User blog comment:Videogamep/The Impact of One Piece/@comment-13876472-20140131230955

No, I don't believe One Piece will have great impact in the future. At least that's what I understand by the clues I'm getting from my country (Greece). As for my reasoning I will divide my statements in two categories.


 * Impact to pop culture

When I say I like manga or anime, the majority of people surrounding me asking: "what exactly is it" or "what's its difference from comics or animation". There is always an easy answer to avoid the trouble by saying: "Dragonball" or "Pokemon" or "Kabamaru", which are extremely famous anime here with indeed a great impact. Specially, Pokemon is the greatest example of how an anime influenced pop culture and merchandise, no matter how I never liked it personally.

If One Piece would enter this Pantheon of popularity it would have shown signs of it already. After 15 years and all its aknowledgement in manga fandom it didn't manage to win the public aproval it deserves. Even if One Piece's ending brings upside down for its followers, very few people with no interest in manga/anime gonna be motivated to read/watch it. Its size is the most obvious reason for this. For someone not familiar with manga, 400 chapters is a really frightening amount and One Piece may reach three times as many.


 * Impact to mangakas

No matter how much I like One Piece, originality is the not a word I would use to describe it. Its scetching is just common and mediocre, its story is a common Shounen Adventure story, its protagonist is just another young good guy, with great potential in fighting. All the plot devellopment tools I see in One Piece, are already used by its predessors, with or without similar success. Power scaling, old badass geezers, the pure goal, ranks among the villains, arc divisions, time-skip, hot cheeks are just some of these too common elements that just came to my mind with no effort at all.

Don't get me wrong, I love One Piece, more than any other manga I'm reading, but impact is the last thing I expect from it.