User blog comment:Nicolas Yami/It One Piece really long?/@comment-24850639-20150423193217

Everyone's said what I was gonna say in some form or another. Basically length is relative, depending on how the story is told. It isn't necessarily fair to compare it to series by DC Comics/Marvel, especially when there have been so many different continuities. At the end of the day, most of their series involve crimefighters. A crimefighter's only real purpose is that, fight crime. There's no epic journey they're embarking on, or ultimate dream they're hoping to fulfill usually. On top of that, in terms of their enemies, they usually wait for the bad to come to them. They don't actively seek out and destroy their opponents, rather the bad guy initiates something that causes the hero to take action. As long as you can always come up with a new villain, or some new plotline involving a villain, it'll essentially never feel like its getting old, or dragging on. The crimefighter exists solely to fight crime, and crime will always exist, so there isn't really a point where the crimefighter has ever "won". As they fight each villain, there isn't an end goal in the background that they're moving themselves closer to.

One Piece is an entirely different beast. We know the main characters end goal, but on top of that, he has crew members that also have their own end goals. We knew nothing of what it took to get this goal starting out; Luffy essentially was just drifting from island to island, with no real agenda aside from maybe new crewmembers, and getting to the Grand Line. Through each new person he meets and is introduced into the storyline, we learn something new about the journey ands its requirements, about the main characters, about characters that will affect the main characters and their journey, and how different objects/abilities/places impact this journey. I don't think any other manga has had THIS many different characters (important or not), places (important or not), or objectives that all tie into the main story in some form or another. Even though the series is currently focused on Dressrosa right now, something else happening in say, the Kano country, could be equally important. Ace's search for Blackbeard was completely separate from what was currently going on in the Alabasta Saga, yet it set the stage for an event that completely changed Luffy and his crew's attitude. I don't think any other manga has ever had so many elements that all work in unison like this.