So first time watching one piece and just finished Skypiea a few days ago and watching G-8 and I gotta say Skypiea almost made me quit the show.
I didn't like any characters other than Conis, Pagaya and Eneru, which sounds like a lot but they were barely in the season compared to Wyper or any of the Shandians and I really did not give a single fuck about any of their backstory. It felt more like filler than G-8 does right now. All the fights against the priests felt unimportant to the story and I straight up just didn't like the priests either. Whenever Luffy finally meets Eneru and they fight just for the fight to be held off for a couple more episodes while they tell the history of Upper Yard and make Luffy run up Giant Jack over and over again just killed all excitement.
The whole thing felt drawn out and could have been done in maybe 20ish episodes and the whole story felt unimportant (at least for now, friends tell me it means more like 600 episodes from now 💀).
Another thing was that my favourite characters just weren't in the arc that much. Sanji just got his ass knocked out for most of it, same with Chopper after protecting the Going Merry and Luffy just was inside a snake for half of it. Again, this was to focus on the Shandians and the backstory of Upper Yard, Noland etc.
Did anyone actually think the arc was impactful? Like yeah, it wasn't really bad but coming off Alabasta and into this was just shit but at least I got some banger arcs coming up according to my friends with Water-7 and Enies Lobby + G-8 is really good for filler (way better than Skypiea)
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