Eiichiro Oda's One Piece is a mainstay of shonen manga, entertaining audiences with pirate action comedy since 1997. Both the original manga and the anime adaptation have remained immensely popular for decades. However, at nearly 1000 chapters, One Piece is an absolute behemoth of a series. In comparison, Andrew Hussie's Homestuck is a much younger work, beginning its run in 2009 and ending the main story in 2016. Still, it has a loyal following of fans that were attracted to its unorthodox story, diverse characters and unique format. Like One Piece, Homestuck is also incredibly long.
Here's what you need to know about both super long stories to know which one is right for you.
Art Style
One Piece is a classic black-and-white manga. The story features characters with exaggerated features and fantasy powers, though they still retain some level of realism. Dynamic action shots are accompanied by a plethora of visual metaphors and gags, and it’s all tied together with an overall consistent and recognizable style. There is an amazing range of creative character designs in a variety of shapes and sizes, from princesses and mermen, to cyborgs and the undead. Despite this, some have called the designs for women oversexualized and critiqued the series' lack body diversity. Generally, though, if you enjoy seeing fun shapes in characters, One Piece's art will appeal to you.
Homestuck boasts unique and extremely stylized cartoonish characters, with initial sparing use of color giving way to lush, full-color panels. At some points, it’s even illustrated by various different artists. However, Homestuck is slightly more than just drawings. Instead, there are GIFs, minigames and cinematic animated sequences and albums of music that are all a part of the comic. Still, getting used to the art style takes some time, as Homestuck is generally very pixelated and sometimes downright scribble-like. That being said, fans of ONE's works, such as One-Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100, probably won't have a problem with this.
Characters
One Piece boasts a colorful cast of ambitious young people who are fiercely loyal but also determined to make their dreams a reality. While their outlandish powers (and appetite) might make one question just how physically "human" they are, One Piece makes a point of emphasizing their humanity -- as well as the courage, heart and bonds of the crew. There is something heartwarming about seeing a ragtag bunch of individuals come together to help their comrades achieve the impossible, and this makes it both an exciting and comforting read. While there are cheesy shonen tropes like the strength of friendship, they don’t make the characters any less believable and charming. Instead, they reaffirm the trust they have in each other. Readers can expect to both tear up over and laugh at Luffy’s crew as they go through all kinds of crazy shenanigans. If you liked characters from such series as Naruto and Hunter X Hunter, you’ll be sure to enjoy One Piece.
Homestuck, comparatively, doesn’t quite have a single set of main characters. While the four kids introduced at the beginning, the narrative introduces more and more characters. One hundred and twenty-eight, to be exact. Homestuck shifts endlessly between varying groups of overlapping groups that span the past, the future, parallel universes -- all of paradox space. Impressively, even characters that seem unimportant at first have full-fledged, plot-heavy backstories attached to them, woven into the overarching plot with surreal logic. And with a cast this big, you're bound to find someone they love. However, if the prospect of remembering all these names and faces makes your head spin, this might not be the series for you.
Storytelling
There’s a reason why One Piece is considered a classic: It is, underneath the wild adventure fantasy, a story about a group of friends journeying to defeat evil, much like other shonen manga that came before and after it. Every character has their own goals that they want to achieve independently of each other, but the story inevitably leads back to liberating good and vanquishing evil. If all of this sounds cheesy, it’s because it is. That’s not to say it’s trite: far from it, One Piece features a lot of heartwarming and heroic moments while transforming in every arc. When characters explore new islands, each one has its own particular characteristics that Luffy and the crew get to enjoy -- and new problems to deal with. One-Piece is a vast, fantastical world that surprises both readers and characters at every turn. If you find joy in exploration, you will want to read One Piece.
Homestuck comes at storytelling from a completely different angle. While it does draw from text-based adventure games and RPGs as its sources of inspiration, the modes through which characters interact with each other and their environment, and even the locales themselves, are completely unfamiliar to any story or genre. Homestuck exercises total unrestrained creative freedom, which builds up a game-based world from scratch (both literally and figuratively) and makes endless references to real-world happenings. In fact, breaking the fourth wall is one of the most important mechanics of the comic, which started with reader input and evolves through author inserts and the deconstruction -- and subsequent reconstruction -- of the webcomic's literary reality. For a story about kids playing a game, Homestuck is surprisingly grand. If unique world-building with endless character dialogue filled with potential for analysis appeals to you, take a crack at it. You might be surprised at what you find.