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The story
On 5ch’s “Nanidemo Jikkyou G” board, a discussion about the current state of One Piece heated up. It started with talk of sluggish volume sales — someone noted the convenience store shelves weren’t moving — and spiraled into comparisons involving One Piece’s Guinness World Record for total print run and its return-rate versus Demon Slayer and Dragon Ball. From there, complaints piled up about the changing art style, pacing, and plot direction, with some accusing the characters of having become slaves to the plot. Meanwhile, readers who’d recently binge-read the series to catch up pushed back, saying it’s “genuinely still good” — exposing a split between longtime fans and newer readers.
What people said
Be honest for once.
Even the diehards turned into haters after the whole "Domi Reversi" thing (a fan nickname for a specific plot twist).
it's just wasting a whole row, fading in the sun.
Apparently it's gunning to have more copies printed than the Bible or Mao's Little Red Book.
though it'd make more sense if they compared actual "sales" numbers against Dragon Ball and Demon Slayer specifically.
Lately about half the copies are getting returned unsold, aren't they.
Not trying to be a contrarian or stir things up, but there's no way it's stopping at just half.
What's the return rate for Dragon Ball or Demon Slayer, then?
Makes you wonder what Oda from back then would say if he read today's chapters.
These days he'd probably just be screaming with his eyeballs popping out 👀.
The shortage of flagship series is getting serious.
No idea about Dragon Ball, but isn't Demon Slayer's return rate low?
Both of them sold out their first print runs.
Both Dragon Ball and Demon Slayer ended before their peak popularity wore off, so they never really built up returns. Demon Slayer's the easy example since it literally went out of stock, but Dragon Ball's the same story — every volume from #40 onward came out in '95 and all got reprinted within that same year.
Re: #40
I see…
But surely once it's not popular anymore,
that kind of trick stops working, right?
I doubt even America has manga this shoddy.
Well, once it started ripping off Tom and Jerry, I just figured…
But isn't Akaza basically just Katakuri?
At least fight seriously like you did back in this era.
Haki (the series' aura-based power system) ruined it.
Usopp just gets heart-eyes, drooling over his dream destination Elbaf, and lectures Imu and Gaban.
Chopper ditches his job as the crew's doctor to go translate for an owl in the middle of a battlefield.
Brook gets a pointless, dragged-out flashback arc that's supposed to lead into rescuing Gunko, except the Straw Hats can't even break the ice themselves — in the end it's Loki's hammer flying in out of nowhere that smashes it.
It's stopped being "characters act, and the story emerges" — now it's "characters act just to make the story work."
Honestly it's about time they killed off at least Usopp.
And then give me that classic "Luffy laughs on the outside, cries on the inside" moment.
The story doesn't even hold together as it is —
I have zero clue how they're going to land the ending in Elbaf.
Honestly it's hard to admit these days, so I've been pretending to be a hater, but I actually love it. I genuinely don't get why it's getting bashed so much.
I think it's because I recently binge-read to catch up — the story's genuinely gotten more epic in step with the characters' growth, and it's fun.
The haters never binge-read it in the first place, so they drifted away from One Piece at some point, and now that their own enthusiasm's cooled off, it just looks like they're bashing it for fun with no real reason behind it.
I don't think people actively reading it week to week have many complaints at all.
I get that some people still like One Piece as it is now, but if you genuinely think it hasn't declined compared to before volume 60, something's off with your eye for criticism.
Go read the blog post "Why One Piece Stopped Being Interesting" a hundred times.
Guess it makes sense that the longer someone's been reading, the more disappointed they are by how much the characters and direction have changed.
I genuinely can't tell if you're serious.
Forget the fights, just show us them actually going to get the One Piece already.
Wait, what??
No way, Imu is obviously way stronger than Kaido.
How does anyone actually die in this story? Why did some guy named Ace die from that? It's driving me insane.
I mean, some people die just falling down stairs.
Loki, Hyldin, and that old geezer all took serious wounds and it just got brushed off.
Lately there's even a guy who didn't die after getting his brain skewered.
Honestly, Ace is the only one who was too weak to survive.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
One Piece is a series with a total print run so massive it’s earned a Guinness World Record — its sheer print numbers stand out even within the industry. The “about half returned unsold” figure that came up in the thread isn’t an official statistic; it’s an anonymous post based on bookstore impressions and guesswork, not a verified number, so it should be taken with caution. The comparisons to Demon Slayer and Dragon Ball are also simple print-run comparisons against works that wrapped up or went on hiatus while still at the height of their popularity — a different situation from a series still being serialized. Where opinions in the thread split was along generational and reading-style lines: longtime readers tend to be disappointed by the changes in characters and direction, while readers who recently binge-read to catch up are enjoying it at face value. This kind of split in how a long-running series gets evaluated, based on when a reader started following it, isn’t unique to One Piece — it’s a structural point worth keeping in mind when reading any critique of a long-running work.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (“Nanidemo Jikkyou G”) thread “[Sad News] One Piece Strikes Again: Luffy Charges In with Yet Another Eye-Popping Face…“.
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