**Perona
Love:**
Perona may actually be my favourite female character in all of One Piece.
Her battle with Usopp is by far the most fun fight in the entire series to date. When her one overpowered ability proves ineffective on Usopp we get into a battle of mind games, tricks, lies and scares, all of which gave both parties the perfect opportunity to shine. Watching both parties alternate from smug and confident to terrified and on the verge of passing out was comedic gold as they played pass the parcel with those respective personalities as each gained a slight advantage.
On Usopp's part it showed why he was a vital part of the crew. Not because he's 'negative' which was the given reason he could withstand her abilities, but because he's probably the one fighter who can adapt fastest within battle. Capable of working out how Perona's devil fruit worked from merely battling it a bit, and working out her personality enough to know she was as big a coward as he thinks he is.
For Perona herself, she showed just how powerful a devil fruit can be outside of sheer brute strength. The negative hollows do, to some extent, make sense to me; the idea of a ghost passing through your body making you feel like you want to die does seem like a logical extension to feeling a fearful chill in the air when you feel frightened.
The mini hollows, admittedly, just appear to be a shout out to Dragonball Z's Gotenks' Kamikaze ghost ability. Having googled exploding spirits and got nothing back related to ghosties, that's all I can imagine it could be.
The ability to remove her own soul from her body is a nice extension of her powers and gave a nice feeling of helplessness for a moment, allowing for a far more impactful victory for Usopp when he figured out what had happened.
My last point on her powers; whilst not strictly just a Perona thing, one thing I really appreciate with the Mysterious Four is how their abilities work perfectly for Moria's plan. Perona makes them lose their will to fight, Absalom kidnaps them without even being seen, Moria removes their shadow, and Hogback creates a zombie for it to be placed in. I don't think we've had as an effective use of abilities in any other crew outside maybe the Strawhats. There's a reason Thriller Bark ranks high for me, and I think this perfect crew for the job may just be one small factor of that.
Personality wise, Perona was somewhat of a breath of fresh air for me. After the likes of Khalifa and Miss Doublefinger(whom I still adore), Perona's overemotional outbursts, face faults, random mood swings and occasional comedic moments made her stand out from the crowd. The fact she's also potentially MORE dangerous than her WARLORD MASTER coupled with this bratty attitude is somewhat amusing, and that she did genuinely get upset when Usopp purified Kumacy did give some sort of lead up to a change of heart later down the line. Her love of things cute is somewhat different from Porche, as she seems to find the frankly roadkill esque frankenstein monster looking wild zombies to be the cutest things ever.
Can't talk about loves without mentioning her design either! With her unusual, yet still weirdly attractive face, Tim Burton esque clothing choices and gothic lolita looks, she not only acts unique, she looks unique. Wearing her fake crown, she's the self designated princess of everything cute(and creepy) and her very design reflects this personality of hers. Post time skip gets a few points for carrying around a Kumacy doll which admittedly makes me feel a little bad about Usopp finishing off the real one. Maybe she'll meet Kumacy's shadow's owner one day…
Loathe: Like many others, Perona's willingness to abandon her crew, steal all the gold and food for herself and leave is…concerning. Admittedly she did think Oars had been sent to kill her(maybe she assumed Moria had thought she'd outlived her usefulness?) but the way she turned her back on the man who had essentially raised her from childhood(if we go by the brief flashback) left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth.
Speaking of, her involvement with Moria is a bit of a weird one. She bawls like crazy when she thinks he's been killed in Marineford and after Mihawk dismisses the idea he's been killed, she seems to perk up. On the other, this seems in stark contrast with her previous "Seeya" attitude to Moria and the gang. So she cares about Moria, but seems to be making no attempt to leave Mihawk's side to go and locate her crewmates? How exactly DOES she feel about Moria?
She got over her hostility towards the Strawhats surprisingly fast. Could have dragged it out a LITTLE more with Zoro. I can buy becoming Zoro's ally in two years, but she went from enemy to patching him up almost instantly aside from one snide comment.
Whilst I didn't consider this before Lao G is spot on when he points out how Perona and Usopp would have made for a more dynamic character interaction than her and Zoro considering the two had no build up in Thriller Bark.
Design: 4/5 Whilst not totally ground breaking, her design is solid and works well, avoiding the old trappings of Oda's limited female character diversity from yesteryear. She's only overshadowed(HA) in her arc by Moria for great designs IMO.
Character: 4.5/5 Fulfills her role magnificently, and there's a reason she became popular enough to keep coming back as a reoccurring characters whilst poor Hogback got nothing, and Absalom only got mentions. MOST FUN FIGHT IN THE MANGA AND FOR THAT SHE GETS ADDITIONAL POINTS. FIGHT ME BRO.
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Oh, dang I missed Rayleigh:
**Silvers Rayleigh
Love:** He's a part of Roger's old crew, and gosh dang it we are sorely uninformed about Roger's legendary crew outside Shanks, Buggy and Crocus(a bit)
Whilst I'm not usually one for the top tier characters(genuinely I think being too strong takes away character growth which is why Buggy is forever>>>Shanks to me) Rayleigh fulfills his role nicely without making Kizaru look weak. That clash was actually pretty well handled where a lesser manga would have just had Rayleigh bitchslap Kizaru away and ruined his overall threat feel. Kudos for that.
He's a pretty cool old guy in a series filled with cool old guys(Garp, Sengoku, Hiriluk, Brook, Crocus, etc). That he manages to stand out amongst such powerful competition as a cool old guy is impressive.
Loathe: Why is he training Luffy? His connection is a little weak. He's Shanks' old crewmate I guess, and Shanks is Luffy's mentor figure? Rayleigh doesn't really have a real connection to Luffy, and it goes so quick from meet up to get a ship coated to saving them from Kizaru to personally training him…Rayleigh feels like he's a mentor because he's a cool old guy, and every manga has a cool old guy mentor. Shanks is not old enough! OLDER!
There isn't an awful lot to Rayleigh outside of that though. He's not really got much reason for doing anything that he does, and whilst I feel One Piece beats Dragonball and Naruto in many aspects, Rayleigh's inexplicable action for doing anything with Luffy makes Rayleigh feel less of a natural mentor to me than Master Roshi or Jiraya did to Goku/Krillin and Naruto respectively.
Character: 3/5
Rayleigh doesn't do anything wrong, but at the same time he also doesn't do anything that makes him stand out that much as a character. He's unfortunately a pretty paint by numbers cool old teacher in order to narratively allow Luffy to learn Haki, and nothing more.
Design: 4/5
I can't deny he looks cool as hell though. You can see where Shanks got his sense of style from.