bunch of BS they threw in for the hell of it. If Gohan had trained, as I said, he woulda been strong enough to handle the threat. But this is just my opinion, again. The Mystic bit, IMO, is, like I said BS they threw in for the hell of it. And even if the lack of training and becoming a total nerd prior to the tournament and buu hadnt been bad enough. They threw in Saiyaman, whom TOTALLY rips off the Ginyu Forces poses. Makes ye wonder how badly they traumatized him as a kid.

But even still. Gohan was the weakest, not countaing the human characters in Buu up till mystic. He barely managed to attain the level 2 stage at that time. When he was the first to obtain it. This is why I stick to fanfiction though, for this stuff. SO much better than how things really turned out. Least sometimes. Anyways my guess on Evil buu is that he is on par with SS3 Goku. They never fought. Though he could be a little stronger too I suppose. Regular Buu was used as one of those punching balloons with the rubber band on the end by Goku till his time ran out.

But anyways, my point is that it annoyed me how they made gohan go from the strongest and most badass to a weak nerd with a super hero complex, and had to get help from a Supreme Kai to get into the fight. I feel they ruined the best character of the series in it. Hell, DBZ was meant to be Gohan's story anyways. Its just fan pressure and such made them rewrite it to be that it was Goku's second story. Least from what I read and such on various sites thats what happened. Im not 100% on this mind.

I hated the time skip. Not because of events, but because of how the character designs changed. And it sucks how slow it goes. A long time ago, I decided to never watch it, because the characters looked hideous. Now it's one of my favorites (even though I couldn't take arlong seriously as a villain because he had hercule satan's voice from dbz, and just sounded like a blowhard). Sanji's timeskip training was one of the only ones I liked, too. Speaking of dbz, it seems to be going in that direction. Everyone started off pretty strong, but the hero only a small ways ahead, but now it's become hero has all the power and fights the big bad, everyone else is totally useless and hardly survive fighting the henchmen.

Come to think of it, it's a lot like dbz. Though most anime has this setup. I should make a chart of common character types.
Got the childish overpowered hero that leaves everyone in the dust after a couple sagas, Goku and Luffy.
The second in command that's silent and everyone is glad isn't their enemy, Zoro and Piccolo.
The guy with more power than someone with his ego should be allowed, Vegeta and Frankie.
The weakling that gets a few seconds of badass out of pity, Yamcha/Krillin and Usopp.
The woman that is pretty weak but is the only think stopping everyone else from getting lost, Bulma with the dragon radar and Nami the navigator.
The polite one that nobody can decide if he is 2nd or 3rd strongest, Gohan and Sanji.
The perv that's not really strong, but can surprise you with his skill, Roshi and Brooke.
Only ones that don't have a match are Trunks, Tien, Nico Robin, and Tony Tony Chopper. Unless you want to call Trunks and Chopper the ones with the medicine, and Tien and Robin the weird ones :P

Gohan was always the strongest he just didn't do anything.. And Krillin is my favorite DBZ character.

Frankie's appearance change was the most disappointing one to me. I loved his original look, his new one is stupid as hell..

Robin's wayyyyy too comfortable with letting people touch her body, I don't like Nami with huge boobs, Sanji looks stupid with his new bulky neck, we never actually SEE Zoro do any sword fighting (it's all too fast to be seen), Usopp hasn't changed thank god sept for his outfit, Luffy somehow looks younger and it doesn't really make sense that now he's immune to poison, Chopper also somehow looks younger and smaller, and Brook also hasn't changed much..

Also I didn't like Arlong but I looooooooved how he got beaten.. However I was sad to find out he lived.. The people in One Piece are all WAY too durable. It takes a LOT to kill anyone.. Arlong took a kick to the temple through 5 stories of concrete, and lived..

I agree so much with Frankie. The arms look terrible, and his pompadour is gone! Chopped doesn't look the same with his pink top hat inside a round helmet. I really liked Brooke's old outfit as opposed to this over the top rockstar one, but at least I didn't have much time to get used to the old one. My favorite section of one piece is by far pre-grandline (minus Usopp's storyline). The story moved so fast, and the arlong storyline was awesome, especially Luffy destroying the map room.

Oda doesn't like killing people off, in which sense when people DO die, it's a really huge deal. Which if funny if you sit and think about how many random unnamed marines are clearly no longer alive.

I'm not mad/surprised that Sanji lost in his battle with Doflamingo, but I do think he should've lasted longer than he did. Luffy is going to have to beat Doflamingo because it's what's expected of him, just as he always beats the big bad on any given island.

I hope neither Rebecca nor Viola joins their crew permanently, although it's looking like Viola will accompany them to Zo if she doesn't get killed on Dressrosa. Personally, I'd like to see Jinbei join their crew sometime in the future (maybe help them take down Big Mom?).

I agree that, like most "fight your way to the top" shonens, One Piece seems too fond of using the Sorting Algorithm of Evil to keep the villains at roughly the same power level as the Straw Hats.

I do hope Sanji and the other Straw Hats get better fights in the future.

That samurai guy was called a part of the strawhats by doflamingo. I hope that's not true. But to be honest, I like the original 5 crew best, not a fan of the ones they picked up in the grand line.

That epic scene when Sanji hit Doflamingo's leg with his BURNING leg, which should have a power which is not from this world anymore, and Doflamingo just blocks it... and keeps grinning while his own leg starts smoking <.<

I was thinking about some one piece rage journal as well. Mainly because of the PACE of the episodes. Here I should say that I don't read the manga so I have no idea how far the manga is already ahead and how much scenes in the anime are fillers or stuff that actually happened.
But still, they are right now able to fill 25 minutes episodes with almost NOTHING. I think I skipped at least half of the stuff that was happening in Dressrosa so far and was still able to completely follow the story...

Oh, and am I the only one who thinks it is ridiculous that NOBODY in the colosseum, except for a few people who wanna kill Luffy, was able to see that he was fighting there? I mean, yes, nice disguise, but he was using his Gum Gum stuff aaaaaall the time! At least I can barely remember any normal punches from him x3

If you don't like moving slowly, keep not reading the manga. They progress all of 5 feet towards their current goal per chapter

Yeah the episodes are like 20 minutes long total, 2 WHOLE FUCKING MINUTES for the opening, 5 minutes of recap of the last episode, then 13 minutes of talking, with 1 punch at the end, then it's over.. Let's not forget in the Colosseum when they thought it would be VITAL to introduce ALL THE FUCKING POINTLESS CHARACTERS WE'LL NEVER SEE EVER AGAIN! "They did this one thing in their homeland that was impressive! FEAR THEM! OH THEY LOST AND YOU'LL NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN, GOOD THING WE WASTED 5 EPISODES GETTING TO KNOW EACH ONE!"

"Never see again", says he.

Shurorororororo... No, I won't spoil.

Trust me. If there's anything I learned, any character that gets named or gets some kind of focus IS seen again. Even if it's on the manga chapter cover stories (which are pretty neat in themselves).

All the fights you're mentioning are Pre Time Skip though. You're forgetting that they got stronger in the 2 years. Sanji and Zoro would whip Crocodile.

And I don't think it'd be lame for Sanji to defeat Doflamingo, especially since Zoro defeated Hody prior to Luffy's fight with him. Sanji's Diable Jamble even defeated Jyabura, who was stronger than Blueno.

Both Sanji and Zoro have the 2 forms of Haki that can be learned, just excel in the opposites, Sanji's better at Kenbunshoku Haki. while Zoro's better at Busoshoku Haki. So there's no doubt in my mind Sanji used Busoshoku Haki when kicking Doflamingo (cuzz why the hell wouldn't he?) which to me says there's no way Doflamingo could block it unless he was actually stronger.. Which is bullshit, it should have at least damaged him, not saying Sanji should've won, but he definitely should've damaged Dof..

Pre Second Gear Sanji was Stronger. Sanji using his strongest kick damaged Blueno, Luffy couldn't beat Blueno until he went Second Gear.

He wasn't fighting him on par, Luffy was definitely losing.

You have to consider the considerable effort it took Sanji to muster up the strength to deal damage through Iron Body.

I did, that's why I said "Strongest Kick"

I noticed that Zoro doesn't seem as badass as he used to be. And there's no explanations for why his eye is missing. Besides the eye, he's missing something he had before the skip...

I figure why his eye is missing doesn't need explanation. He obviously lost it when training with Mihawk.

Yes, that's easy to figure out. But how did it get taken out?

I know why i never watched it, i hate these we have 40 heroes BUT only ONE of them wins in fights....

I am pretty sure all the characters are going to get their share of fighting soon. Flamingo is the last warlord and after that they're on their way to face the emperors. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the emperors' crews rank on par with or above Flamingo himself, in fact I would be shocked if they didn't. But yeah I agree we haven't seen the strawhats really pushed to the limit yet, and by that I mean a real life or death fight. Once that time comes I am positive we're going to see real conflicts and new abilities not yet shown from the entire crew.

Doflo and his gang are kicking everyone's ass... But he's afraid of Kaidou and his army.

Yup, thats pretty much the sign right there that things are going to get really ugly after this arc. Honestly I don't see one piece ending without the death of another main or important character.

one piece gets better, but gotta say that Doflamingo is powerful and we hardly know much about him. Law was not trying to even fight him and he is powerful which goes to show how strong Doflamingo is.

I even read the manga so if you hated this get ready for more BS

Much as I will agree that the anime is slow-paced, you can't pretend it's ever been *better* paced... In fact, with all the stuff going on at once in both Punk Hazard and Dressrosa, they're having to resort to less filler stuff than in a lot of pre-timeskip episodes. Remember Alabasta? They were packing the minutes with flashbacks from the *same episode* :D

Part of this is that with such a crapton of characters in the past couple of arcs, One Piece has been gradually moving away from the "Shonen duel" trope. There are instances, yes. But Oda keeps everyone relevant by having them all contribute.

And take it from someone who's reading the manga... Luffy so very much needs EVERY SINGLE ally he can get his hands on :)

I can't remember, was that before Law explained how Doffy's powers work or after?

In addition, with what the series has shown, you're heavily underestimating Doffy. He's unbelievably strong and durable as seen multiple times without using his power. Not to mention he is the only enemy of the time skip thus far that isn't a tricky Logia user to actually be a combat threat. Luffy, Zoro and Sanji have YET to have a challenging fight.

Yeah this is always a problem with these kinda mangas, but I get the feeling you're watching the subbed and not reading am I right?

Either way it hurts the story if only Luffy beats up the big bad everytime, yet you wonder that maybe Oda feels obligated to make Luffy fight every big bad. Which is why I usually prefer the fights with the other strawhats.

on a semi unrelated topic, do you care for Violet x Sanji?

No. I don't want Sanji to ever get a girl.. lol

That kinda sucks that he would lose like that so I agree with ya on this

just watching what you're on about now, all I can really say is "Of course Sanji lost to Don Flamingo" XP
He's the 'Captain' of the 'Crew' they're up against right now. Sanji isn't supposed to stand a chance against him. Sanji will get to show off later against one of the many foreshadowed or already introduced villains, have an amazing fight, win, and move on. That's generally the formula.

And sure he and the crew got stronger over the two year break, but that doesn't mean they're immediately better than the new villains. In spite of how overwhelming they seemed against the New Fishmen Pirates. I think it is safe to assume that the villain characters take time to get stronger too. XP But either way, of course Luffy is gonna be the one fighting Flamingo at the end. The arcs always wrap up with Captain vs Captain. XP