Unfortunately it will always still suffer from the shounen curse of reared in stakes and development. Certain mainstay characters simply won’t grow anywhere but in power and no one is ever allowed to die or leave. Everyone simply has their personal story “on hold” perpetually till they get rushed near the end.
I do not watch One Piece. But I did start to play One Piece Odyssey. Every character in the crew there was already present in a One Piece Musou game I played in the early 2010’s. That tells me all I need to know about how much the story progressed for real. That’s Why I scoff and laugh whenever I see people not list out which large chunks of a long runner to skip, or when directors like FF14’s states it’s all worth it and you should not skip to HS. I’m a human with basic pattern recognition. I’ve seen that bullshit before and recognize it for what it is.
I’ve watched Dragonball, Naruto, My Hero, etc. etc.
Shit’s all the same, one sniff, it smells. I got no reasons to watch the LONGEST of all shonen, it’s all the same.