@Don:
but richie is still their:blink:
non the less ,their is sure still hope for us and foxy battleing a future yonkou has to be a coverstory
The way I see it, Richie will be the final opponent for Foxy, taking the same place as Luffy once did, and just as that match is about to get started, Buggy will come storming in.
great idea…gaimon sure need some new friends and PX would be great to see ,how he discovers a peaceful place where his mind chances(when he has a mind)..
gaimon would be the perfect teacher for that
love all animals however they may look like....
Yes, exactly, by the end of the chapter story we would see him gently patting the head of a rabbit or something, and enjoying a mellow sunset.
@Taz:
But I guess in the end the deciding factor was that Luffy's popularity was just too much. Understandable though, given that it's been his story alone for the last year. (Though that is true about the timing for Zoro. Perhaps Oda was trying to make up for his dickishness in W-7 with that generous exhibition of good deeds.)
I agree about Luffy's popularity and the good timing in terms of recent manga chapters. If he was to win a tournament – and he almost certainly will this time -- this should be it. Cheers to the true pirate king!
Oda has been evolving Zoro's personality for a long time -- turning him from a lovable goof into a responsible adult. And unfortunately, that's made Zoro less popular with some people, because he's no longer as stupidly funny as he once was. But I think Oda's done a great job of finding other ways to make Zoro funny. For instance, making a lot of jokes at the expense of that new-found seriousness in Zoro (for example, Sanji's reaction after the negative ghost zaps Zoro, and Zoro's reaction to Sanji's reaction) So we're still laughing at Zoro, but it's his intense seriousness that's the punchline now, where it used to be his intense stupidity.
Of course we see the events at W-7 differently and always have, and I'm not going to try to persuade you otherwise (sweat) but I think you're right that at least some of the good deeds he's done since then are Oda's way of showing that he's not a monster.
I also think that Oda had Usopp play a major role in the saving of Zoro (just before they all got pawed) as a way of reinforcing to fans that there's no hard feelings between the two of them, and so there shouldn't be between the fans either. And did you notice that Usopp gave Zoro a lecture too? Not many people catch that, but it's there. Zoro demands to be dropped so that he can serve as a distraction for Pacifista and so that Ussop can escape. Usopp flatly negates the plan: "Hell no! You're crew, too!" So Ussop isn't taking the easiest way out anymore, and Zoro has just learned that he can't always play the martyr card.
Even though Buggy seems to be building up for greater things, I too would still like a meeting with Foxy. And with Alvida and the rest of his crew wandering around without one of their co-captains, they'd make for some nice Foxy-prey so I wouldn't say the window of opportunity has been shut just yet.
The way I see it, this is a convenient way for him to end up with a huge crew before entering the New World. So for him to have circus (the original crew), side-show freaks (Foxy's crew) and con-artists (the Impel Down 'converts') all together in one big armada seems perfect to me. And yes, he's got to go on to bigger things. He's one of Oda's own favorite characters.