Many will say that people only don’t like this because it’s a physical person acting like a cartoon character, but I do think it runs deeper than all of that. America and really just western audiences as a whole have not been able to climb over the hurdle of cynicism and embrace jovial camp or sincere whimsy. It makes us uncomfortable.
The closest we’ve had to this in a rating that isn’t strictly for toddlers and was widely beloved was Superman and Knight of The Seven Kingdoms, and both of those stories were surrounded with cynicism to avoid the sincere optimistic qualities from becoming too overwhelming to audiences- or to resemble our world that is tonally jaded with few good people. Something that’s more palatable to modern viewers.
One Piece refuses to exist within those barriers, which to me makes it one of a kind.
I turned off the episode, this is unbearable