I actually preferred Naruto/Sakura for a while, but realized early on where it was going on. I liked Hinata at first, but lost interest after the author shot her to near irrelevance for the majority of the story. Heck, even her own backstory arc shifted to make her cousin look more sympathetic than she was. The final straw for me was when Neji was killed off for no apparent reason other than to make her look good. After completely ignoring her for most of the story, throwing away another character just to build her up just felt awkward, clumsy, and objectively terrible writing.

Not that Sakura was much better of course. Pretty sure the author just didn't care about his female characters in general, based on Sakura's horrible conclusion, and how every female character ended up as a freaking housewife. Seems like I wasn't alone at least...apparently at some Jump festival, Chie Nakamura (Sakura's seiyuu) flat out told the author to "shut up" after he mentioned how much he loved Sakura's character. 

As much as I like shipping, I wish authors of these long running battle manga would stop trying to shoehorn romance into the story where it isn't really needed. It can be fine within limits, but Naruto and Bleach are prime examples of how it doesn't work if the author doesn't care to expand on the theme. We won't have to worry about that with One Piece at least.

Tell that to Boa

She doesn't think it's a gag, tho...

Also, Usopp has his girl settled, so I have no reason to ship on OP, indeed
But there actually is shipping, I see people going for Robin/Zoro or Robin/Franky stuff, when we all know Zoro will be sticking with Tashigi.

She doesn't think it's a gag, tho...

Also, Usopp has his girl settled, so I have no reason to ship on OP, indeed
But there actually is shipping, I see people going for Robin/Zoro or Robin/Franky stuff, when we all know Zoro will be sticking with Tashigi.

Those ships are harmless because I don't think Oda will ever listen to them and I also don't think he'll ever pair the strawhats.

As I recall, a fan asked Oda one time if Luffy would marry Nami or Hancock, to which Oda responded with "If you want romance, go read a shoujo." 

I'm sure it's possible that he might hook them up after a time-skip...but any romance in the story proper is just going to be one-sided gags. Which is fine to me...if Oda doesn't want to do romance, he certainly doesn't need to.

I actually preferred Naruto/Sakura for a while, but realized early on where it was going on. I liked Hinata at first, but lost interest after the author shot her to near irrelevance for the majority of the story. Heck, even her own backstory arc shifted to make her cousin look more sympathetic than she was. The final straw for me was when Neji was killed off for no apparent reason other than to make her look good. After completely ignoring her for most of the story, throwing away another character just to build her up just felt awkward, clumsy, and objectively terrible writing.

Not that Sakura was much better of course. Pretty sure the author just didn't care about his female characters in general, based on Sakura's horrible conclusion, and how every female character ended up as a freaking housewife. Seems like I wasn't alone at least...apparently at some Jump festival, Chie Nakamura (Sakura's seiyuu) flat out told the author to "shut up" after he mentioned how much he loved Sakura's character. 

As much as I like shipping, I wish authors of these long running battle manga would stop trying to shoehorn romance into the story where it isn't really needed. It can be fine within limits, but Naruto and Bleach are prime examples of how it doesn't work if the author doesn't care to expand on the theme. We won't have to worry about that with One Piece at least.

As I recall, a fan asked Oda one time if Luffy would marry Nami or Hancock, to which Oda responded with "If you want romance, go read a shoujo." 

I'm sure it's possible that he might hook them up after a time-skip...but any romance in the story proper is just going to be one-sided gags. Which is fine to me...if Oda doesn't want to do romance, he certainly doesn't need to.

Wasn't for lack of warnings tho

I would say just let it go and move on, but with how long Bleach went on, I figure it's not that simple, haha.