@Aaronrules380:
Oh I'll agree that fun is a huge motivating factor and a fair point. As for the comparison to the 23rd Budokai, I kind of disagree. I've read it and am aware of the whole piccolo stuff involved being a huge focus, but I remember all that piccolo junior stuff was happening within the fabric of the tournament.
He blew up the island and was trying to murder everyone.
The joke was that Goku (and the announcer, who is the most underrated character in the whole series) were still behaving like it was going on when it really really wasn't.
Hell the island had already been evacuated entirely by hearing the Great Demon Piccolo was back reincarnated.
Whereas the tournament hasn't encompassed the whole One Piece arc, with the main arc villain not even being involved in it himself.
It doesn't need to. You're still ignoring the point that Oda would be of a mindset where he would mostly want to play out a tournament.
As for my thing on Burgess, it was more that it'd be kind of a waste for him to curbstomp a Dofla member IMO. Like, I feel like Oda already went out of his way to not have any named characters in A block besides Burgess.
So Oda went out of his way to show nothing….almost as if a one v one match vs Senor Pink would be where he DOES show something.
It would be more of a waste to preview a BB member in this arc without us seeing him do anything much.
That's the point of previewing him, to see him pull out some cool dangerous trick or something to hype up his presence later on.
And I think the fact that the factory invasion is just about to start suggests to me that the interruption will happen earlier rather than right near the end.
This arc is nowhere near ending, so explain how Oda would launch that attack in a way that ends the tournament and ALSO have it not succeed. And then have more stuff keep going on. It would make more sense for the tournament to break for the day, for the semi-finals the next day. And have the dwarves attack in the night, and fail.
I do think the tournament was immensely important to this whole thing, and was just Oda having fun. But to me it already feels like the tournament itself is winding down a bit since Oda is shifting his focus more and more onto other things.
He isn't whatsoever. Did you miss that he's been doing that all along? During every block fight?
Oh and also, that nothing he's setting up is the end of the arc. Law will get his ass kicked, and it's really doubtful the dwarves will succeed on a first try. Meanwhile like a third of the crew goes to a completely different island?? Come on now.
I'm not saying the Dofla storyline is going to end soon, just that this part of it might and then we'll move on to another part where we'll see more of the higher ups.
So yeah, you think the final fight is about to happened then. No way jose.
I also don't believe the tournament stuff is just going to be abandoned. In an earlier post I elaborated about how I think things are going to go down. Because personally, I think it will be more fun and more in line with Oda's style to ditch the tournament setting after a while and let the characters he's introduced there run wild in a more free and unrestrained style.
They're more likely to be turned into toys, then turned loose AS toys much later at the finale. Right now they're not about to be loosed. No way.
Plus I don't feel like Oda would want to really show Burgess fighting at this point in the story.
OF COURSE he would. The whole point of flaunting a uber villain from the rival crew is to ….flaunt him!
Seeing some flaunt doesn't mean we see everything.
Also, I feel like most of the random just for fun skypeia fights were more to give more of the main characters stuff to do and people to fight in that arc. Wiper also got a fight, but he was a central figure in the whole arc and as such his fights helped show a bit about the conflict between the shandians and skypeians. I think Rebecca has a somewhat similar role this arc, but I don't think Bartolomeo is important enough to the arc in that sense to merit a one on one fight unless it's just glossed over, and he's not a main character where Oda would need to give him another fight because he's not doing much else (especially since he is doing a bunch of stuff that isn't fighting right now)
Someone is forgetting Yama Vs. Genbu.