@Jejune:
Most of the Strawhats started out as unheard of rookies trying to make it big. The whole point of the story is that they're constantly moving up in the world, and therefore, constantly fighting stronger opponents than the ones before. An underdog is about being expected to lose, and if you think about all their major battles you can see why an outsider would expect them to lose (and sometimes they /have/ lost). They nearly die all the time, usually win out of sheer determination in the face of bad odds, and they're /still/ not taken very seriously by the next antagonists.
This applies to some crewmembers better than others, but Zoro is still just a rookie too, and in East Blue, though his reputation was great, in most of his fights you could still call him an underdog (even though for two of them he had to be heavily injured for it to apply).
Robin's a bit of an exception, but I'm using fighting as my point and she doesn't tend to fight much.
Ok, so you are arguing that even though Zoro was really strong and famous, he was still thought of as an underdog. I see no reason why the same can't be true of Jinbei (especially on land). Rookie and underdog aren't the same thing, after all.
You guys just want Jinbei to join 'cause he's the only new and cool fishman we've seen so far. You'll change your minds soon enough.
@SunWuKong:
i agree with you that they need a fishman, but must it really be the first one that comes across? they didn't even enter fishmen island afterall…
Seriously? I didn't write up my entire theory to have people reduce it to something so elementary and silly. Here, since you guys seem to have missed it: [hide]First, the crew is in need of a fishman or someone similar. When I look at the crew's strengths and weaknesses, I find that they struggle the most while on their own ship. This was especially apparent at the end of the Arabasta arc. The Sunny has given them some good escapability and has a neat cannon, but they can't keep either running away or one shotting their opponent in every sea battle. A fishman brings both the ability to fight in/with the water and the ability to move crew members across the water to other ships. The added flexability would make the Strawhats capable fighters on the sea in the New World, to go along with their abilities on land. Being a pirate manga, I can't help but feel that this is very important.
When Jinbei first appeared in Ace's cell, I thought he would be the perfect candidate for being the Strawhat fishman. The last two additions (Franky and Brook) are both pretty wacky characters, and Jinbei's calm personality would help to balance that. His style remains different from any of the current members, which is a prereq. His uniqueness is a huge selling point for me, as it's one of the few common traits among the crew. The last thing we knew at the time was that he was a Shichibukai, which is important for two reasons. One, for a fishman to join, they have to be capable of becoming legendary among the fishman, and the Shichibukai fishman is a good bet for that. Two, after everything Luffy's been through with the Shichibukai so far, and the first meeting ending with Croc's highest ranked officer joining, I thought it would be appropriate for a Shichibukai to join at the Red Line to symbolize that Luffy "conquered" the first half of the Grand Line.
Once Luffy freed Jinbei, the goosebumps started coming. Jinbei's reaction to seeing Luffy appear in level 6, and the following conversation encouraged me. It seemed that he was already willing to devote himself to helping Luffy. In the next chapter, we discovered that he was a user of fishman karate, and he started earning a ton of cool points with that. Then there was the scene in which Jinbei stopped Luffy from fighting Blackbeard so that he could concentrate on saving Ace, which is exactly the kind of thing that Luffy needs from his nakama. Finally, he got into the water and showed us some of the coolest techniques I've seen.
People tend to worry about strength quite a bit, which I think is a seriously over rated concern. It's a manga in which strength tiers are loosely defined at best, and like all manga the characters get stronger in short intervals which are spaced out accordingly. For the crew to suffer a defeat like they did at SA, that type of thing will typically make them all a lot stronger when they're finally back together again. What's far more important than strength to me is cool factor and likability (this is a story after all). The stuff Jinbei has done over the past few weeks has been amazingly cool. If a different fishman were to join, they'd have to be cooler than Jinbei (note that I didn't say stronger), and that's not an easy task. Keep in mind that even if Jinbei joins, there's still a lot more time to hype him first.[/hide]
it's true that if we're strictly speaking robin and brook aren't rookies anymore, but shakky referred to them as rookies and that should count. also they feel like rookies unlike jimbei.
Robin didn't feel like any more of a rookie when we first saw her than Jinbei does now. Brook is the same way. Shakky referred to them as rookies because the Captain was a rookie I believe. I don't see how the rookie argument can be used against anyone given that Robin and Brook are in the crew.
Robin didn't have a higher bounty than Luffy when she joined. We were shown his and Zoro's bounties of $100,000,000 and $60,000,000 respectively back during Alabasta right after they left the palace using that duck squad in the chapter the page I linked is from.
