User blog comment:Introvert 32/The wait/@comment-24850639-20180710194302

Only real remedy for that is to just disengage from the series entiirely for a while, and then come back and binge watch/read. I watched the series on and off back when they were still showing it on 4Kids TV when I was in 8th grade, and then didn't so much as think about the series again until the summer of my sophomore year in college (6 whole years later). At that point, I binge-watched all of Jaya through the timeskip. Dropped it, picked it up again and binge-watched Fishman Island through the early parts of Dressrosa. When I caught up that time, is when I started reading the manga, and went all the way back to Episode 1 for the anime.

Re-watching the anime's earliest episodes now armed with the knowledge I had of the series made those earlier arcs seem so much better. You noticed the moments that were really significant, and that the anime may have called out more than the manga. I'll give an example: after seeing how much Luffy cared about his Straw Hat over the course of the series, seeing the actual story of how Shanks gave it to him in Episode 3 just tore me apart. Another example: seeing how much faith Nami places in the crew when they really need to get something done. Igarams' ship gets blown up when the Straw Hats are leaving Whiskey Peak, which brings Vivi to tears. Nami promised Vivi that her crew is going to save their country, seeing as they saved the entire East Blue all by themselves. Nami knew that they were facing a Shichibukai, and that Luffy had never fought one before, but she nonetheless had the utmost faith in them. Very interesting dichotomy of her usual fear of getting into danger, versus her absolute faith in the crew when shit gets real. I'd say just take a break and go watch or read something else, and then come back in like a year. Some aspects of following this series are a lot easier to digest if you can read it all in conjunction, as opposed to staying up week by week.