Board Thread:Manga Discussion/@comment-33600764-20171219023000/@comment-27659575-20171219154633

I do put Stone Ocean at the bottom of the barrel. The main reason is that the characters are uninteresting and the group is kind of shit. Jolyne is subtle and well-rounded as a character, but she eats up all of the screen time. Many side characters are based on an archetype in the series, but part 6 is the only one where the rich interactions between these overall basic personalities is missing. Why the fuck does Ermes cry for Weather Report for instance, why the fuck do Anasui and Weather even hang around? They didn't share any meaningful moment, not even in their fights. If I were to draw a relation chart of Part 6, all the side characters would be mere "acquaintances". Why is Avdol's death impacting? Because Polnareff is here to cry for him, and we know their relationships; if you're not sad about Avdol, we are at least sad for Polnareff. In here, most of the deaths are fake drama.

Moreover, many of the antagonists are also bad. Villain of the week got really bad in this part. Pucci isn't so charismatic that he can tell prisoners to go kill someone, why does anyone obey him? What are their goals, really? We don't know, so I don't care about them.

I don't care about any character in this part, and for a character-centric series, that's a bad bad sign.