User blog comment:Leek0421/Fairy Tail vs One Piece/@comment-3987368-20150813183905

Alright, I'll give my take on this.

Side Characters Development Fairy Tail's development of side characters is present, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's well-done. Personally, I like the characters of Gajeel and Laxus but I have always felt that their backstories and transitions were far too rushed to make me fully appreciate the changes they made.

You can ask if Oda is over-developing his side characters and say it's unnecessary but I will openly disagree. Let's take the example of Law's backstory. While long, it is a great one all the same and gives us believable insight into how he changed from the child he was to the man he is. It fully explains his attachment to Cora, why he's a pirate and his need to fight Doflamingo. As such, I would definitely say that it is a good backstory and its length was necessary for us to get the understanding we did. You can say you found it too long, but I'm of the opinion that shortening it would cheapen it. If you wanna argue another case with me, feel free.

Villainous Character Development As to villains, Oda doesn't really develop them more than necessary in my opinion. We know the motivations of various big villains like Doflamino, Moriah, Enel and others but the thing is that all of them feel a lot more fleshed out than most of Fairy Tail's big villains. Zero and Acnologia both just want to destroy, which I've said before is the laziest motivation. Faust and Hades' development could have been better than it was, but the two never got enough time to be fully fleshed out in my opinion. Some exceptions to Fairy Tail do apply such as Jose Porla and Jellal in the Tower of Heaven arc. Some don't need to be too deep, like Erigor, but for the most part, I found the the OP villains more varied, better-developed and believable.

Tone I've read this complaint that One Piece has a lot of mood swings, so I'd like to know what exactly people are referring to. I'm actually drawing a blank trying to remember these supposed 180° turns.

Now, there was a mentioning of "Tragic and sad moments are mixed together with slapstick, totally ruining the atmosphere." but I'll be honest and say that I can't recall any such moments in One Piece. If you want an example of potentially good character development being sacrificed for cheap laughter in Fairy Tail though, look no further than the Tartarus arc. You guys know what I'm talking about. I actually would have really appreciated Happy taking up the role of the one to perform a heroic sacrifice and save lives in the process. If anything, I would have hated him a lot less and probably even accepted him outright had he died heroically. My mindset would have been "Yeah, he was a douche, but he stepped up when nobody else could do anything and saved innocent lives in the process. That's definitely worth acknowledgement." But nope, he's gotta come out of it barely injured, covered only in some burns, scratches and that idiotic afro. Seriously, does anyone actually find that funny? What could have been a deep, serious scenario that solidified this as the arc where Fairy Tail would take its darkest turn turned into a joke in only two pages.

Battles Would it not be nice for Fairy Tail to have battles that were won through courage, strength, determination and strategy? Fights where we felt that though Fairy Tail was the protagonist, there was still a looming feeling of despair and that they could lose?

My view on the subject is that while we do want Fairy Tail to win in the end, we also want to believe that they could lose. It's boring to have a story where the heroes always win and seem to do so without a legitimate challenge. The way the world and guild of Fairy Tail is written is such that no matter how big the challenge appears to be by this point, we will never truly count Fairy Tail as out. No matter how serious the situation is, we simply can't be forced to believe that things will ever lead to anything but victory. Whether it's an invasion of Dragons or the activation of Alegria, we've gone through it knowing by this point that Fairy Tail will not lose because the author won't allow them to lose, or even struggle for too long.

Compare and contrast One Piece, where we have never had such levels of awful writing in battles or plot. Now, we have had battles of predictability (Enel) and stuff that was undeniably bad (3rd fight with Crocodile) but have we ever had a battle as needlessly one-sided as Natsu soloing Sting and Rogue? Was there ever a logic fail like Laxus beating Jura in a 1-v-1? Have we ever had such bullshit like we had with Erza vs. Kyouka? No, no and no. Have we ever had a character flop on their knees and surrender like Sting did int he GMG? Nope. While One Piece does have fewer fights overall, it has unarguably longer, more impactful and better-written ones without Deus ex Machina. Speaking of which, let's go onto the next section.

Deus ex Machina/Asspulls The Dragon invasion, Alegria, Face, the battle with Hades and more all suffer from the problem of the odds being so highly stacked against the heroes that we need some kind of Deus Ex Machina to stop them, and that is exactly what we got, in one way or another. Mashima may have managed to make some of it look cool but that doesn't change them from being Deus Ex Machina made up to counter overwhelming odds stacked against the heroes as opposed to having the heroes deal with the problems themselves.

Now, what happens in One Piece when the problems become hard? Does some kind of external, never-before-hinted force arrive to bail out the Straw Hats? Do we get a poorly-conceived explanation on how to make the problem just go away a la Eclipse? Nope, we actually see our heroes working together to combat the problem. The most recent example being the Dressrosa arc where the Birdcage is collapsing and the villain must be beaten lest everyone die? And what happens? The villain is beaten after a long and challenging fight where the hero has used a power that does not feel like an asspull and is more of an extension of his already-established abilities. As a result, Dressrosa is saved. Now in that case, there's no foolish asspull to solve an overwhelming problem. What happened happens in terms of the established narrative and creates a realistic, well-written solution to the problem.

Batman I'm sorry but this is not relevant at all. Batman comics are written by multiple different writers and in different formats. All of these writers have different takes on the character and his side character and he has been going on for 70+ years. Not to mention that Batman inhabits a shared universe with Superman, Wonder Woman, e.t.c. By comparison, these manga are much younger and have been written and drawn by one main mangaka in all this time. Comparing the two does not work at all because they are fundamentally different.

Conclusion

I may think One Piece is better than Fairy Tail in most ways, but there's a reason I joined a Fairy Tail site instead of One Piece. I found Fairy Tail long before One Piece and it's had more of an impact on my animanga habits than the latter. I would still look up a some Fairy Tail art on DeviantArt before One Piece and I would much rather write a Fairy Tail fanfic rather than a One Piece fanfic.

Also, I didn't get into main characters mainly cause I didn't have the time right now. If anyone wants me to, I can do so on a later date.

Before anyone gets jumpy with me, if you like Fairy Tail more or you think it's better or whatever, that is ok with me. I am not the supreme arbiter of what is and is not ok to like, nor is anyone else here. I wrote this to show why I feel One Piece is better and as you can tell, it's based on things that are important to me. You're free to like what you want, just as anyone else is.

If anyone wants to reply to this, I'll address it later cause I'm off to bed now.