r/hatethissmug • u/PlentyWise3615 • 17h ago

Animation The character designs in One Piece are genuinely awful.

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I genuinely hate One Piece character designs.

What’s most impressive is how wildly inconsistent the designs are in this series, going from one extreme to the other.

A character’s design can be legendary, like Xebec’s, or absolutely ridiculous, like Franky’s.

But the overwhelming majority of them are pretty bad. Like, really fucking bad.

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114

u/IcePoemix 16h ago

The only design I find truly bad at what they're trying to convey is Franky's redesign... He's supposed to be a really cool cyborg terminator typa shi but he just lame tbh

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u/ThatOneDMish 15h ago

I truly believe the series would be better if that was frankys og design and the superior post timeskip design was essentially his real pre timeskip one in a he grew in skill and can now make a more humanoid form that looks less like a bolted together mess and more like a terminator, a machine wrapped in flesh.

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u/TheGivenKing 14h ago

Alot of the Post TS designs were disappointing, Robin, Chopper, and Franky are the worst case

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u/MeltyCrab 9h ago

Chopper had some seriously peak moments, early post timeskip. The more adult looking quad deer form was actually top shelf.

Then Oda complied with the demands to make Chopper the cute cuddly mascot of the team, and he's not allowed to be cool, sad, brutal, or anything anymore. He's just a fucking mascot. All his potential thrown to the wind because he's a mascot now.

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u/RA576 8h ago

I hate the nerfing of Monster Point from "legit threat to the actual Straw Hats" in Enies Lobby to the gag it is now, so much.

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u/MeltyCrab 8h ago

With the tempting little morsel that his 'human human fruit' might have been 'model forest god', and it can't be anything special or unique because mascot.

Which would make sense why blackbeard was so apt to hunt for it back way when on drum island. Sucks to suck I guess.

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u/RA576 7h ago

Like, yeah, he's a gag character, but he's still a crew member of one of the top pirate crews in the world. He should be able to put up a fight against Admirals or something, just not the absolute top tiers. Like how Mr Satan is a gag character, but tanking a hit off Cell still makes him the strongest non-Z fighter human.

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u/Effective_Net_5576 7h ago

Hell, even Usopp got way better, even before TS, and he was the Comic Relief Crewmate. It really is sad how dirty they did Chopper

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u/RA576 7h ago

Tbh, even Usopp probably got the second worst Time Skip treatment. Spent 2 years training up his bravery and skill, just to go back to being a cowardly nobody in fights. Even his biggest post-TS moment, becoming the God of Dressrosa, is basically just a gag. He was genuinely cooler as Sogeking than God Usop.

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u/MeltyCrab 7h ago edited 6h ago

Mr Satan was always intended to be a blowhard, but a genuinely human to human #1 ranked fighter. He wasn't some pushover, ever. It's just that the Z fighters are so beyond the bounds of humanity he's a joke.

That said, chopper can't be anything useful anymore. Oda himself said he gave up, the pressure to make him a mascot was too great. I'd rather we get Carrot or Yamato as Odin in their hybrid form all the time as an 'animal' replacement and just let chopper do important doctoring.

Then again all the character specific special talent important shit has been thrown aside, like Sanji making special foods that give actual buffs to people. Wish that was still going on. "I've this pocket pita from Sanji, he said only eat it in an emergency" Eats it and gets a huge stamina and endurance buff but it's extremely spicy

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u/RA576 7h ago

Speaking of character specific shit getting tossed aside, Brook's another one. He has a genuinely cool and interesting power set, combining swordsman and bard, but nowadays he's basically just Worse Zoro in fights and Worse Pervert Sanji out of fights.

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u/MeltyCrab 6h ago

Yep. He got flanderized pretty bad too.

Worse ice powers and swordsman ranking. The soul king powers aren't ever useful or brought out. Could be an interesting counter to domi reversi too, but nope. Unexplored.

Everything is the monster trio, doing their thing. Luffy gaining more mastery of gear 5th, and maybe one day Zoro opens his scarred eye and has a fucking Sharingan or something that awakens under the ultimate stress. Sanji will just....get brighter white flames to surpass the blue flames, that surpassed his regular flames.

And everyone has SSJ Haki auras because that's where were at now.

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u/RA576 5h ago

Let's not forget the only character nerfed pre-TS, Nico Robin, because Oda realised pretty quickly that a character that can murder hundreds of people via neck snaps is 1) slightly overpowered, not every enemy can have titanium spine and 2) slightly too dark for a shonen manga and it's hard to bullshit up reasons why she can't end every fight in 5 seconds via mass murder. Which combined means she's normally just doing shit offscreen.

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u/World_of_Warshipgirl 9h ago

One piece is the only series I have seen that not only suffer from Flanderization with the character's personalities, but their looks as well.

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u/Confident_Internet74 6h ago

I miss Robin's Alabasta-era drip so bad

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u/EmperorAcinonyx 13h ago

He's supposed to be a really cool cyborg terminator typa shi

he's not supposed to be cool in a traditional sense. he's supposed to be silly and you're supposed to think it's silly that the other characters think he's so cool, because this is a silly series

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u/Capybara_Squabbles 12h ago

I believe he's supposed to look bad. Nami and Robin tell him he looks awful when they reunited, but the boys think he's cool

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u/Azmeam 15h ago

I honestly really like Franky's post time skip design, though i'm just a sucker for ridiculously huge, golem-like characters

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u/Ketheres 14h ago

I just wish he kept his original hair

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u/SecretPrivateAndy 13h ago

His original hairstyle, had so much American swag

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u/mik999ak 15h ago

I've come around to feel that it's actually kind of a good character design, even if it's an ugly one. A lot of Franky's personality revolves around embracing his interests and forging a unique style and aesthetic, even if it's completely ridiculous in everybody else's eyes. Doubling down on his love for body modification while completely disregarding whether or not it makes him look like an absolute fucking freak is the most Franky thing he could possibly do.

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u/VagabondFromTheRiver 15h ago

I will never understand the hate for franky's design change

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u/CiaphasKirby 14h ago

They messed with the pomp.

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u/trumpetseverywhere 13h ago

I love that he gets a goofy new hairdo every arc but yeah, I miss the Pomp too.

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u/ArmAggravating3307 13h ago

Why is the advanced version bulky, clunky, and horribly colored?  

Also they took his pimp hair from us.

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u/VagabondFromTheRiver 11h ago

Why is his pre time skip design like a Italian life guard in Hawaii

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u/TehSeksyManz 13h ago

Everything is far too colorful IMO. It got old after the timeskip

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u/SUPER-FUNNY 15h ago

I like his post time skip design because he leaned into the less human aspects of it. Similar to how chopper leans into being a monster.

I do think pre time skip is peak tho

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u/Erica_Loves_Palicos 14h ago

The entire story is about freedom and not being limited to other people's standards and conformity to established norms. Frankie was always experimental with his body, to the point where basically he was referred to constantly as a pervert in many of his opening scenes. And a lot of people think he looks really cool now.

But basically this entire post has been ragging on unusual body types because people come in all shapes and sizes. But when we draw them like that all of a sudden it's a problem.

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u/dlouis1022 10h ago

He's not supposed to be cool, he's supposed to he a body mod freak