Watched through the Jaya arc and the first 7 episodes of Skypeia. Then wwe met Kotori, and the pacing slowed to a crawl. I thought that this might have been a problem with the anime, so I switched to the manga. Unfortunately, the pacing is still just as slow there. I think I just don't like the villain team structure (Akatsuki/Espada/Phantom Troupe, etc, where a bunch of "lieutenants" of the big bad are introduced for no other reason but to pad out the time until the protagonists actually confront the big bad. The fights with the villain team are pretty much meaningless filler in the grand scheme of things. I would rather just get straight to the confrontations that actually matter). I then deicded to start watching One Piece in a window while I'm fishing and gathering in FFXIV. Makes it a lot more tolerable. Really helps that the One Piece anime presents the story in such a way that you can easily follow what's going while on paying attention half of the time.
Nothing interesting about Jaya to talk about, though they've brought up that the Going Merry is falling into poor condition, which IIRC will come to a head in about 100 chapters, or so. Kinda weird that the Going Merry is touted to be in such a bad condition when it has really only been in a single battle, and it seems like it hasn't even been in use for that long. Speaking of which, it's really hard to tell to the timeframe the story has been taking place over. Can't really tell how long it's been since the start of the story or the time in between arcs. Since it's been 400 years since 1100, it seems like the story takes place around 1500ish.
Seeing the Warlords meeting with the Admirals at Reverie is exciting.
Skypeia is aesthetically pleasing to look at, and the lore of using different elemental snail shells to power your technology is pretty cool. However, I didn't like the use of the snail shells as a "power system" later on. They kept talking about how they were using a shell to do this and a shell to do that, but in the end it doesn't really matter. It felt like HxH, where they pretended that they had a fancy power system with rules and all, but in reality they were just pulling crap out of their ass.
I'm surprised that Skypeia hadn't had their asses kicked by an extraordinarily powerful passerby until the Strawhats showed up. Is the world government even aware of Skypeia?
Hm... was the Sky Knight's old friend Gol D Roger?
The manga art of Gan Fall vs the priest is really cool.
Waipa looks like Renji. Well, this chapter came out two to three years before Renji appeared in Bleach, so I guess Renji looks like Waipa.
Not fond of Wapol getting to open a toy shop. Dude was a brutal tyrant who had doctors and dissenters executed.
What a relief! They're not going to have to formulaically go through the other three trials!
Noland and Calgara story was great.
Why are the people in the boats just watching? You need to take your boats as far away as you can! To the edge of the cloud sea!
Eneru was too powerful to be reasonably defeated. His defeat made no sense. If he was powerful enough to just nuke Skypeia, why didn't he do so from the start? Why did he mess around for three hours? If Eneru could discharge hundreds of millions of volts, then there is absolutely no reason why the strawhats should have survived. If Eneru was able to teleport across Skypeia in the blink of an eye, then he could have just decapitated Luffy before he had a chance to react. If Eneru could heat up gold to the point that it was melting, than Luffy should have straight up died when his arm got stuck in the gold ball. If Eneru can become intangible like Smoker, than there is no reason why Luffy should have been able to hurt Eneru without using a Sea Prism Stone. If Eneru was able to detect people's positions and hear their conversations, there is absolutely no reason why he shouldn't have been surprised by Usopp's or Sanji's entrance on the airship. And so on.
The problem with such ridiculously overpowered villains is that it is very, very difficult to write them in such a way as to make them NOT just immediately ROFLstomp the protagonists and not look stupid. By the end of the Soul Society arc, Aizen was clearly powerful enough that he could have just ROFLstomped the Soul Society if he wanted to, and it made absolutely no sense why he didn't sense that was his goal. Instead he was inexplicably lounging around on a chair why the protagonists worked their way up through the villain team to him. By the end of the war arc, Madara was clearly powerful enough that he could have ROFLstomped everyone and won; not even Naruto and Sasuke at their height could have taken him out, so Madara had to be killed off by an even MOAR powerful villain (who Naruto and Sasuke inexplicably defeat).
I feel the only time that such a ludicrously overpowered villain was justified was in FFXIV and the Trails series. Zenos (FFXIV) and McBurn (Trails) are antagonists who are far and away the most powerful beings of their respective settings. They could clearly ROFLstomp everyone else if they wanted to, but they are too lethargic and apathetic to care about dealing with their enemies, and conquering the world doesn't interest them. They only find fulfillment in seeking a life-or-death fight with an opponent who can rival them in strength. Thus, even though they are introduced early on in the story, it makes sense that they don't do anything until the protagonists become strong enough to legitmately challenge them.
If Eneru had been written like that, it would have made sense for him to NOT just immediately ROFLstomping everyone in Skypeia once his airship was complete to make sense.
Kinda bullcrap how Wyper's men survived when they were clearly portrayed as having died earlier in the arc.
OH COME ON! DAD LIVES TOO? Brrrrr. Lemme guess; Eneru's priests aren't dead either?
Strawhats stealing gold? I think this is the first time they've done any actual pirating. Only took... 193 episodes!
Okay, here's the thing about the Poneglyphs. Who made them? Did someone from the Ancient Kingdom on Raftel survive, and then traveled the world, erecting poneglyphs? How did that person get permission from the royal family of Alabasta, and from the civilization on Jaya to erect the poneglyphs? Was that person a world renowned hero trusted by the various kingdoms? Or were these various kingdoms (that didn't join the 20 that destroyed Raftel and formed the WG) so aghast in horror at what had happened, they supported the survivor's attempts to record history? Also, IIRC, the Grand Line is actually made up of seven roads. So far, we have found two Poneglyphs on the same road. Are there Poneglyphs on the other roads that contain the same information? Or do you literally have to travel through the Grand Line seven times, once on each different road, to gather all of the information to reach Raftel?
The octopus balloon was cool.
Seems pretty weird that the Strawhats arrived on Skypiea on the same day that Eneru finished his ship and decided to kill everyone, AND the day the Shandorans began their decisive attack.
LOLOL they fell right into the middle of a marine installation.
Wait a minute, isn't this the filler arc everyone says is actually good? Guess I'll watch it.
Final thoughts on Skypeia: I thought the Jaya arc was fine, had my interest piqued for the first seven episodes of Skypiea when we were exploring and seeing the new dials and all that. Then the priests were introduced and I kinda just started tuning out until there was only Eneru left to deal with, at which point it picked back up. I think I also became interested again when the Shandorans came into focus. I just really didn't care about the Skypeians or the priests or their nonsense at all. The last 1/3rd of the arc is decent, but Eneru just isn't a satisfying villain to fight and it sucks that he got away and lived.