User blog comment:DevaunteSucksBalls/One Piece Vs Bleach , HELP US DECIDE./@comment-845858-20100801234314

Personally, I feel that One Piece is the better manga. Though I may be biased, seeing as this is a One Piece site, I do have a reasoning behind what I do. Mainly, this reasoning stems from the plot of both series and how it's handled.

For One Piece, the series has a goal, albeit a basic one: sail around the world, and find Gold Roger's treasure. However, Bleach has no goal in mind, and after four hundred chapters, the series is still beating up villains for no particular reason. In One Piece, the plot developments are foreshadowed to a great extent - even things like the spirit in the Going Merry and Crocodile's Devil Fruit powers were built up to well beforehand.

Meanwhile, Bleach shamelessly retcons half of its plot with nothing more than "I was lying" - Aizen not knowing where the Hougyoku was, the ability of Gin's bankai, the reasoning behind Urahara's exile from Soul Society. As well, Bleach's pacing is abominable - the past few chapters could be covered by other manga authors and artists in less than half a chapter, yet Kubo wastes countless amounts of space with massive blank panels, explosions and swirling dust, or close-ups of characters heads as they say a brief line of dialogue.

As well, there is the difference of how both series handle their characters. In One Piece, the characters are all given moments to shine, and their accomplishments mean something in the grand scheme of each arc. Meanwhile, in Bleach, every non-(former) Captain character, Ichigo, or Orihime might as well not exist as far as the plot is concerned - almost every time they do anything, it's negated immediately afterwards (Chad beat an opponent? Too bad, now he's going to lie unconscious for two hundred chapters!  Yammy revealed his ultimate form?  Let's shift focus to Aizen beating everybody effortlessly... again... for nearly twenty consecutive chapters.  Vice-Captains are having difficulty with Fraccion?  Yamamoto can one-shot all of the Fraccion, yet he sits there doing nothing until everyone's unconscious or dead.)

There's also the matter as to how believable the main character's victories are. With One Piece, the Devil Fruit powers have established weaknesses for the most part - even the Logia fruit users have abilities which they struggle against. Meanwhile, Bleach seems to be about putting the heroes up against unsurmountable odds and letting them win via gratuitous Deus Ex Machina.

Ulquiorra was superior to Ichigo in speed, durability, and strength, and manages to kill Ichigo, yet Ichigo comes back from the dead in a super mode that can curb-stomp Ulquiorra effortlessly, something which hadn't been established whatsoever. Barragan can kill his opponents by breathing near them and survives two bazooka shells to the face, yet he can't withstand his own breath despite doing so for the entire fight. Tousen is strong and durable enough to crack Komamura's bankai by blocking it, yet loses to an unreleased sword to the face even though it was established that a character's spiritual pressure must be in the same ballpark to be able to injure someone, and Hisagi was nowhere near as strong as Tousen.

And don't get me started on Aizen. Blackbeard, arguably the main villain for One Piece, has displayed weaknesses to his powers (ex. automatically drawing in attacks), and has lost to or struggled with opponents in all of his fights. Meanwhile, Aizen can't be inconvenienced in any way - every single time that it looks like he's going to be hurt, he either pulls a new power-up out of nowhere to negate it, or reveals that it was all an illusion, even in the most unlikely of circumstances (ex. when he's paralyzed, in the middle of being stabbed, and has had all of his directions reversed - either that, or Hinamori's thoughts beforehand were incredibly out of character).

He is better than every single character at everything they do (ex. he's smarter than Urahara, able to mentally reverse all of his directions effortlessly despire the sheer impossibility of doing that, stronger than every character sans Yamamoto, able to take an explosion containing all of Yamamoto's power with only slight clothing burns, and able to plan for impossible situations such as Ichigo coming back from the dead, Rukia being unable to beat a random Hollow, and the Hougyoku (which was well-established as something which breaks down the barrier between Hollows and Shinigami) being a wish-granting machine with what little evidence he has contradicting what had already been established), and the only character left in the series to beat him being Ichigo, even though Ichigo was established to be several orders of magnitude below him in strength, speed, and abilities. Adding to that, his most basic power is absolute permanent control over all five senses, and he still has another power-up to go at least!

I apologize for the rant; this topic brings out the worst in me. To sum it up, One Piece knows where it's going, and has fun getting there. Bleach has no idea where it's going, and is driving at an incredibly slow pace to give the person at the wheel time to think of what he's going to do.