one piece is super impressive in terms of the scale of the worldbuilding, oda's ability to weave disparate plot threads & characters together, & his ability to keep meticulous track of what info every character has at any given time. it often achieves a sort of "setting up dominoes & then knocking them all down" cascading effect that (when he does it well) is unlike anything else i've seen. it is also the most intensely that any piece of media has managed to make me cry, which is a rare thing for me in the first place
all that being said though, it is annoying as hell how oda seems to get progressively worse about writing women, leans harder & harder into Anime Bullshit with how he sexualizes female members of the cast, & draws 95% of them with the exact same body type (despite male characters frequently having body types of any conceivable shape). also the wide range of inspiration taken from different parts of the world for islands' differing cultures & architecture is not reflected at all in the diversity of skin tones. the anime is slightly better about that than the manga, but even the anime backpedals with some timeskip designs (nico robin is noticeably paler post-timeskip). sometimes one piece gets dangerously close to "white pharaoh" levels of colorism (alabasta)
all of that is unfortunate bc even with all the cool shit one piece does, it makes it harder to recommend it to people. i'm gonna keep watching, but i wish i didn't have to stomach the parts of it that suck really bad to experience the parts that make people decide to evangelize for the series
