@PirateHunter:
Your definition of "rival" is completely backwards.
Because you too are going off the dictionary definition.
It doesn't make sense to consider Blackbeard and Luffy as competitors of the same scale at the moment.
That's because they aren't.
Which is the point. No one gives a shit about people below the hero, they care about whose above him. About the drive to surpass those people.
Also, he's an opponent who we know Luffy will certainly over-power (for vengeance/justice).
How is this not also true of anyone else you could care to name.
That "rivalry" would last only the duration of their inevitable match
That rivalry is already established, and will obviously be expanded on significantly before the end of the series. Duh.
On the other hand, we can count on Smoker,
Luffy doesn't give one Texas shit about Smoker as a rival. Punk Hazard if anything defused Smoker's drive to capture Luffy.
Law,
Another Texas shit Luffy doesn't give.
and Kidd
And one last Texas shit Luffy doesn't give.
They may briefly be low level rivals at some point before Raftel, but that's it.
The Supernovas don't even figure into Oda's long term plans for the series, I'm pretty sure Oda admitted an editor came up with the idea some time before Saobody.
Trying to compare them with Blackbeard is folly.
and their interactions are part of a longer, more substantial competitive relationship, otherwise known as a rivalry.
The only single time Luffy has ever ever shown any rivalry of any sort toward them was in the fight with the Marines at the auction house.
We've already been given insight into the greatest rivalries of the manga, Roger/Whitebeard and Garp/Roger. In both cases, there
Nobody cares, Oda is not trying to exactly mirror the past. You don't remotely understand the act of paralleling if you just think it's some bland color by numbers alignment.
Blackbeard has a few great moments in Mock-town, but for the rest of the series he is merely the subject of Luffy's pending vengeance.
Every single time Blackbeard and Luffy have met, everything you imagine Luffy feels toward Kidd and Law and Smoker (which he doesn't) is visible clearly.
Blackbeard is an asshole, that doesn't change that he's the only competition outside of Shanks and Ace that Luffy has regarded in that fashion.
Luffy isn't going to "surpass" Roger.
Luffy surpassing Roger is one of the most obviously inevitable things there is in the series.
And you're completely hopeless if you can't see that.
There will be greater direct consequences of his success, but "surpassing Roger" isn't part of his agenda.
Luffy's agenda has nothing to do with it. This is the nature of the story. It's been blatantly set up. I was able to figure it out three years before the series blatantly spelled it out for us with Rayleigh talking about the Roger Pirates not knowing what to do with what they found on Raftel.
Here you are, about FIVE years after THAT. Still not getting it? And then you say this below lol.
You have no substantial argument to justify ignoring the considerable amount of parallels between the two and the relationships they've formed.
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@Bigivel:
Yep, a rival isn't someone that is always BEHIND(Soon or later the strongest wouldn't think of him as not worth), but I don't think he have to be always some steps ahead. More important than that, a Rivalry, to exist one, has to be recognized by both sides. Both want to be better than the other one and if they already are then they don't want that person to surpass them later, making them thrive for a more comfortable place.
I disagree, I say the protagonist's view is what matters. One look at the Ace/Luffy relationship should make that clear.
If someone is too ahead of them I agree, like Shanks.
But in Blackbeard's case I don't think so.