God, are people still freaking out about this chapter?
This all comes down to two things: Oda being a mediocre writer and the restrictions he has on him due to this being a Shonen manga.Oda has never shown himself to be a fantastic writer, but he manages to make the series enjoyable by implementing relatable characters and decent art. If he actually was a good writer (and yes, this does tie in with the second point), he would have done something more interesting, like actually executing Ace, or having the admirals all beam/lava/ice spam Ace and Luffy as soon as they were free.
But, of course, he has certain limitations on him since it's a shonen manga; he can't just go around killing popular characters.
This chapter did sorta blow, but it's most just because actually having a realistic war is apparently completely out of Oda's field of thinking. To be pretty honest, I think this entire arc was dull, and dragged on too long. Let's just get WB killed and move on to the next arc.
Lol wow if you are going to even ATTEMPT to troll do it on a manga that DOES suck.
Oda a "MEDIOCRE" Story writer? HAHAHAHAHA, I think you are confusing this with Naruto, you want to talk about a piss poor story writer, the naruto forms are that way pal. >->
Oda has been flat out brilliant in ever thing he has done so far, portraying emotion, you name me one series that can even compare in story development? Things set up 300 chapters ago are now having an effect on things of today, what series even remotely have that? None, at none that do it nearly as well and complete as how oda does.
Oda has made sure to bring to life his characters,make each one important to the team, having their own dramatic, and heart breaking background.
Id like to see you even ATTEMPT to make something near as good as even naruto let alone try to compete with the likes of what oda has done, he has forced manga to step things up completely, you can't get away with the whole DBZ formula like bleach and naruto who follow that formula like the bible anymore thanks to him, unlike them he didn't just flat out copy it, he took it and improved it and made it his own, and thankfully better.
You honestly have no right to say what you have, I myself am working on my own manga/anime series, and at first it followed the same DBZ formula, main hero does everything everyone else is in the way extremely predictable crap, after reading this series, I have completely scraped it and am redoing over a decade of script and story development and writing, to make it as amazing as this.
Plus for being what you said I find it funny that OP is now the top selling and most popular jump series of all time in recent polls outselling even DBZ finally, which nobody thought that possible.
Along with that Oda's artwork is incredible and moving at the same time, so either step up or shut up.