Let me ask you guys, what do you think the point of giving Coby his hax instant haki upgrade is, if not to help him get closer to catching up to Luffy and be somewhat relevant during the time of the actual story? Doesn't it seem like an incredibly pointless upgrade if the story's going to tack on an extra 10 years of training at the end?
@MiyamotoMusashi:
I would be disappointed if Coby would become a rear admiral or even higher during the series. I would be content if we get a timeskip at the end of OP (maybe even after Luffy´s death) in which it is shown what the most important chracters in the series are doing, Coby then could be admiral as far as i´m concerned.
@Urouge: Roger taking 3 years to become Pirate King, do you mean taking that one route Skypeia- Water 7 etc. or do you mean sailing the Grand Line in general. At this point we almost now nothing about Roger and his crew´s voyage but i kind of get the feeling that they spent a lot of time on the Grand Line taking many routes and not only the one the SHs traveled. I mean, we´ve seen how young Roger was when he met Rayleigh (pretty young) and Brook also remembered a rookie called Roger from 50 or rather now 52 years ago. I kind of doubt that Roger + Rayleigh + crew just relaxed for 24 years and then suddenly decided to go all the way, that wouldn´t make sense to me to be honest.
http://eatmanga.com/Manga-Scan/One-Piece/One-Piece-506/page-11
I never got the impression that they spent more time in the Grand Line before that. Consider when Buggy ate his DF, the crew wasn't even sure those things were real. Had they been familiar with the Grand Line, there wouldn't have been any doubt. Coincidentally, Buggy and Shanks looked roughly the same age when they fought against Shiki, if I remember right.
I get the impression that for most of the years the Roger pirates didn't really have a direction or a goal. There was no pirate age at the time, and far fewer pirates as a result, and there was certainly no One Piece to go to the Grand Line to search for. If I had to guess, I'd say he finally went to the Grand Line in search of the poneglyphs, but that's simply a hunch which lacks the evidence to support it.
@Jabra:
I mean the latter.
With "I fail to see the point of it" you probably mean Coby's promise to catch/corner Luffy one day? Well, to be honest I don't see it happen, ever. Partially because I doubt Luffy survives the end of the series. The point of a "X years later" scenario would be to show that he managed to fulfill his dream, that's all.
Personally I don't need it either, him being a Rear- or Vice Admiral with a promising future ahead would be enough for me, as long as the reader can be sure that he will make it. Anything is better than him becoming an Admiral in merely 3 years tho, especially when we consider that massive growth spurts stop at some point.
You really think there will be a massive timeskip prologue just so Coby can achieve his dream? I fail to see the point of Coby spending the entire manga pursuing a dream that doesn't have any impact on the story until some distant prologue chapter, and I fail to see the point of the instant haki upgrade in this scenario. If Coby's defining moments around the Raftel portion of the story are something he does with the rank of Vice Admiral, then I have to believe that Oda would make becoming a Vice Admiral to fight Luffy would be his current goal.
I simply don't think Oda foreshadowed Coby becoming an admiral all this time without the intention of making him one and also making it important to the story, rather than just tacking it on at the end.
@Autumncomet:
Looking at this picture of Kizaru and this one of Aokiji, I would honestly put them both in their mid to late twenties at that point, making them in their forties or fifties at the Paramount War, which seems right to me.
My main issue with Coby becoming a VA so young is that it really stings. Did Smoker, Hina, Tashigi, Drake, Doberman, T-Bone, Brandnew, Strawberry, etc., who either haven't become VAs or became VAs later in their lives, not have as much ambition and training as him? I find that really unlikely.
Smoker pretty much blew off his rank. This is a guy with a habit of ignoring orders and pissing off his superiors. Tashigi simply has never been that strong. Doberman we have no clue when he became a VA in the first place, and while we have a young shot of Strawberry as a Rear Admiral, I believe we're to assume these guys learned haki the slow and painful way. Let's not forget that Rayleigh said learning haki is something that would normally be impossible to learn in just two years. Coby had the luxury of using a cheat code to bypass that phase, which I get the feeling vaulted him ahead of where Tashigi is even now, considering she's had two years which isn't supposed to be enough, and we've seen that her haki is too weak already anyways. It's not just about ambition and training. Let's also not forget the inevitable and massive DF card that hasn't been played yet, which can beef up the ol' strength in a big hurry.
Moving on with your list, I don't get the impression that Drake is that old, and he'll have improved as much as the other Supernova over a two year period anyways even if he is. No matter how old these guys are, they've only been given two years to improve. And these other characters you mention, Hina, T-Bone, and Brandnew. These are characters that were designed to fill the ranks. Sure, Oda will probably give them a few promotions here and there, but none of them strike me as characters who were ever intended to reach that level to begin with. Coby is, and the blatant foreshadowing of it makes his eventual ascension pretty much unarguable. For all these other characters, it's a question of "if," but for Coby, it's a question of "when."