Well that's their fault. If someone keeps reading a manga and he has no emotional attachment to any character or any of the events then it's their problem for wasting their time.
I think it's fine, I'm the last person to tell people what they should or shouldn't read.
Personally I'm interested in writing comics myself, so even when reading stories that don't engage me I'm extremely curious
why this is the case. Sometimes I see people scold Big One or whatever for reading stuff he doesn't enjoy, but he obviously enjoys writing his reactions.
The inanimate object problem is only for believing that a ship can get its own spirit and travel to save its nakama. For some people that might be hard to swallow even though this is OP and it has a history of doing that kind of shit. However as for the crew feeling sad about losing their ship and crying and all of that, it's normal. Loads of people have connection to objects like games or comics and so on so losing a ship, your second home, is a big deal.
I completely agree with this, but it's also where my problem with some of the criticism stems from.
As you said, the problem has little to do with the ship being inanimate and more the way it showed up.
I think from a storytelling perspective you could say there's one or two things that are iffy about it, nothing worse than things I've seen in Bleach though.
In the end I feel like most of the things that are "iffy" are partly justified by the sheer fact that one way or another, Going Merry did come to it's expected end after all was said and done.
The "miracle" of Merry Appearing was dream-like and insane, but it didn't magically make it's inevitable fate of not surviving it's own wounds any less real.
/edit
Is Beam Phoenixcal-viking btw? I see people talking about "Beam" being leaped upon, so I figure that means they're the same person?
