@Admiral:
Except that you're wrong about pretty much everything. I think he's dead, but certainly not for the bizarre reasons you've given.
WOOOOW Coming from you, I take it as a compliment.
BTW my post was a semi-answer to incinerator.
@incinerator:
Granted, a death of a strong character could be the shot-in-the-arm that One Piece has needed for a while, but it's highly untraditional. It could be used as a pivotal moment in the storyline. However, I can't help but think Ace's death wouldn't be important to Luffy in the big picture. Ace may mean a lot to Luffy, he may not. The point is that Ace not only is independent from Luffy and his dream of being Pirate King, but is standing directly in Luffy's way! Luffy is already plenty motivated to fulfill his dream for his own reasons anyhow. The death of a family member may cause sorrow or thoughts of vengeance, but does he need any further encouragement, especially from a shaky source?
It's compelling to think of it being an earth-shattering event that rocks the New World. It would work well as a new type of story element to mark a new stage in One Piece. I only see a few problems with this… One Piece is a very long-running series. Its longevity speaks strongly of its stability; it has a very wide reader-base and a steady flow of story development, almost comforting in its consistency (setting aside a few dud bits). It's exciting to follow, but if you zoom out and look at the big picture of the plot, it is not a radically changing story with shocking plot twists. Combine that with the fact that Ace is one of the most popular characters according to the polls, it's apparent that Ace's death would be too upsetting and disgruntling to long-time user base that made One Piece such a success in the first place. Not making waves within the warmly familiar character cast = keeping customers in their comfortable happy zone. These waves will have to happen once the story reaches its climax, but not very well until. We still have a long haul ahead of us, ne? Besides, knowing Oda, he can make Ace's defeat fulfill all intents and purposes of his death without closing any doors.
Ah this turned into another long-winded musing, I guess the only point I'm trying to prove is... don't be sure of something that's still so high up in the air (and then that's only really for Mw no ice =P )
Well I agree with your first paragraph but that's just what I said: Ace's death is in no mean something to develop Luffy's character.
I do not agree with teh rest. I believe that the story of One Piece was written a long time before Oda began to serialize the manga. I am talking here about the grand scheme of the story, not the Arc-stories, side characters and etc….
And I believe that Blackbeard, Ace, Dragon, Gold D Rogers and others (especially those little tidbits of things we see between arcs) are part of that grand scheme, so it doesn't matter if Ace is popular or not, it doesn't matter if Oda never kills other characters, Ace will die and died, the same way Gold D R died.
We can also debate about the usefulness of Rogers death , all those arguments you used can be used for Roger. Do you really want a "Is Gold D Roger death or alive" thread??
And yeah we cannot be sure of nothing in one piece (hmmm am I contradicting myself), well we can not be sure of anything in OP. Hell I even won't be suprised if Bellemere popped up in next arc.