One Piece: Come Aboard and Bring Along all Your Hopes and Dreams

Now, I don't usually watch animes because I struggle to watch the action and read subtitles simultaneously, and dubbed versions are usually just so bad it's painful. But my friend suggested to me that I should watch One Piece, so I did. I am sorry to say it was the subbed version though. I know, I know, I'm bad.

One Piece is probably the first anime I have ever watched properly, and I love it. Now let me tell you why. 

I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot in these reviews, but I think the characters are brilliant. Everyone is totally different and I love the back stories they have, and the journey they have come on to get where they are. Well, I say this, but I can not stand Usopp. SPOILERS. I just don't like his character at all. I don't like how he has to lie to get people to like him. I totally understand why he does considering his background but he still continues to lie even though it can get the others into a pickle. Yeah, fair enough living day to day in his own little world, but c'mon there's a time and a place. People have ranted to me about "how he grows as a character and becomes more brave and useful on the crew blah blah" and yeah fair enough, I get that, but that's not the reason I don't like him. He's just an arse and his personality GRINDS MY GEARS. 

Sorry rant over. 

Maybe I'll come to like him the further I get into the series. I mean, there's a good 700 episodes at least and I'm not even at half way yet, so there's still hope for Usopp yet. Maybe.

Like I said though, I've never really watched animes before, and I don't know if other shows have done something similar, but I like the powers or abilities that the characters possess. I think they're just so creative and I like how I'm sucked into this world that is just so imaginative. Usually the things I watch are quite realistic, and the events that occur could actually happen in real life, and it was a nice change for me that majority of One Piece definitely couldn't. Everything from having the ability to shape shift or stretch, down to rivers that run into sky. 

Now, I think the story is great. It has - again, repeating myself a bit here - a good mixture of background stories, fight scenes, adventure and sad & happy scenes, but I do think the show has some flaws. Some of the scenes drag for waaaaaay too long. Sometimes it's fine because there is a lot of ground that needs to be covered, but then on the other hand, and I might stand alone with this opinion, there are some scenes that just seem unnecessarily long. A good example of this is the fight scene towards the beginning of the series (I forget the exact details, it's been a while). That fight scene lasted like five episodes, and I felt it could easily be compressed into about two. It was actually these dragging scenes that stopped me from watching it. I wasn't necessarily bored, but at the time I was watching it I had a lot going on with college and I just couldn't be bothered to watch through it and I had important stuff to do. I never really returned to watching it either as my sister excelled ahead of me, and I just felt too behind to catch up. If I find the time between blogging and crying over blogging I might try and pick up where I left, because I really did enjoy watching the show. If you can be bothered to get into it and commit about half your life watching 700 or so episodes (and it's still going) I'd definitely recommend it.