One Piece’s Biggest Problem Still Stops It From Becoming the Best (And It’s Time It Was Fixed)

Even though One Piece is in its final stretch, the series still refrains from featuring a powerful element that could make its narrative even more exciting and deeper. There is no denying that One Piece‘s narrative is one of the best anyone could witness in entertainment and fiction. With a storyline that has been running for almost three decades, One Piece has nearly every element fans could hope to find. While action and adventure are the series’s strongest aspects, it is the intrigue surrounding its titular treasure that has kept fans hooked. Though there are countless great things about One Piece, it is not without flaws.

There are several issues with the narrative, but the most repetitive one in its storytelling pattern is how One Piece rarely features character deaths. Across thousands of chapters, the series has included very few major deaths. This is especially concerning given that the story is set in a perilous world where danger lurks around every corner. While this pattern is something fans have grown accustomed to, even in the final saga of this dangerous adventure, the series still avoids it, and it’s time that it fixed that.

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One Piece Still Shies Away From Killing Its Characters and Giving Them a Compelling End

One Piece is currently depicting its Elbaph arc, one of the most important arcs of the final saga. With Dorry and Brogy under Imu’s control and all of Elbaph in chaos, the situation has become extremely dangerous, especially since the co-captains of the Giant Warrior Pirates had turned hostile and intended to kill Jarul. The latest chapter, One Piece Chapter 1176, titled “With Pride,” briefly shows the two giants regaining their sanity, reflecting on how they were manipulated into trying to kill one of the most important figures in the Giants’ nation. Filled with shame yet guided by pride, the chapter features Dorry and Brogy decapitating each other with a single strike.

For a moment, this scene added significant depth to the narrative, especially considering the centuries-long rivalry between the two giants. With Dorry and Brogy even acknowledging that such an ending would be fitting, ending their rivalry by killing each other, One Piece briefly seemed to conclude one of the strongest narrative elements in its larger storyline, and using death in that moment was genuinely shocking. However, the series immediately undermines the moment by revealing that their actions helped break Imu’s control, allowing them to stand back up with their heads magically reattached to their bodies.

This moment highlights how Eiichiro Oda still struggles to incorporate death meaningfully into the manga, which is unfortunate because the scene briefly delivered a shocking twist while also offering a fitting end to a long-standing rivalry, all while suggesting that the final saga of One Piece was entering truly dangerous territory. It is time for the series to address this issue, and Dorry and Brogy’s clash could have been the perfect starting point, as every element was in place to make their deaths impactful. Instead, One Piece still avoids killing characters. If anything, it continues to revive supposedly dead ones, as seen with Saul still being alive and Vegapunk not truly being dead. This is disappointing because the few times One Piece has featured deaths, they have added a level of gravity that few stories manage to achieve

One Piece Has Proven in the Past That It Can Kill Characters to Add More Gravity

The majority of the deaths One Piece has featured occur in flashbacks; however, they do not carry the same impact because fans already know the characters are destined to die. In contrast, when One Piece has killed characters in the present timeline, most notably with the deaths of Portgas D. Ace and Edward Newgate (Whitebeard), those moments were executed in such a compelling way that fans still talk about them today. This shows that Eiichiro Oda knows how to write powerful character deaths, but he uses them very sparingly. One reason fans continue to focus on Ace and Whitebeard is simply that they remain the only major deaths the series has featured in the present timeline.

Thus, it is high time the manga addressed this element, and it could easily do so given the hundreds of characters within its world. One Piece simply needs to find the right moments to use them rather than keeping them on the sidelines, only for fans to forget about them because of the sheer size of the cast. With the situation presented in the latest chapter, the series had created the perfect opportunity to begin incorporating this element, yet it still avoids doing so. This ultimately prevents the story from exploring new territory that could make the manga even better.

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