User blog comment:Norman Fong Ochoa/Anything New Which Could Stand to One Piece Now?/@comment-4401815-20170723162414/@comment-30127592-20170725183352

I agree: The best thing about one piece is how Oda manages to build and oversee such a huge setting, consistently introducing new themes, locations and characters, and still manages to make it all feel organic and fitting in the greater whole. Especially the way he often builds up relatively small details to a point where they heavily influence the overall plot, as we've seen with Bepo and the auction house foreshadowing the Minks, Sanji's anger at Duval and his mask, and recently with the Tamatebako; and the same can be said about his foreshadowing of upcoming events in the colour spreads. The amount of preparation and world-building it must have taken to keep it all both consistent and introduced in a fitting, organic way without overwhelming readers must be immense.

While i agree that Luffy running out of time while using Gear 4 unhinged the doffy arc for a few chapters, i can't really fault Oda, as the best way to make new abilities interesting is by giving them clear limits and drawbacks, and that was the only way to show those at the time. It's similar to how luffy's Gear 3 shrinkage almost dooming him while fighting Rob Lucci. In the latter fight, Oda resolved it quite nicely; in the former he may not have managed to resolve it as well, but it managed to show Gear 4th's main drawback quite well.