User blog comment:Joekido/One Piece Polling: Is the series declining? 70% said no/@comment-24850639-20160512144755

I don't really get this criticism in the least. If you're a true follower of the series and actually know the story, then this should actually be the most exciting point of the series for you. Like whether you're a bigger fan of story vs. fights, it's pretty clear that both of them are on levels now that they've never been on before. I could understand this during the Paradise portion maybe, when the series didn't really seem to have as clear cut of a direction, but the ending of the series has literally been laid out for us at this point. We're about to start getting answers to some of the biggest questions we've had for a decade, and Luffy is about to start fighting people that make Doflamingo look like Wapol.

On top of that, I have yet to see a series THIS deep and enthralling. It is unforgivable how predictable Dragonball is, and for 2 decades of our lives we've watched arc after arc ultimately end up being about no one but Goku and Vegeta. If these 2 aren't involved you give no fucks whatsoever, and even then you can usually count on Vegeta falling short in some kind of way, and Goku having to always save the day. Same goes for Naruto, with Naruto and Sasuke for the most part, and Bleach with Ichigo. One Piece has hundreds of characters all over multiple places in the world that all have relevance and actual meaning to the story, which I've never seen any series do before. Even now we're torn between Whole Cake Island, the Reverie, and Wano, and they will all hve incredible impact on the story. I just don't get it.