@ultimateclima:
Oda really skipped around a lot. A lot of the story is told nonlinearly. It would make a great drinking game. Take a shot every time Oda backtracks in the story. Once you know the events it's not as jarring…but still.
Lol, i just started to re-watch every episode with a friend of mine and we thought about having a drinking game for this..when we reach FI it would at least be an idea to use there ;)
But to reply more serious on final thoughts about this arc and FI itself, i think many will see it as a disappointment just like Skypia, DBF or Thriller Bark are considered so by many.
I honestly just see TB as not "that well done", but i also was never a fan of horror.
In my eyes the war was the arc with the most potential waisted, what doesnt mean that it was bad or anything. I haven
t re-read FI so far, because i see it as to early, but i don`t see it as a bad arc.
It was way to hyped and everyone had his own picture of it already made up years ago..so its natural that many didn
t see what they hoped.
I also wanted it a bit more dark down there but non the less the world Oda presented us with FI was amazing and had many cool ideas.
It may have been better to give us sooner a map of the location so that we get a better picture of it, but beside that it actually was a good designed fantasy island.
The characters i may be able to judge better after rereading the whole thing, but i liked the ryal family and the designs for the fishman were also creative but maybe not enough used..it felt like the real characters were in the flashback instead of the current events.
About the fights..well i could repeat here myself but i posted my thoughts about them already and i just leave here the quote for those interested.
! @Don:
! > I guess many are kind of annoyed that the SHs wont get "real" battles(those where they survive just barely) in this arc, seeing how they own those fishmen realtively easily. But after accepting that fact and thinking about it in the great context, it
s actually not rly that surprising.
After the TS the crew reunited and started the second(and this time for real) approach to achieve their dreams.
The chapter was even called "Romance Dawn for the New World", what marked where their second part of the journey began.
So what does this have to do with getting right now such unsatisfying battles?
Well, when we look back at the first chapters of this manga we also got a lot of fights, but there our heroes also had opponents which seemed to be strong(at that time) but were defeated in the end very easily.
(Luffy-Alvida,Morgan,Buggy,Kuro /Zoro fought always somehow injured and so all his battles seemed closer as they rly were../ more or less etc. for the rest of the crew)
So during their journey they had to improve because stronger villains appeared everywhere, but at the beginning the skill/strenght they had before they joined Luffy was already enough to defeat most of their opponents relatively easily without having close-to-survive battles.
Later during the journey they improved, but so did the villains which resulted in near death battles against the CP9 members and their near annihilation at Shabondy.
Now after the TS they all trained a lot and their skills/strenght may not even be close to that what they all will achieve someday, but just like in the beginning of the manga, right now for the start of the second part they are way ahead of the first opponents they will encounter.
Later in the NW their skills/strenght won`t be enough anymore and they have to improve from island to island, because their opponents will be stronger.(like it is normal in mangas)
We are right now used to those fights like against the CP9 members where the SHs have to give their best to survive, because they came to a dead end with their current skills/strenght.
But those fights were rly close to the end of the first part of the story,while
right now we witness such fights again, we had at the beginning of the first part, where they dont have those close-to-death battles against their opponents. Later in the NW we will for sure get that all the time, but by now it would be kind of awkward when their training would have been just enough to somehow survive the entrance of the NW. Seeing that we
re at the beginning of the second part we get villains who are actually stronger then the previous ones, but those can be defeated as easily as the first opponents of the first part of the story.
The arguement was brought up that we didnt see fishman karate dojo…ehhm yeah well, it was said we hear more about it at FI (what we actually did via Jinbe) but i personally don
t miss it.
We would have get the same explanation how it works as we have and maybe a cool designed dojo..not rly that much we miss tehre...some strong fighters i may agree on but it isn`t that necessary after all.
The overall story of this arc i think was a intense with bringig up racism,hatred without reason and being obsessed about revenge.
That fits my assumption that Oda will use more darker and mature material in his story for the second half of the GL and i think that was a good start for that.
So afterall this arc wasnt bad at all in my eyes and i guess rereading it won
t change that..iam looking forward to your deeper analyse ultimateclima, don`t forget to link me to the blog or whereever you may post it :)