@Hinscher:
I am also against the Roger = Luffy comparisons done all the damn time. Why can't the story be about Luffy and not about Luffy doing everything Roger did, looking like Roger, wearing Roger's clothes, acting like Roger, having Roger's abilities, ect.
I mean how come Sea Kings have been waiting for Shirahoshi for thousands of years, or someone who can talk to sea kings I should say, and yet within 20 years there are 2 HUMANS who can hear sea kings talk?
It kind of reminds me of a book series that has a huge problem with this cliche thing of having too much coincidences on a main character. I mean look at Eragon. First is his name, he has the same name as the first ever dragon rider. Then he names his Dragon the same name as his Fathers dragon. And lets not even get into the whole family thing about all the cliche family things that screams star wars, which One Piece did that as well with Dragon and Garp and Ace.
Maybe thats why out of the strawhat crew, Luffy might be my least favorite person. The rest of them are for the most part just normal people that are doing the best they can and became amazing. Meanwhile Luffy is the grandson of this amazing war hero, he is the son of the leader of the revolutionaries. He is best buds with a Yonkuo, he is wearing the Pirate Kings hat, he has this unique super rare Haki, he can hear Sea Kings speak or listen to all things.
And out of ALL those things, the only one that he earned was the Hat by befriending Shanks. The rest was given to him upon birth. No matter what anyone else in the series did, they could not achieve any of those other things due to not being born with them.
Meanwhile look at the rest of the crew. Everything they have and stand for or do, they all earned for themselves. Even Robin studied her ass off to become the archiologist her mom was, she wasn't born an archiologist. No one has some Fancy parents that we know of. No one has some special unique power that ONLY they can do. (obviously devil fruits could have been eaten by anyone, so don't say those)
Yet here is LUffy with as I listed above, just some rediculous amount of unique things that are so cliche. Feels like Naruto. I mean look at all the connections Naruto has through history and his family and so on. Both One Piece and Naruto started out so great with the main protagonists being just themselves and doing the best they could as themselves. Then all of a sudden they decided they need to have the most crazy parents, grandparents, history, ect ever to give a quick "wow" factor to readers. Its a cheap wow factor and I hate it.
Well. regarding the whole "2 humans that can hear sea kings in 20 years while they were looking for shirahoshi for thousands" thing, I don't think it's 100% certain that roger and luffy can communicate back to the sea kings, though I'm not sure, so I think Shirahoshi is unique in that way. Secondly, you can throw the "born from a crazy family" argument out the window because it doesn't affect Luffy's abilities in the slightest and is just a stupid argument to begin with. Neither does wearing the hat. Also, the king's haki is rare, but its not like he's the only one since Roger. He still has to work to improve it. Hell, he still had to work to awaken it. You might as well complain about everyone with king's haki. Also, you talk about other characters never being able to achieve what Luffy did because they weren't born with it. Achieve what? Achieve being the son of someone famous? How would that help them improve their skills? And about Robin, did she not have to be born on that island in order to study and learn to read poneglyphs? Would that not then make it her "destiny" to have had that opportunity? If she were born anywhere else, she would not be able to learn at that level, but she wasn't. And I'm sure you can make many connections like that with tons of characters.
"some rediculous amount of unique things that are so cliche"? That's some contradiction there. I'm pretty sure we've learned that everyone is born with haki, it is just dormant for most of them for their entire lives. King's haki, I'm not so sure about, but Luffy has it and is efficient in using it through training, and that doesn't mean it's some destiny thing, it means he's lucky he gravitates towards this haki, but he still had to work to improve it and allow it to grow. And with the hearing all things, we don't know much about that either, so at this point, I find it to be extremely over-exaggerated to say that this is something everyone really wants and will benefit Luffy greatly in the future. You see, Luffy is the main protagonist. If he wasn't special in some way, he would not be a very good main protagonist. I don't think you can find a single main character out there that doesn't have something that separates them from everyone else. The reason the others don't have as many interesting things is because they would overshadow the main character, and you don't want that. That's why I think people find it really easy to complain about main characters when the other characters are not always much better. They've all got something unique. Luffy is just more obvious.