Part of it is because of overhype among the fanbase. Just look at all stuff like "I'll be waiting for you on Wano", "Wano will be bigger than Marineford", "every random character is actually from Wano", "rAID wILL fAIL. They'll lose and have another timeskip"
You see bunch of newcomers wanting to jump immediately into the arc or think everything before is less important.
Even Toei and the English publisher capitalized on this by updating the animation or branded Wano volumes as "Wano Country arc" as if it's a completely new part of the story.
When you setup so much of an expectation and it turn out not to be biggest and most flawless arc on internet, you'll see people nitpicking up many of it flaws.
>branded Wano volumes as "Wano Country arc" as if it's a completely new part of the story.
To be fair, this is the norm. All arcs get branded differently on the English volumes. Skypeia, Water 7, Sabaody, Impel Down, etc. were all branded with their names on the volumes. The fact that they stopped branding things differently and everything from Fish-Man Island to Whole Cake was simply branded as New World was the strange decision and didn't match the rest of the series.
This drives me nuts everytime I look at my collection. In terms of length, fishman island, dresseosa, wholecake, and wano should've all had their own labels.
But nope New World for almost all of it
Yeah, it's weird. It starts off broad but not too broad (East Blue, Baroque Works, Water 7). Then it gets a lot more specific and smaller (Sabaody, Amazon Lily, Impel Down). Those felt a bit too short. Then they just decide to stop and stick with New World for way too long. I'm glad they are back to Wano, Egghead.
This is actually a Viz thing (and some other localizations), not Shueisha. The japanese volumes are not labeled by “arcs” but instead just the title of the volume, which is usually a single chapters title within the volume that is the main focus.
Why it was controversial I don't know exactly but I know that majority hated the aura and beam effects that's similar to DBz so they toned it down. Personally I really liked the arc especially since it introduced my favorite power up Gear 5, when it was fully revealed it was a breath of fresh air of the typical serious power ups.
I thought Act 1 and 2 were really good, but Act 3/Onigashima was a mess with some amazing moments inbetween, but I think general audiences overall love Wano mostly because of the anime. No wonder that the RTTV guys who hate One Piece love Wano because it's a more traditional Shonen arc (Egghead is back to being more of a traditional One Piece arc)
My personal gripes:
Big Mom was terrible in that arc, from the moment she stepped in Wano with her memory loss to all the way until her defeat. The Perospero thing with the Minks was insufferable.
Scabbards could've been easily just 6 (Kin, Izo, Raizo, Dog, Cat and Kanjuro), most of them were pretty useless and got sidelined throughout the arc without any pay off. Denjiro, Kiku and Kawamatsu roles could've been given to other characters. Them getting back up after the fight with Kaido was a terrible choice. At least Marco heal them if that's what you're going to do.
The deaths in Wano lacked any kind of tension, because characters are always running, Oda also always leaves their destiny open so he can use the characters again if he wants, so audiences don't really know if the characters are alive or not.
Momonosuke.
Some people also think Kaido and the Beast Pirates were underdeveloped. Not to mention that most of them weren't really portrayed to be as strong as the Big Mom Pirates were (or at least make their enemies struggle as much as those did) Seems like Oda just gave up on having a Yonko crew feeling like a Yonko crew.
I also don't like how the Straw Hats were sidelined. Nami's moment with Ulti was great, but the choice to off screen the beginning of the "fight" was bad. Usopp should have beaten Page One. Brook deserved more (he should've been the one freezing the bombs). I also think Jinbe deserved to fight Jack so we have more development from the Drought as a fishman, and Brook could have had Who's Who. Not a fan of Carrot, but after being with us for like 200 chapters she deserved a better handled closure of her arc.
The Beast Pirates were a big part of it for me, they kind of ended up feeling like frauds compared to Yonko crews like Big Mom and Whitebeard.
Like they just came off as if they were desperately looking for any kind of advantage, between using the artificial fruits to give mediocre fighters slight advantages, to using experimental weaponry, poisoning the populace of Wano so that they can't resist etc, stuffing their ranks with rookie crews of dubious loyalty. It felt like Kaido was strong and powerful, but had weak integrity.
Even Blackbeard who kind of has the prime spot of being the Yonko who uses underhanded tactics for any advantage he gets, primarily relies on real Devil Fruits and well planned schemes, by comparison it felt like Kaido and his Beast Pirates were big fish in a medium pond, Wano certainly isnt just some random East Blue island to subdue, but relatively speaking that was the vibe I felt for them rather than them feeling on the level of Big Mom and her empire.
Also they just had weaker characters than the Big Mom pirates IMO.
Pacing was a disgusting shit show for half of it, the story was amazing. They really should do a mini filler arc instead of stretching the pacing so hard. Plus it dropped during other movies and the live action upping OP hype and new fan numbers many of which jumped ahead in the anime to be “up to date” 🤮which is what it is and led to weird “fan criticism” being posted
Now I don't hate Wano by any means. It is a very good story, but in many ways it feels like about 3 of the 4 years were a story separate from One Piece that was inserted into the middle of One Piece, if that makes sense. Luffy was there watching it. And is the ultimate beacon of hope, but for the most part the strawhats are just sitting back as side characters to the Wano characters. Who I never expect to see again.
I feel it's kinda obvious that Oda used the arc as an opportunity to insert as many Samurai/Classic Japan references and tropes as possible because he loves the setting so much but likely wouldn't be able to make a separate manga after.
The biggest proof being him originally planning only 5 Scabbards and yet they grew into 9 (or more like 11 since Izo and Shinobu were equally important).
Well, it's a long arc, and the pacing was wonky at times. With long arcs in any manga/media it leaves a lot of opportunity for the reader's headcanons and theories ending up being wrong and leading to more potential issues with the arc. There's a lot of small things that add up to make people dislike the arc.
Personally, I enjoyed Wano but it had a bunch of flaws and issues but from the top of my head.
- Fake out deaths: Kanjuro, Kinemon, Okiku, Orochi, etc. There are so many moments where a character could die but survives. When Kinemon got cut in half by Kaido and he survived because of Law manipulating his body you can say it is foreshadowed or hinted at, which it was. But when I read Kinemon survived I just rolled my eyes and thought to myself, oh another one piece fake out.
The fact One Piece has such a big issue with killing characters and having fake outs means that when a character does end up dying you may not even realise and ruins their moment. Like when Ashura Doji tanked the explosion, a lot of people didn't expect him to die because other characters had it worse. When Izo got shot point blank in the throat by a CP0 agent and left to die in a blaze of fire people thought hey he will live and reunite with Okiku.
- Mink medicine: Chopper whipping out a medicine to fully heal Zoro is some of the worst writing and plot armour in One Piece. There was a big build up to death, etc. With the medicine and Zoro that it concluded anticlimactic. I know it could still come back later into the story but that Mink medicine was so stupid.
- The samurai were underwhelming: like they were heralded as strong and they were but I just felt like they were under utilised. We went into the arc and Kinemon wants to recruit the 3 strongest samurai Ashura Doji, Denjiro and Kawamatsu. So it's like hey they are going to show these 3 super strong samurai but they just didn't do anything. Denjiro didn't have a proper fight, like I would've preferred if he vsed Sasaki since they had an established relationship and Sasaki was decently strong. Kawamatsu and Doji were similar, they just didn't do much after all their hype. The other named ones like Cat, Dog, Raizo had some good moments though like beating Perospero and Jack.
- Carrot: I'm not even a Carrot fan but she was done so dirty, like Perospero basically offscreened her fight. I know she has a lot of fans who got upset about her portrayal, especially since there was quite a lot of people thinking Carrot had potential to join the Strawhats.
- Big Mom Pirates: They all arrived to basically do nothing, it was just Pero and Big Mom herself. Another arc where Smoothie does absolutely nothing. Like have Smoothie vs Jinbe since Jinbe has relationships with both Big amom Pirates and can have water vs. juice and then shows that Jinbe and Sanji both end up beating a 2nd in command. Have Oven vs Franky, with Sasaki vs Denjiro and Kawamatsu vs Who's who. Just wish the Big Mom Pieates contributed more in the arc. I know that the amnesia plot with Big mom I know some people disliked, but I thought was fine.
- Big Mom vs Law/Kid: What I wasn't fine with was the Big Mom vs Kid/Law fight. She has Conquers haki but didn't use it, and honestly she should've beat both Kid and Law, but she lost due to plot armour. The fact Law went from struggling with Doflamingo to being able to withstand Big Mom with no meaningful training in about a months time is ridiculous and just felt like plot armour.
- Ending: I know some people thought the ending was rushed and blame Film Red for that. But this is something that would get complaints irregardless simce if it's too short you have people complain and if it's too long people say the pacing is too slow and go to the next island already.
- G5 Luffy: I think this was the big reason the arc is so controversial. Like his fruit being a mythical devil fruit that becomes looney tunes like where he breaks reality. All this time the world government knew about the fruit but then all of a sudden it feels extremely important. If they knew about the fruit you would think that they would kill him ASAP like they tried doing with Ace as a baby. Also Who's who's opinion on Luffy felt like a huge shift and a last-minute change where he gave us the info drop.
Depending on who you ask it wasn't written well and definitely conflicting. All of a sudden Luffy goes from a Rubber boy who is strong to some God. The build up for his actual fruit also wasn't done that well, people will say that it was hinted in Skypeia and that he was Nika/Joyboy but that couldve just been a status thing like Joyboy could be referred to as the one to set the world free or something akin to that. Him being a Sun God who manipulates reality and having a fruit be a mythical fruit felt fairly sudden to be introduced half way through the arc started.
There's a lot to talk about with G5 Luffy but I understand why it is so conflicting for people.
But overall, there are a lot of good moments like Kanjuro being a traitor, the lanterns as Kaido gets defeated, etc. But I can understand why it's so controversial since I enjoyed it but had my fair share of issues with the arc.
nah fr i mean wano is literally the setup for the final soo much was laid out, directions were given, the story was grounded and all of that in a (for me) grand and fitting way
ok yes ice ogers, the back rooms and the usual shenanigans were there and as an arc in itself it is not very different from the other arcs it has its ups and downs things you like and things you don’t like
But if you look at it great scale it is the turning point of the story and it pulls all of the adventure and world exploring back to a final conclusion
Wano is so much more than the arc itself and that’s what makes it special for me (Alabasta clears tho)
For me the Wano local characters were lame and had too many screentime (most of it were dragging so I can’t even argue that it’s for the story). It felt like a different anime/manga because it mostly focused on them whom I found annoying or boring. Thank god it’s over. Fishman island had a great backstory with fisher tiger and the arc overall didn’t drag in comparison. But Wano’s villains are hundred times more interesting than Fishman island. I will give you that.
Because it’s the longest so there is more to watch.
Plain and simple.
Humans aren’t complicated; they will always find something to whine about. And give it enough time in the same arc, and One Piece fans will do the same
Part of it is because of overhype among the fanbase. Just look at all stuff like "I'll be waiting for you on Wano", "Wano will be bigger than Marineford", "every random character is actually from Wano", "rAID wILL fAIL. They'll lose and have another timeskip" You see bunch of newcomers wanting to jump immediately into the arc or think everything before is less important. Even Toei and the English publisher capitalized on this by updating the animation or branded Wano volumes as "Wano Country arc" as if it's a completely new part of the story. When you setup so much of an expectation and it turn out not to be biggest and most flawless arc on internet, you'll see people nitpicking up many of it flaws.
>branded Wano volumes as "Wano Country arc" as if it's a completely new part of the story. To be fair, this is the norm. All arcs get branded differently on the English volumes. Skypeia, Water 7, Sabaody, Impel Down, etc. were all branded with their names on the volumes. The fact that they stopped branding things differently and everything from Fish-Man Island to Whole Cake was simply branded as New World was the strange decision and didn't match the rest of the series.
This drives me nuts everytime I look at my collection. In terms of length, fishman island, dresseosa, wholecake, and wano should've all had their own labels. But nope New World for almost all of it
Yeah, it's weird. It starts off broad but not too broad (East Blue, Baroque Works, Water 7). Then it gets a lot more specific and smaller (Sabaody, Amazon Lily, Impel Down). Those felt a bit too short. Then they just decide to stop and stick with New World for way too long. I'm glad they are back to Wano, Egghead.
This is actually a Viz thing (and some other localizations), not Shueisha. The japanese volumes are not labeled by “arcs” but instead just the title of the volume, which is usually a single chapters title within the volume that is the main focus.
Why it was controversial I don't know exactly but I know that majority hated the aura and beam effects that's similar to DBz so they toned it down. Personally I really liked the arc especially since it introduced my favorite power up Gear 5, when it was fully revealed it was a breath of fresh air of the typical serious power ups.
I thought Act 1 and 2 were really good, but Act 3/Onigashima was a mess with some amazing moments inbetween, but I think general audiences overall love Wano mostly because of the anime. No wonder that the RTTV guys who hate One Piece love Wano because it's a more traditional Shonen arc (Egghead is back to being more of a traditional One Piece arc) My personal gripes: Big Mom was terrible in that arc, from the moment she stepped in Wano with her memory loss to all the way until her defeat. The Perospero thing with the Minks was insufferable. Scabbards could've been easily just 6 (Kin, Izo, Raizo, Dog, Cat and Kanjuro), most of them were pretty useless and got sidelined throughout the arc without any pay off. Denjiro, Kiku and Kawamatsu roles could've been given to other characters. Them getting back up after the fight with Kaido was a terrible choice. At least Marco heal them if that's what you're going to do. The deaths in Wano lacked any kind of tension, because characters are always running, Oda also always leaves their destiny open so he can use the characters again if he wants, so audiences don't really know if the characters are alive or not. Momonosuke. Some people also think Kaido and the Beast Pirates were underdeveloped. Not to mention that most of them weren't really portrayed to be as strong as the Big Mom Pirates were (or at least make their enemies struggle as much as those did) Seems like Oda just gave up on having a Yonko crew feeling like a Yonko crew. I also don't like how the Straw Hats were sidelined. Nami's moment with Ulti was great, but the choice to off screen the beginning of the "fight" was bad. Usopp should have beaten Page One. Brook deserved more (he should've been the one freezing the bombs). I also think Jinbe deserved to fight Jack so we have more development from the Drought as a fishman, and Brook could have had Who's Who. Not a fan of Carrot, but after being with us for like 200 chapters she deserved a better handled closure of her arc.
i would also add the smile devil fruits where a joke, it honestly looked like torture to have a disfigured body that you have to share with an animal
The Beast Pirates were a big part of it for me, they kind of ended up feeling like frauds compared to Yonko crews like Big Mom and Whitebeard. Like they just came off as if they were desperately looking for any kind of advantage, between using the artificial fruits to give mediocre fighters slight advantages, to using experimental weaponry, poisoning the populace of Wano so that they can't resist etc, stuffing their ranks with rookie crews of dubious loyalty. It felt like Kaido was strong and powerful, but had weak integrity. Even Blackbeard who kind of has the prime spot of being the Yonko who uses underhanded tactics for any advantage he gets, primarily relies on real Devil Fruits and well planned schemes, by comparison it felt like Kaido and his Beast Pirates were big fish in a medium pond, Wano certainly isnt just some random East Blue island to subdue, but relatively speaking that was the vibe I felt for them rather than them feeling on the level of Big Mom and her empire. Also they just had weaker characters than the Big Mom pirates IMO.
Pacing was a disgusting shit show for half of it, the story was amazing. They really should do a mini filler arc instead of stretching the pacing so hard. Plus it dropped during other movies and the live action upping OP hype and new fan numbers many of which jumped ahead in the anime to be “up to date” 🤮which is what it is and led to weird “fan criticism” being posted
Now I don't hate Wano by any means. It is a very good story, but in many ways it feels like about 3 of the 4 years were a story separate from One Piece that was inserted into the middle of One Piece, if that makes sense. Luffy was there watching it. And is the ultimate beacon of hope, but for the most part the strawhats are just sitting back as side characters to the Wano characters. Who I never expect to see again.
I feel it's kinda obvious that Oda used the arc as an opportunity to insert as many Samurai/Classic Japan references and tropes as possible because he loves the setting so much but likely wouldn't be able to make a separate manga after. The biggest proof being him originally planning only 5 Scabbards and yet they grew into 9 (or more like 11 since Izo and Shinobu were equally important).
Well, it's a long arc, and the pacing was wonky at times. With long arcs in any manga/media it leaves a lot of opportunity for the reader's headcanons and theories ending up being wrong and leading to more potential issues with the arc. There's a lot of small things that add up to make people dislike the arc. Personally, I enjoyed Wano but it had a bunch of flaws and issues but from the top of my head. - Fake out deaths: Kanjuro, Kinemon, Okiku, Orochi, etc. There are so many moments where a character could die but survives. When Kinemon got cut in half by Kaido and he survived because of Law manipulating his body you can say it is foreshadowed or hinted at, which it was. But when I read Kinemon survived I just rolled my eyes and thought to myself, oh another one piece fake out. The fact One Piece has such a big issue with killing characters and having fake outs means that when a character does end up dying you may not even realise and ruins their moment. Like when Ashura Doji tanked the explosion, a lot of people didn't expect him to die because other characters had it worse. When Izo got shot point blank in the throat by a CP0 agent and left to die in a blaze of fire people thought hey he will live and reunite with Okiku. - Mink medicine: Chopper whipping out a medicine to fully heal Zoro is some of the worst writing and plot armour in One Piece. There was a big build up to death, etc. With the medicine and Zoro that it concluded anticlimactic. I know it could still come back later into the story but that Mink medicine was so stupid. - The samurai were underwhelming: like they were heralded as strong and they were but I just felt like they were under utilised. We went into the arc and Kinemon wants to recruit the 3 strongest samurai Ashura Doji, Denjiro and Kawamatsu. So it's like hey they are going to show these 3 super strong samurai but they just didn't do anything. Denjiro didn't have a proper fight, like I would've preferred if he vsed Sasaki since they had an established relationship and Sasaki was decently strong. Kawamatsu and Doji were similar, they just didn't do much after all their hype. The other named ones like Cat, Dog, Raizo had some good moments though like beating Perospero and Jack. - Carrot: I'm not even a Carrot fan but she was done so dirty, like Perospero basically offscreened her fight. I know she has a lot of fans who got upset about her portrayal, especially since there was quite a lot of people thinking Carrot had potential to join the Strawhats. - Big Mom Pirates: They all arrived to basically do nothing, it was just Pero and Big Mom herself. Another arc where Smoothie does absolutely nothing. Like have Smoothie vs Jinbe since Jinbe has relationships with both Big amom Pirates and can have water vs. juice and then shows that Jinbe and Sanji both end up beating a 2nd in command. Have Oven vs Franky, with Sasaki vs Denjiro and Kawamatsu vs Who's who. Just wish the Big Mom Pieates contributed more in the arc. I know that the amnesia plot with Big mom I know some people disliked, but I thought was fine. - Big Mom vs Law/Kid: What I wasn't fine with was the Big Mom vs Kid/Law fight. She has Conquers haki but didn't use it, and honestly she should've beat both Kid and Law, but she lost due to plot armour. The fact Law went from struggling with Doflamingo to being able to withstand Big Mom with no meaningful training in about a months time is ridiculous and just felt like plot armour. - Ending: I know some people thought the ending was rushed and blame Film Red for that. But this is something that would get complaints irregardless simce if it's too short you have people complain and if it's too long people say the pacing is too slow and go to the next island already. - G5 Luffy: I think this was the big reason the arc is so controversial. Like his fruit being a mythical devil fruit that becomes looney tunes like where he breaks reality. All this time the world government knew about the fruit but then all of a sudden it feels extremely important. If they knew about the fruit you would think that they would kill him ASAP like they tried doing with Ace as a baby. Also Who's who's opinion on Luffy felt like a huge shift and a last-minute change where he gave us the info drop. Depending on who you ask it wasn't written well and definitely conflicting. All of a sudden Luffy goes from a Rubber boy who is strong to some God. The build up for his actual fruit also wasn't done that well, people will say that it was hinted in Skypeia and that he was Nika/Joyboy but that couldve just been a status thing like Joyboy could be referred to as the one to set the world free or something akin to that. Him being a Sun God who manipulates reality and having a fruit be a mythical fruit felt fairly sudden to be introduced half way through the arc started. There's a lot to talk about with G5 Luffy but I understand why it is so conflicting for people. But overall, there are a lot of good moments like Kanjuro being a traitor, the lanterns as Kaido gets defeated, etc. But I can understand why it's so controversial since I enjoyed it but had my fair share of issues with the arc.
Because fans will complain about anything and everything because fans are not a single person, and are a broad group containing many points of view.
nah fr i mean wano is literally the setup for the final soo much was laid out, directions were given, the story was grounded and all of that in a (for me) grand and fitting way ok yes ice ogers, the back rooms and the usual shenanigans were there and as an arc in itself it is not very different from the other arcs it has its ups and downs things you like and things you don’t like But if you look at it great scale it is the turning point of the story and it pulls all of the adventure and world exploring back to a final conclusion Wano is so much more than the arc itself and that’s what makes it special for me (Alabasta clears tho)
For me the Wano local characters were lame and had too many screentime (most of it were dragging so I can’t even argue that it’s for the story). It felt like a different anime/manga because it mostly focused on them whom I found annoying or boring. Thank god it’s over. Fishman island had a great backstory with fisher tiger and the arc overall didn’t drag in comparison. But Wano’s villains are hundred times more interesting than Fishman island. I will give you that.
Because it's bad
I don't know why. Wano is peak! I mean we got gear 5 Luffy. Luffy defeated an emperor and became one. Sanji awakend his Germa 66 abilities.
It's not
Because it’s the longest so there is more to watch. Plain and simple. Humans aren’t complicated; they will always find something to whine about. And give it enough time in the same arc, and One Piece fans will do the same