So I am on Ep 5 of 8 in OPLA and I have a few thoughts. Spoilers below:
So I am enjoying this season WAY more than S1 (hoo boy my gripes with 1 coukd fill a book). This season is delivering in Amazing ways I do genuinely enjoy. Especially filling in characters and events that we later find out happen/ed during the journey (Barto, Brook, more on Crocus and Roger, etc).
BUT one gripe I have that may genuinely hurt OPLA in the long run is their continued commitment to just fucking killing off side characters/villains. Its actually and genuinely a problem to me. One of the things I have always loved about OP is the fact that no character is insignificant. Even when we leave them they go on to have a life. Sometimes they wallow in their loss. Sometimes they make a better life for themselves and others. But every life matters. Its what makes the Actual Deaths hit Just Right and So much harder.
And OPLA is falling into the modern show/anime trap of just killing off their side chars/villains. Which is very quickly cheapening things for me. I'd hoped Merry was an isolated incident. But after these eps I'm not thinking so. All of Whisky Peak, Mr. 9, Mr. 5 and Ms. Val. The current middling of Ms. GW. The added likelihood of Igaram staying dead... I do not, fucking, care for it. Because if we get to the later bits, we are going to be so desensitized to death that the losses will not hit right. Losing The Merry, losing Ace and WB. The deaths in Alabasta, the deaths of the WBs at MF. Etc. Those hit harder BECAUSE we don't kill.
So yeah. Its not ruining S2 for me entirely, but it is slowly building me to a point where I'm not enjoying it as much. It's making it feel the same way I do about the GoT series, or a lot of the newer animes. "Oh look, another dead char. Okay." Which isn't how OP is supposed to be.
We use sparing death for a reason. Because it means, when someone dies, it hits the way it should. If I wanted gratuitous char death I'd watch GoT, BNHA, etc.