Reread Alabasta.
Hohoho, it wasn't as strong as I remembered. But even back when I watched it, I knew I didn't enjoy it as much as Baratie and Arlong.
I'll get more in depth later on, but some quick (possibly underdevloped) thoughts:
The relationship Vivi and the Straw Hat Pirates had wasn't strong enough to get me to believe that they were truly friends. Vivi would just tell them about Alabasta and stress out a lot, and the straw hats - being the considerate people they are - would calm her odwn by telling her to stop stressing out. That's kind of it. They barely had much conversations that didn't revolve around only what was happening, and usually the conversations played out similarly.
It was hard to get invested in it.
Secondly, Crocodile did a lot of stuff that, well, I felt was bullshit from a story-telling perspective. Like he always seemd to have a backup plan that would make you say "why couldn't you just do this instead". Or at the very least, "why even bother doing this". Like with the bomb situation in Alabasta. Like, no need to even have two agents near the clock, if it was going to detonate on its own anyway?
And lastly, my god. The Alabasta Arc in particular really just dragged. Like, people complain that New World has dragged on… well, imagine how Alabasta would be if you had to read it weekly. Like legit, from when Luffy defeated Crocodile to when the straw hats ate at the banquet was like 4 chapters in between. We had a whole chapter dedicated to the marines, which was forgetable. Like it literally could have been half of a chapter given the content (luffy and zoro's bounties, and tashigi crying).
The arc kind of reveals a flaw with Oda: He's too quick to call supporting characters friends, without having enough emotionally varying/conversationally varying scenes.
In real life, when you meet someone and talk about one particular subject for like 5 minutes, you might not really call them a friend, especially not a friend that you'll ris your life for. Usually this will only happen after talking about a couple things, and getting to know the person personall so that you can build a real bond with them. With Vivi, the depth of the conversations were limited.
! @zeltrax225:
! > Are people seriously arguing over whether W7 and EL is the same arc?
What the heck is that even something worth debating I mean when you think of Water 7 you think of CP 9
and when you think of EL you think of them saving Robin which led from water 7.
I wish people would stop saying they are different things, so just because EL happen some place else it's a different arc
okay so when the arc concludes and the SHs celebrated back at W7 do we call it wow its a new arc with a few chapters, water 7 arc number 2?
This is stupid, it's as if saying Dressrosa is split up into two arcs: the coliseum and everyone vs Doffy family.
I'm just going to call it the CP9 arc.
Anyway I feel like people now are just bashing it because it's filled with shounen tropes that you know actually worked which meant Oda did everything right but hey just because the island is boring and we have all one-on-one fights like in every shounen series
this is suddenly not one piece anymore right? Oh of course one piece must be special, it can't fall into any shounen tropes right?
So let's bash this arc just because it has parts similar to a generic shounen manga. It shouldn't have because One Piece is oh so special.
While ignoring that Oda hits all the right note, calling gear second an asspull when you know you love it and hating on all the stupid
fans for loving the arc so much when it brought so much attention to OP. Sure go ahead.
Elitists aren't we?
The main complaints about Enies Lobby were the asspull powers, CP9 being "dumbed down" to give them a chance at the keys,
the island with no culture and of course our generic shounen fight festival with its one-on-ones.
Before you go complaining that the powers were ass pulls, are we reading the same manga?
The SHs have been stagnant with their powers for years after Alabasta and during Skypiea.
They themselves knew they needed a leverage if they want to keep surviving.
Look, just because we the readers can't comprehend how the SHs can further improvize and use their powers doesn't
mean it's an asspull.
Zoro has mentioned that all of the SHs have grown somehow, there were lines suggesting that they are
getting stronger or have something they can pull off. It has been mentioned godzillion of times by people defending it saying it's
not an asspull.
If Luffy suddenly goes blond or grow a tail and whoop the shit out of Lucci when he's cornered, that's an asspull, that's what
you call a Deus Ex Machina.
But we know that with the Gum Gum fruit there are still things that luffy can come up with, heck a few of us probably played
with our imagination and came up with new powers for Luffy in our mind.
All Luffy did was come up new techniques, over the course of his adventures and executed it on what he thought necessary on a new group of villains that he knew he can't match.
No, he didn't grow two horns or shoot red beams suddenly after he came up with it himself.
He actually implemented it quite well.
And no it's not like he suddenly wanted to get stronger either, he has been thinking about it since Aokiji incident.
it's not a "oh I've been wanting to pump my legs so I shall use it to kick your ass!"
it's more of a "how can I be stronger given my limitations? What can I use my fruit powers further for?" throughout.
I'll give you that Asura doesn't make sense but if you want to say that then Zoro's fight with Mr 1 doesn't make sense either.
I mean whoa, he cut steel in the middle of the fight! That's so cool and there's this spirtiual shit going on, even cooler!
No way! it's not like he pulled that out of nowhere, there's spiritual shit and stuff man!
But when he have a new technique he developed overtime it's somehow an asspull.
Why again? Asura is a freaking technique not a form, it's the same thing as him learning how to cut steel in the middle of a battle and he didn't even learn Asura in battle, it's probably something he developed over time.
"But there were no mentions of it!
They were pushed their limits and didn't use it?!"
Maybe because they didn't have it yet, I don't know man but if you are going to go to islands and islands working your ass
off and almost always end up dying I'm pretty sure you'll rack up some experience and new skills.
But hey of course we shouldn't think that way just because it wasn't foreshadowed before and that characters don't grow unless we see them train like all other shounen mangas, remember?
I don't get why people bitch on Bleach and other manga using the same techniques over and over again
and then jump on OP when it does something new in EL which might I add is within the limitations of their powers.
It's not like Usopp slingshot was a miraculous weapon with a miracle dial to one shot an agent either.
! Nah, just admit Ennies Lobby took an L. Sanji's Diable Jambe crap was horrible, Zoro's asura was bad - you mention the Mr 1 fight, which was a little shitty, but one can at least say that he never really had to put him self in position to fight against an opponent like that. And the flashback fits in nicely. Not to mention the scenes where Zoro clearly trains for the purpose of cutting steel before they arrive alabasta (I can't find the scenes; just look around drum island).
! More importantly, the issue with the Ennies Lobby asspulls is that they ruined everything, and could have set up a bad precedent. When I was watching Thriller Bark, I was really worried that the strawhats would easily beat Oars without even need Nightmare Luffy becuase they could just pull out some random asspull. But thankfully, it didn't happen. Same thing with Saboady.
! The lack of an explanation for them suddenly getting stronger cheapens everything. We don't even need to see them train. I just want something I can buy/believe, other than "we need to get stronger", because, well, again, it sets a bad precedent. Not only that, but it didn't even really apply to the previous arcs. They usually found ways to defeat the villains by learning their weak points or something. All the Arlong fights, the Drum Island fights, etc.
! I have no issue with all-out fighitng. I mean heck, that's how many of the arcs have been. I just hated how they handled it in Ennies Lobby.
! And finally,for it's worth, I don't even like bahing on One Piece for stuff like this, becuase One Piece as a whole is so great so far above a lot of it's shonen contemporaries like Bleach and stuff, that I almost don't even want to criticize it.