@kerronstw:
How the hell was that forced? Correct me if i am wrong (since i havent read skypiea for a long time) but since the time when merry was on that altar and Robin noticed something on the wall it was clear that upper yard has some historic monuments. She even beat the crap out of one of the goat fighters for stepping on a monument before she faced Yama.
I don't mean that it came out of the blue or that it was out of character, but that that part of the fight was kind of force. Like "Oh no, I must protect the ruins with my body and there's no way at all I could attack you in this place, must struggle further away first (even though out of everyone I have the best suited attacks to killing someone with no environmental damage.)" Protagonist losing for a while, then winning with awesomeness is pretty normal. Thing is, it ought to feel convincing. Like Zoro struggles against Mr 1 because he literally can't cut him. And then he can. With some characters, we get them struggling because, uh, they're weaker, and they need to find the route to victory.
Basically, while it was all in character for Robin to behave the way she did, it's not a particularly convincing scenario. It feels like Oda made her feel like she had no choice but to take hits just to make the fight feel less one sided and have Robin take hits, rather than he struggle being organic to the situation she was in.
And his axe dials are clearly part of his fightinh arsenal since he used them against a shandian so i dont see your point. And tbh Nami having some sort of weather weapon to fight an expert fighter with a deadly df seems more forced to me than Robin getting angry over the loss of history.
Do you remember when that random guy attacked a Shandian? And said Shandian blocked with his shield? And it was irrelevant because random guy had an aze dial and slice all the way through? Yama's attacks are basically glorified body slams. They could just as easily be impact dials. Or like a softcore version of impact dials. The only reason it really even matters that they're dials is because Robin turns them around so Yama damages himself. Considering all the really good Sky Combat Oda put into that arc, it's pretty disappointing.
Yeah, the length of this fight played a role aswell. There wasnt unnecessary conversation between Robin and Yama. Compare it to Nami vs Doublefinger where the latter just stood there whole nami wad trying to use her new weapon. That is no good. I would have prefered if Doublefinger went all out on her from the beginning and Nami manages to sneak around the small streets because of her experience as a thief (doublefinger even made a comment that she wasnt a complete amateur like she pretended to be)
Those are called gags. They wouldn't work if Doublefinger was trying to spike her literally all the time she could. The same can be said to some extent for the fight with Kalifa, except the humour seems to be in large part at Kalifa's expense, and it makes her look stupid. No, her being stupid is actually one of the gags.
So you can hate the gags-in-fights thing if you want. But that fight (vs Doublefinger) had a lot of meaning behind it and actually had a couple of pretty powerful moments. Robin vs Yama on the other hand? It was just another skirmish in the woods, really. With a bit of actually not all that compelling character drive behind it. And combatively it was a million times less exciting than, say, Zoro versus Braham.
I generally disliked namus fight because her opponents seem to forget that they are expert assassins and killers when facing nami
Doublefinger's a bit lazy, I suppose, but she goes for the kill when she attacks, and she only really seems to humour ami because of her 'weapon' apparently being nothing of the sort.
With Kalifa, that's kind of true. I like that her fight kind of shows her gradually using a better mix of Rokushiki and her new power, as if she's on a learning curve, and would have perfected it had she not been beaten by Nami. But that's probably not intentional at all.
Annnnd, with Hotori, you have no point whatsoever :p