Netflix to distribute the live-action My Hero Academia, because the universe has a sick sense of humor

[Jman]

This is where your subscriber money is going kids!  We lost a Bone cartoon for this!

[OwlChemist81]

I don't even have Netflix. Worst of the streaming services by far!

Been enjoying the hell out of Bleach: TYBW on Hulu though!

Edited December 12, 2022 by OwlChemist81

[MasqueradeOverture]

At least it will suck and bomb.

[Jman]

11 minutes ago, MasqueradeOverture said:

At least it will suck and bomb.

How is that a good thing?!

[MasqueradeOverture]

1 hour ago, Jman said:

How is that a good thing?!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand poe's law strikes again

[atomicinumatt]

3 hours ago, Jman said:

This is where your subscriber money is going kids!  We lost a Bone cartoon for this!

Have they not learned from the live action failure they did with Bebop?

Edited December 12, 2022 by atomicinumatt

[viperxmns]

finally, something live action that has superheroes

[3ngag3]

We already have a live action My Hero Academia.

It's called 'Sky High'

[Jman]

2 minutes ago, 3ngag3 said:

We already have a live action My Hero Academia.

It's called 'Sky High'

I’ve heard this joke nonstop since the project was first announced years ago.

So I’m just going to say it.

FUCK SKY HIGH.  IT WAS SHIT.  A WASTE OF BRUCE CAMPBELL.  A BOX OFFICE BOMB.  IT SUCKED.

[Daos]

6 hours ago, Jman said:

I’ve heard this joke nonstop since the project was first announced years ago.

So I’m just going to say it.

FUCK SKY HIGH.  IT WAS SHIT.  A WASTE OF BRUCE CAMPBELL.  A BOX OFFICE BOMB.  IT SUCKED.

I think it had potential, but they went wayyyyy too campy with it.

[PokeNirvash]

Well it was a Disney film marketed towards kids.

[Daos]

3 hours ago, PokeNirvash said:

Well it was a Disney film marketed towards kids.

Always remember, just because something is marketed to kids.... doesn't mean it has to suck.

It didn't seem to know what it was trying to be. A wacky parody/ comedy? Or a serious story about a super hero school? 

Harry Potter was about a wizard school and heavily marketed to kids, it didn't treat its story as a joke though.

 

[matrixman124]

21 hours ago, Jman said:

This is where your subscriber money is going kids!  We lost a Bone cartoon for this!

To be fair, they just need to follow Super Sentai/Power Rangers formula

[matrixman124]

7 hours ago, Daos said:

I think it had potential, but they went wayyyyy too campy with it.

I actually really liked Sky High. Superhero materials can be Super (ha) camp. I think it worked. And Bruce is the king of B movie camp. He was perfect for that film.

[EmpressAngel]

You'd think at some point, western studios would look at the track record of live-action anime adaptations being both critical and financial poison and just cut their losses. Like, I'm pretty sure you can count on one hand the number of these things that have actually made a profit and/or got genuinely positive reception. If nobody's able to make money off of this idea, and the intended audience tends to be lukewarm to downright hostile about the idea, maybe it's just not a viable idea and you should let it go?

[Daos]

4 hours ago, EmpressAngel said:

You'd think at some point, western studios would look at the track record of live-action anime adaptations being both critical and financial poison and just cut their losses. Like, I'm pretty sure you can count on one hand the number of these things that have actually made a profit and/or got genuinely positive reception. If nobody's able to make money off of this idea, and the intended audience tends to be lukewarm to downright hostile about the idea, maybe it's just not a viable idea and you should let it go?

I've actually always wondered about this. How does Hollywood actually make money? Most of what they put out is crap, and they put out far more bombs than money makers.

My guess is the money makers make so much money that they pay for all the bombs and still have money left over.

Look at DC movies. A whole wad of money losers. So what do they do? Put out Black Adam. It loses money. What will they do next? More DC movies. 

Why? Don't know.

[Jman]

15 hours ago, EmpressAngel said:

You'd think at some point, western studios would look at the track record of live-action anime adaptations being both critical and financial poison and just cut their losses. Like, I'm pretty sure you can count on one hand the number of these things that have actually made a profit and/or got genuinely positive reception. If nobody's able to make money off of this idea, and the intended audience tends to be lukewarm to downright hostile about the idea, maybe it's just not a viable idea and you should let it go?

Yeah, but all the good comics have been used.  Seriously, we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel over at the House of Ideas (Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf by Night, Ms. Marvel), DC has no clue what it’s doing, and indie comics worth a damn have dried up.  
 

The problem is that manga adaptations don’t work nearly as well because they’re much less malleable.  So they naturally go for the most obvious Shounen Jump titles with no way to translate that into a visual medium, or change so much the end result is slurry (the script for the LA Gundam from the Paper Girls and Y the Last Man guy is supposed to be complete shit).

So be on the look out for Chainsaw Man in 2026 starring that black kid from Cobra Kai as Denji.  And it’s directed by Quentin Tarantino. (Actually, Tarantino is the one director I would actually somewhat be morbidly curious with a Chainsaw Man movie).

Edited December 14, 2022 by Jman

[Daos]

Technically we were scraping the bottom of the barrel when Guardians of the Galaxy came out. Like most people, I hadn't heard of any of those characters. 

But Marvel at the time had good enough writing to turn obscure characters into big franchises. Disney/Marvel doesn't have that anymore, and WB/DC never had it.

[OwlChemist81]

I would argue that Black Panther has sort of done that. And then there's Dr. Strange.

On the DC side, Suicide Squad/Harley Quinn KIND of did that. Not many had really heard of King Shark before Ron Funches voiced him. Also, Aquaman IS relatively obscure.

Edited December 14, 2022 by OwlChemist81

[DragonSinger]

On 12/13/2022 at 11:08 AM, matrixman124 said:

I actually really liked Sky High. Superhero materials can be Super (ha) camp. I think it worked. And Bruce is the king of B movie camp. He was perfect for that film.

I wanted a sequel for a long ass time. Also me during a rewatch some years later: "Warr..en...Peace? Ohhhhhh!"

[PokeNirvash]

I understood the pun behind Warren Peace's name from the very first watch. And I hadn't even heard of Tolstoy at that point.

Edited December 15, 2022 by PokeNirvash

[Daos]

9 hours ago, OwlChemist81 said:

I would argue that Black Panther has sort of done that. And then there's Dr. Strange.

On the DC side, Suicide Squad/Harley Quinn KIND of did that. Not many had really heard of King Shark before Ron Funches voiced him. Also, Aquaman IS relatively obscure.

Aquaman Obscure? What are you smokin bro?

[matrixman124]

1 hour ago, Daos said:

Aquaman Obscure? What are you smokin bro?

[Top Gun]

No one watched old CN promos?

"My ability to talk to fish is of no use to us here!"

[Daos]

3 hours ago, Top Gun said:

No one watched old CN promos?

"My ability to talk to fish is of no use to us here!"

I mean he's not exactly well respected but almost every human being in America knows exactly who Aquaman is, even before the movies came out. That's the opposite of obscure.

Edited December 16, 2022 by Daos

[Jman]

 

Production has begun, headed by Joby Harold, the producer of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (aka the TV show with Godzilla).

[Jman]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/my-hero-academia-live-action-movie-1236366658/
 

It’s moving forward.

[naraku360]

On 12/12/2022 at 2:08 PM, atomicinumatt said:

Have they not learned from the live action failure they did with Bebop?

Not when the live action One Piece is significantly better than the original.

 

 

 

......

 

 

 

 

That post was way before One Piece came out, but whatever, I'll make fun of OG One Piece for being trash anyway.

Edited Thursday at 12:33 PM by naraku360

[Top Gun]

4 hours ago, naraku360 said:

Not when the live action One Piece is significantly better than the original.

 

 

 

......

 

 

 

 

That post was way before One Piece came out, but whatever, I'll make fun of OG One Piece for being trash anyway.

I'm sorry you have to live with the constant shame of being so wrong. It must be hard for you. 

[naraku360]

20 minutes ago, Top Gun said:

I'm sorry you have to live with the constant shame of being so wrong. It must be hard for you. 

It's really not my fault that being adequate is better than the original.

Simply cutting utter dogshit like the DOZENS of nigh identical B-plots where Luffy [or whatever character(s) it is this time] fucks off to find food in favor of mixing in actual storylines that do things like develop the characters or move the narrative forward in some tangible way, also known as not wasting my time, is an automatic, significant, and downright objective improvement.

Oda explicitly treated it like a second draft, and if you compare it side by side, you can fucking tell, my dude. There are maybe moments done better in the source, but nowhere near the number of improvements.

There was more character depth within the first season than the totality of 100+ episodes of the anime.

Edited Thursday at 05:22 PM by naraku360

[Top Gun]

Shhhh. It's okay. You're allowed to be wrong. It's fine.

[naraku360]

3 hours ago, Top Gun said:

Shhhh. It's okay. You're allowed to be wrong. It's fine.

What's wrong about it?

"Lolno u wrong" is little more than a lazy, cheap way to say "I disagree but have nothing to substantiate it with."

The source sections off any of the crew not immediately relevant, and insists on showing them do nothing, as a matter of the series formula. It was every arc within the first 110ish episodes.

I don't mind them not being around. I don't mind checking in on the crew.

I do mind showing what everyone's up to if what most of them are up to amounts to the same gag as the last 10 appearances and it takes up half the episode. For, like, a vast majority of episodes. It's mindnumbing and I genuinely have no clue how anyone can like it.

So, what was the point of the 10th B-plot where Luffy or Zorro or Sanji decide to waste my time watching then break stuff in efforts to find food? Because, let's be real, almost every B-plot in Romance Dawn is about someone being hungry, causing destruction looking for food, and little, if anything, else.

[Jman]

So…we’re totally getting Cena as All Might, aren’t we?  Him or Cody Rhodes.

[Sketch]

52 minutes ago, Jman said:

So…we’re totally getting Cena as All Might, aren’t we?  Him or Cody Rhodes.

Yeah probably

[Jman]

1 hour ago, Sketch said:

Yeah probably

 

[Top Gun]

1 hour ago, naraku360 said:

What's wrong about it?

"Lolno u wrong" is little more than a lazy, cheap way to say "I disagree but have nothing to substantiate it with."

The source sections off any of the crew not immediately relevant, and insists on showing them do nothing, as a matter of the series formula. It was every arc within the first 110ish episodes.

I don't mind them not being around. I don't mind checking in on the crew.

I do mind showing what everyone's up to if what most of them are up to amounts to the same gag as the last 10 appearances and it takes up half the episode. For, like, a vast majority of episodes. It's mindnumbing and I genuinely have no clue how anyone can like it.

So, what was the point of the 10th B-plot where Luffy or Zorro or Sanji decide to waste my time watching then break stuff in efforts to find food? Because, let's be real, almost every B-plot in Romance Dawn is about someone being hungry, causing destruction looking for food, and little, if anything, else.

I was responding to your one-liners in turn for lulz, but sure, we can talk about this for real. The trouble is that I'm...not really sure where your complaints are coming from. Like for starters, there aren't "dozens of plots where someone runs off to find food." That is not a thing that happens on the regular, at all. The only thing from the early going that might qualify off the top of my head is the Baratie arc, but that's wholly dedicated to a seagoing restaurant and a search for a ship's cook so that's kind of a given. I don't really get what you mean about "sectioning off" crew members and cutting to them "doing nothing." Yeah, the crew splits up at times, but that's usually to tackle some intermediate goals or to fight various subordinate arc villains while Luffy goes to take on the big bad. The only time they're usually standing around is when everything else has been taken care of and Luffy's engage in the arc's climactic fight. I also have no idea if you're differentiating between the story that Oda actually wrote himself, and the usual sort of shounen anime fluff that Toei adds in to stall for time.

A lot of the points you're making make it sound like you're relatively unfamiliar with the series as a whole. And if you've seen 100-odd episodes you may think that's crazy talk, but trust me, that's just scratching the surface. I don't even blame you for that, because even if you were enjoying yourself you're looking at dozens of hours worth of reading or hundreds of watching to catch up to the current material, and I'd never expect anyone to do that. Suffice it to say that by that point in the series, the "main plot" has just barely been introduced, and even then only in tiny hints. The reason so many of us love this series is because of how ambitious its storytelling is, in a way that very few other manga series have ever tried.  It's the sort of long-form work one might only otherwise encounter in epic fantasy novels, like ASOIAF if Martin actually got off his fat ass and wrote once in a while. As the series has recently started to enter its endgame I've watched almost 20-year-old plot points pay off in spectacular fashion. It's the greatest long-form shounen series ever created, and it's not being close. The catch is that you have to stick with it for the long term to see that big picture being formed.

As for the live-action series, I've heard a lot of praise for it but know very little about it myself. I'm an animation nerd at heart,  live-action adaptations don't really do anything for me. What I do know is that while Oda undoubtedly has to sign off on whatever it does, he's not the one writing the adaptation, so any changes there are strictly on its own writers. It's certainly not intended to be an upgrade or replacement for the original story.

[naraku360]

2 hours ago, Top Gun said:

I was responding to your one-liners in turn for lulz, but sure, we can talk about this for real. The trouble is that I'm...not really sure where your complaints are coming from. Like for starters, there aren't "dozens of plots where someone runs off to find food." That is not a thing that happens on the regular, at all. The only thing from the early going that might qualify off the top of my head is the Baratie arc, but that's wholly dedicated to a seagoing restaurant and a search for a ship's cook so that's kind of a given. I don't really get what you mean about "sectioning off" crew members and cutting to them "doing nothing." Yeah, the crew splits up at times, but that's usually to tackle some intermediate goals or to fight various subordinate arc villains while Luffy goes to take on the big bad. The only time they're usually standing around is when everything else has been taken care of and Luffy's engage in the arc's climactic fight. I also have no idea if you're differentiating between the story that Oda actually wrote himself, and the usual sort of shounen anime fluff that Toei adds in to stall for time.

A lot of the points you're making make it sound like you're relatively unfamiliar with the series as a whole. And if you've seen 100-odd episodes you may think that's crazy talk, but trust me, that's just scratching the surface. I don't even blame you for that, because even if you were enjoying yourself you're looking at dozens of hours worth of reading or hundreds of watching to catch up to the current material, and I'd never expect anyone to do that. Suffice it to say that by that point in the series, the "main plot" has just barely been introduced, and even then only in tiny hints. The reason so many of us love this series is because of how ambitious its storytelling is, in a way that very few other manga series have ever tried.  It's the sort of long-form work one might only otherwise encounter in epic fantasy novels, like ASOIAF if Martin actually got off his fat ass and wrote once in a while. As the series has recently started to enter its endgame I've watched almost 20-year-old plot points pay off in spectacular fashion. It's the greatest long-form shounen series ever created, and it's not being close. The catch is that you have to stick with it for the long term to see that big picture being formed.

As for the live-action series, I've heard a lot of praise for it but know very little about it myself. I'm an animation nerd at heart,  live-action adaptations don't really do anything for me. What I do know is that while Oda undoubtedly has to sign off on whatever it does, he's not the one writing the adaptation, so any changes there are strictly on its own writers. It's certainly not intended to be an upgrade or replacement for the original story.

There was a very strict formula where anyone not directly relevant to the main story would have B-plots that broadly contributed very little. Basically everyone I've ever described this to has recognized what I'm talking about, even big fans. I remember there being at least 3 or 4 times where it came down to a character getting hungry and causing a commnotion to get food or as a result of how they got food, but I'm exaggerating on it being strictly food related. The basic point being that the B-plots genuinely felt like filler, even when they weren't. I swear this happened in every Romance Dawn arc with the exception of like.... when Luffy had no crew. They weren't standing around; they just weren't doing things that actually built toward a cohesive narrative within the arc. The split up like every time they reached land, and half the cast typically would just ignore the main story over something trivial, but we'll still keep up with whatever their doing. You probably don't remember them because they are mostly comedy relief.

I had some pretty significant worldbuilding issues very early and they only got worse as the show went. I highly doubt they get better, given the foundational lore is already busted. Like Devil Fruit are a myth but then everywhere they go, they run into Devil Fruit users, and also the highest ranked government officials are famous for being Devil Fruit users, and nobody ever hides that they have abilities.

They mix arcs in the live action and the reason it barely feels like it is because most of the time spent on B-plots get replaced with A-plots, and you lose virtually nothing for it. It straight up cuts the bulk of my grievances by having some basic efficiency with the storytelling.

[Toonamiguy321]

16 hours ago, naraku360 said:

There was a very strict formula where anyone not directly relevant to the main story would have B-plots that broadly contributed very little. Basically everyone I've ever described this to has recognized what I'm talking about, even big fans. I remember there being at least 3 or 4 times where it came down to a character getting hungry and causing a commnotion to get food or as a result of how they got food, but I'm exaggerating on it being strictly food related. The basic point being that the B-plots genuinely felt like filler, even when they weren't. I swear this happened in every Romance Dawn arc with the exception of like.... when Luffy had no crew. They weren't standing around; they just weren't doing things that actually built toward a cohesive narrative within the arc. The split up like every time they reached land, and half the cast typically would just ignore the main story over something trivial, but we'll still keep up with whatever their doing. You probably don't remember them because they are mostly comedy relief.

I had some pretty significant worldbuilding issues very early and they only got worse as the show went. I highly doubt they get better, given the foundational lore is already busted. Like Devil Fruit are a myth but then everywhere they go, they run into Devil Fruit users, and also the highest ranked government officials are famous for being Devil Fruit users, and nobody ever hides that they have abilities.

They mix arcs in the live action and the reason it barely feels like it is because most of the time spent on B-plots get replaced with A-plots, and you lose virtually nothing for it. It straight up cuts the bulk of my grievances by having some basic efficiency with the storytelling.

No, you are correct here about this. Oda likes to divide up the crew each arc and let different members get more spotlight. In Dressrosa, we see a slightly more tolerable method of doing this. Instead of half the crew shifting to some borderline filler adventure, they just get shuffled off to the next arcs start line, and we rarely check on them. Once the rest of the crew catches up, they will bench and recover while the other half of the crew takes the spotlight. 
 

I think Oda did a bit of a U turn on the world building regarding Devil Fruits. They are rare, they are expensive, the average jackoff will never even be near one, but their existence is well known. 
 

Things also change after the timeskip, as we move into a much more powerful area of the world, devil fruits aren’t a strange thing, they are an expectation for survival. Same with Haki. There is only a handful of people in the east blue who can do that. Yet now we see even regular background mook marines can do it easily. Because that’s the areas power level expectation. 
 

What I feel like the live action does the best job of fixing is we don’t have to take constant pauses for a character to do their goofy gimmick. We don’t have to see Zoro get lost EVERY scene where there is movement. We don’t have to see Sanji’s bullshit EVERY time boobs come into frame. We don’t have to watch half the cast scream and make a wacky face every 30 seconds. This is the true time waster in One Piece. 

[Top Gun]

10 hours ago, naraku360 said:

There was a very strict formula where anyone not directly relevant to the main story would have B-plots that broadly contributed very little. Basically everyone I've ever described this to has recognized what I'm talking about, even big fans. I remember there being at least 3 or 4 times where it came down to a character getting hungry and causing a commnotion to get food or as a result of how they got food, but I'm exaggerating on it being strictly food related. The basic point being that the B-plots genuinely felt like filler, even when they weren't. I swear this happened in every Romance Dawn arc with the exception of like.... when Luffy had no crew. They weren't standing around; they just weren't doing things that actually built toward a cohesive narrative within the arc. The split up like every time they reached land, and half the cast typically would just ignore the main story over something trivial, but we'll still keep up with whatever their doing. You probably don't remember them because they are mostly comedy relief.

I had some pretty significant worldbuilding issues very early and they only got worse as the show went. I highly doubt they get better, given the foundational lore is already busted. Like Devil Fruit are a myth but then everywhere they go, they run into Devil Fruit users, and also the highest ranked government officials are famous for being Devil Fruit users, and nobody ever hides that they have abilities.

They mix arcs in the live action and the reason it barely feels like it is because most of the time spent on B-plots get replaced with A-plots, and you lose virtually nothing for it. It straight up cuts the bulk of my grievances by having some basic efficiency with the storytelling.

(Got beat to this reply but I'm too lazy to go back and change what I had.)

I wish you had some specific examples of what you meant, because I've been following this series continuously for nearly 20 years but nothing immediately comes to mind. Granted it's been a hot minute since I've gone back and watched Romance Dawn. What I do know is that those early arcs were very simplistic in structure. You'd have one main villain that Luffy needed to fight, maybe a couple of subordinates for one or two of the other crew members to take on, and not a whole lot else. As the arcs start getting more complex and there are multiple concurrent plot threads going on, that's when you see the crew split up to complete important tasks or fights on their own. The Alabasta arc is probably the first time it happens on a larger scale. By the time you get to the Dressrosa arc that's just finishing up on the Toonami broadcast, the amount of "MEANWHILE..." cut-aways to all of the different conflicts going on at once got to meme level.

The Devil Fruit thing makes some sense if you think about how the One Piece world is set up. The Grand Line is the place where almost everything big happens: the Marines are mostly based there, the most dangerous pirates are either all there or want to be there, the most powerful kingdoms all seem to be there, and the very seat of the World Government is located there. This is where most pirates and Marines with Devil Fruits are going to wind up. In contrast, the four regular oceans are relatively quiet, and East Blue in particular is described as the most backwater and inconsequential part of the world. To add to that, sea travel is still relatively dangerous unless you're strong yourself, so most normal people presumably spend their whole lives on the same island they were born on. If you're a regular citizen somewhere in the East Blue, you're almost certainly never going to encounter someone with Devil Fruit powers yourself (at least not until Luffy shows up), so the best you might have is a distant rumor. I doubt the Marines are that eager to see their soldiers' powers revealed in the papers either. The best chance most of these people would have to see Devil Fruit powers in action was in a massive series-changing war that was essentially livestreamed to most of the world, but that comes much later. And true, it's also that the series expanded a great deal from its earliest days, so what was a rare power at the start became ubiquitous later.

But when I mentioned world-building I was thinking about elements that you almost certainly didn't see yet in your time with the series. One Piece is a narrative that operates on a few different levels. The first is the basic moment-to-moment story that's limited to the island on which the Straw Hats currently find themselves. For the most part that's all that's going on in the Romance Dawn saga. It's not until the Straw Hats enter the Grand Line and the Baroque Works saga starts that we get the first example of the second level, an overarching goal that connects multiple islands together (in this case helping Vivi return to her kingdom to expose Crocodile and prevent a civil war). And it's not really until the climax of the Alabasta arc that we get the first real glimpse of the higher-level narrative: the mystery of this world's past, how its current rulers seized power and suppressed that knowledge, of hidden ancient weapons and the "Will of D." That's the level that most One Piece fans enjoy the most, that has us hanging on every new reveal over years or even decades. There's been some huge stuff happening in the anime recently (and I'd imagine even more in the manga, which I'm not current on), and it's been immensely satisfying seeing these payoffs after so long. It's definitely a series you need to be in for the long haul though.

[naraku360]

On 9/12/2025 at 9:34 PM, Top Gun said:

I wish you had some specific examples of what you meant, because I've been following this series continuously for nearly 20 years but nothing immediately comes to mind. Granted it's been a hot minute since I've gone back and watched Romance Dawn. What I do know is that those early arcs were very simplistic in structure. You'd have one main villain that Luffy needed to fight, maybe a couple of subordinates for one or two of the other crew members to take on, and not a whole lot else. As the arcs start getting more complex and there are multiple concurrent plot threads going on, that's when you see the crew split up to complete important tasks or fights on their own. The Alabasta arc is probably the first time it happens on a larger scale. By the time you get to the Dressrosa arc that's just finishing up on the Toonami broadcast, the amount of "MEANWHILE..." cut-aways to all of the different conflicts going on at once got to meme level.

It's been quite a while since I watched it, so my memory is going to be more broad than I would like.

I recall things like the Arlong arc positioning Nami as the main character of the arc, but basically leaves everyone else to drift around for the bulk. When it comes to the final fights, they brought the crew together for it, but I recall the entire reason Luffy winds up there being a matter of happenstance or events largely (completely?) unrelated to Nami rather than active involvement with Nami throughout. Like I remember Luffy giving his emotional speeches and duking it out, but without looking it up, I doubt either of us could give a summary of what he was doing prior to confronting Arlong, yet I'm certain they showed it, yet it's like half the material of said arc.

On 9/12/2025 at 9:34 PM, Top Gun said:

One Piece is a narrative that operates on a few different levels. The first is the basic moment-to-moment story that's limited to the island on which the Straw Hats currently find themselves. For the most part that's all that's going on in the Romance Dawn saga.

This isn't inherently bad, but it does the best job of identifying where my hangups came from. A great deal of the moment-to-moment, especially when talking about plotlines divorced from the main one, were typically lacking a strong motivation for anyone not central to whichever arc.

By replacing the comedy relief side plots with concurrent character arcs for people who previously were drifting, you get something closer to

On 9/12/2025 at 9:34 PM, Top Gun said:

As the arcs start getting more complex and there are multiple concurrent plot threads going on, that's when you see the crew split up to complete important tasks or fights on their own.

but it's within 8 episodes instead of over 100. I'm all for long games but the setup up should also be good, and introducing Dudeguy #20 so I might recognize him 300 episodes later isn't enough to justify. There are better ways to do it, like making the character you're introducing noteworthy in the A-plot as opposed to rigidly assigning them the throwaway B-plots.

Edited Monday at 06:26 PM by naraku360

[Top Gun]

Arlong Park is a bit of an oddity in that it really starts in the middle of the previous arc, Baratie. You're right that I did have to look up a bit as a refresher (again, it's been a long time), but the arc kicks off when Nami steals the Going Merry and sails to her home. Zoro and Usopp chase after her right away, and after Luffy finishes off the Baratie antagonist he and Sanji follow them too. So in that regard they all wind up on Nami's home island due directly to her actions. After that there are really only a handful of episodes before the big final fight starts. Nami interacts with the rest of the crew a couple of times in an attempt to drive them away (including a faked killing of Usopp to save him from the Arlong Pirates), and then the key part is Nami's sister showing up to tell her whole backstory. You do have a point in that Luffy doesn't really care about this part and checks out, but that's more down to his character: he's a single-minded and direct kind of guy, and if he's already decided that he trusts someone, then he doesn't need to hear anything else. Then after that Nami gets screwed over one last time and begs Luffy for help and you have the iconic scenes of him putting his hat on her and marching on Arlong Park and the big fights begin. The characters don't have much time to do any wandering before the crucial flashback and subsequent fight, and what they do on the island is either related to finding Nami or interacting with her directly. I think I have a better understanding of what you mean now, but I don't think that Arlong Park is the best example of it.

If there are story elements that I think fit what you're describing, then they occur fairly early on in the series ("early" being a relative term for something this gargantuan), and as I said I think it largely moves past them. Maybe it didn't move past them quickly enough for you, and that's fair enough. I said it before, but I also think there's a need to differentiate between the story that Oda wrote, and the way in which Toei has adapted that story into anime. Like every long-running shounen adaptation ever created, there's a need to stretch the material out to fill a weekly anime slot, and in One Piece's case that's usually done by slowing down the pacing in-episode, rather than inserting gargantuan filler arcs like Naruto or Bleach. I don't read the manga myself, but I've spent enough time with the anime to have a good nose for when Toei's pulling some stalling tactics. Without any other specific examples to go on, I'd wager that at least some of the "comedy relief side plots" you're talking about are anime-original material. There are still some traditional filler episodes and arcs too. During the Loguetown arc there are a few random filler episodes (I think one of them is actually based on a published side story), and after it the whole Apis arc with the dragons and the girl with the dumb pope hat is filler as well. There are a handful of filler episodes scattered throughout Alabasta too. Not to say that any and all comic relief is filler, far from it, but I have to think that at least some of your complaints fall under it.

I guess the last bit is that the characters that Oda reintroduces and gives expanded roles much later on tend to be those involved in the main plot of an arc, even if in an ancillary fashion. Just as one example, one of the Fishmen from the Arlong Park arc plays a significant role in an arc much later on (and got a cover arc story in the manga before that). It's not a character I don't think most people were clamoring to see again, but it's fun when those sorts of characters pop up and get a chance to do more the second time around. The more significant a character was the first time they appeared, the more impact they'll have later on. Vivi was the driving force behind the entire Baroque Works saga, and let's just say she's been involved in a huge way in the manga/anime's recent past. Probably the most noteworthy example of this are the Supernovas, a group of pirates with unique designs and powers vaguely on-par with Luffy that Oda infamously banged out in a week or so because I guess he wanted to draw some cool characters. Nearly all of them have been major players in the second half of the series, and some of them have spent dozens or even hundreds of episodes involved with the Straw Hats and received massive character development themselves. Again, I get it if you're not interested in waiting around for that long, but maybe the best thing about One Piece for those of us who are fans is that pretty much everything gets a great payoff in the long run.