@Owain:
They've decided what characters you can like, what other series you can like, and have decided they know for a fact which direction One Piece is going.
Absolutely no one is saying you can or can't like something. Everyone is entitled to opinions.
But where facts are concerned? Where studied theories with evidence and proof are behind them? There, not all ideas are equal.
Its hard or someone to appreciate that's only been here for six month, but the stars are generally given out to people that have been on site for a long time, have had a lot f discussions and debates, and generally are pretty sensible. Everyone has offdays, and we can all be assholes, and personalities can clash, sure.
But. Where the story stuff is concerned?
Track records tend to back up the people that have been around here for a while. You can go back five or eight or ten years, check out posts and theories they made about upcoming stuff, see users take a side in specific debates that last months or years, making the same points again and again, and see them come out pretty much right most of the time.
No, no one can know exactly what Oda is going to do, especially when it comes to brand new characters or deliberately hidden plot twists or what will come in the next given chapter, but in the areas where he plays fair? The broad strokes? Analysis, discussion and study of the story and his writing habits, at considerable length over the course of years, generally works out pretty well.
You can look at things like the Franky/Paulie debates, or the theories of what One Piece was truly going to be YEARS before Enel's story or the war pretty much said it outright. Thoughts on how there was going to be a timeskip, or the guys that figured out Brook was connected to Laboon the second or third week he appeared. People that knew Fujitora was a new admiral after one panel, months before the story said it outright. Or when we unanimously said Sabo was alive and had valid writing reasons behind it aside from "Oda doesn't kill" since he "died" during a flashback. Or look at the next nakama pages and see how a couple of people who picked up on Jinbe early, before he even appeared on camera, had a wealth of reason he might join that were logical and ended up being 100% correct. In a few weeks when the next coverstory starts (probably around chapter 800) is when we'll likely find out officially that Monet and Vergo are still alive, which is a point I've been stressing for over two years now based on the storytelling things Oda does. kaido who was just shown in this chapter, is probably a dragon zoan, which has been discussed for two years now. No telling when that reveal will come, but its probably the case.
Or hell, look to the Naruto thread where it was correctly predicted that there would be a 10 tails beast hidden in the artificially created moon after one off hand sentence, or that Tobi was Obito, years before the story actually got around to revealing these things, after a single panel or sentence.
We're wrong all the time, that'll happen when an author is introducing new elements all the time and we're speculating enmasse about brand new stuff. But we're pretty good about stuff that plays fair and adheres to ideas of good writing and author sensibilities and has been around and discussed for a while.
(And outside of the discussion about a childrens comic about rubber pirate, check the discussions on movies, television, politics, world news, culture, music, and a wide variety of other stuff.)
@uniaka:
Not going to start about the final villain, but you can't say Luffy cares about Shanks much more then Ace.
Its not about what Luffy cares about. Its who is actually in fact more important to the overall story. Ace was important to Luffy sure, but it was WHitebeard's death that changed the world. It'll be the same with Shanks later.
Bellemere was important to Nami, but Arlong isn't the final villain. Hiriluk important to Chopper, but Wapol isn't the last badguy.
Shanks inspired Luffy and his journey, saved his life, sure. Ace made it possible that Luffy can continue his journey and not fail half-way.
So did Shanks. And Law. And Jinbe. And Ivanokov.
Without Shanks arriving at the war, Luffy (and Jinbe and Coby) wouldn't have gotten out of marineford. And… he's gonna face BB later and make the same sort of sacrifice there as Ace. So, with the scales at that point balanced in a few years... how much will Ace's death matter in the overall grand scheme of the story?
He traded his life for luffy's life, Luffy looked up to him since kids, if it wasn't for the events 2 years ago, Luffy's journey would end when he would go in the NW 2 years ago, or even at FI.
And again, once Shanks fights BB, all the same things will apply to him.
