One Piece is the most successful manga in the history of Japan for a reason. It has been going strong for over a decade now and seems to be only hitting its peak. As shonen manga goes, One Piece far and beyond surpasses the likes of similar titles such as Bleach and Nauto in my personal opinion, and it mostly has to do with the characters.

One Piece has some of the best characters in a manga. Each of them gets a heartfelt and tragic story arc in which we get to see their past and the tragedy that of them had to go through. But we get to see how those hardships in the past made them to who they are currently. Its that kind of attention to characters and character development that really got me into One Piece. Where most shonen fail at creating compelling character development, One Piece succeeds.