They've obviously been developed and I'm not denying that Kishi hasn't developed side characters as well, he's just done so on a smaller scale. Luffy's gears come from him becoming more aware of his Gomu Gomu no mi's powers, the facts is Luffy has always had that ability, he's just learning how to better utilize his fruit. None of the moves that Sanji has shown looks like they require much training especially since he gets his training from actual battle. And Zoro has always shown long range attacks, but I see you're already convinced on Zoro's progress. Oda does on and off-screen development, which is very good cause we see and hear about the developed characters, that's much better than always drifting off plot to develop someone. And Kishi does that as well, Sakura and her Yin seal of storing chakra for 3 years which we never heard about til then is proof that Kishi also develops someone while not using time to show their development. The same can be said for K11 who all showed off their techniques against Juubi clones. As I said, you're knocking Oda for doing the same thing Kishi does.
As for Kishi developing characters at a sensible rate, I somewhat agree. While characters like Gaara, Itachi, Obito, etc got developed at a great rate but the same can't be said for all of Kishi's characters, nothing wrong with that either cause no one is gonna write a perfect story successfully developing everyone. I'm just saying that Oda has done a better job than Kishi has, especially since Oda is only halfway in his manga while the clock is ticking for Kishi.
im not knocking oda
im pointing out that people bash kishimoto for doing the same thing oda does and that its funny how its ok for oda to do it but kishimoto cant
for example i remember when sasuke got the legs to his susanoo and people were calling it BS and asspull and things but when luffy got gears he was "finding the potential of his gum gum fruit" but cant the same thing be said for sasuke?
"he was finding the potential of his susanoo"
Oda does "off-screen development" but the thing is there is never any hint to the off-screen development so when people are coming out of nowhere with these new powers that increase their strength exponentially then of coarse thats easy to call development
its like skipping from 1 to 4 to 7 to 12
whereas, kishimoto kinda takes it step by step therefore taking it gradually, he can only actually show the development for certain characters leaving us to make the assumption that others are training off-screen give a large enough gap to make theyre skip from say, 1 to 6 understandable
for example, the last time hinata was in a fight, she was a '3' then kishi leaves time and over that time we can assume shes been training, trying to get stronger, so next we see her fighting a juubi clone and she displays a new move. we can assume that piece of development came from the off-screen training and she goes from a 3 to 5 which is sensible considering the time, her character, and how she would have been training
but Oda doesnt do this so when a character gets new powers ups it doesnt make sense because they kinda came out of no where but its all ok because he's Oda
granted, Sakura's yin seal was very coincidental being that it takes three years and all but i can see Oda doing this
