I don't know, I never saw a bird dying from a bomb. Maybe they all are immune to explosions.
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The Great New World Discussion Thread
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@Count:
Machvise used his Devil Fruit better than Miss Valentine's Day just by having a superior weight metric default?
He was at least competent at using it in battle. Miss Valentine was mostly a chew toy whose biggest accomplishment was sitting on Usopp after Mr. 5 shot him.
Spoiler:
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He was at least competent at using it in battle. Miss Valentine was mostly a chew toy whose biggest accomplishment was sitting on Usopp after Mr. 5 shot him.
But they did the exact same damn thing, minus Machvise attaching a metal weight on his chest. Miss Valentine's Day is only weak for the sake of being weak.
Spoiler:
"Life's not about finding out which card is yours, but finding out which cards you're not."
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@Count:
But they did the exact same damn thing, minus Machvise attaching a metal weight on his chest. Miss Valentine's Day is only weak for the sake of being weak.
Yeah, why did Machvise even need the "superior" version of Miss Valentine's fruit that worked EXACTLY the same? If his thing was "making other objects including a piece of metal strapped to his chest" the story could go exactly the same way and you'd still have the Baroque Works/Doflamingo Family parallel.
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Well, you can also clearly tell from the flashback that Machvise did his best to put on weight over the years in order to increase his attack efficiency - he gave it his all, no wonder he fared better. Thick-as-a-twig Miss Valentine's Day was barely trying, the least she should have been is Big Mom's weight class :ninja:
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I think the worst part is that Miss Valentine's Day is actually more versatile than Machvise since she can also decrease her weight to float, whereas Machvise can only alter how much of an obese paperweight he is.
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but wouldn't miss valentine be more deadly? she has more weight on a tinier surface, resulting in a much higher pressure
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but wouldn't miss valentine be more deadly? she has more weight on a tinier surface, resulting in a much higher pressure
I thought you were the one who was saying we shouldn't apply science to "magical" Devil Fruits?
Spoiler:
"Life's not about finding out which card is yours, but finding out which cards you're not."
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@Count:
But they did the exact same damn thing, minus Machvise attaching a metal weight on his chest. Miss Valentine's Day is only weak for the sake of being weak.
gotta agree with the count here. while oda added the extra weight, if he made machvise an actual fighter and say added weight to his punches or making himself heavier to negate attacks we'd have an argument here, but he basically did the same thing: jump high in the air and "belly flopped"
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@Count:
I thought you were the one who was saying we shouldn't apply science to "magical" Devil Fruits?
devil fruits and their induced abilities are clearly of supernatural origin. That doesn't mean, that there are no laws of physics.
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devil fruits and their induced abilities are clearly of supernatural origin. That doesn't mean, that there are no laws of physics.
I'm just poking fun at you, I wasn't serious, don't worry. But I don't expect Oda to care about technicalities like that.
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It was crazy seeing Flashback Machvise was as muscular as Burgess was. 10 years of giant pizza eating really took it's toll.
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I just realized every big player in OP (the Yonkou, Admirals, Roger, Gorosei, Dragon) is human. Wish I didn't realized that…
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@.access:
I just realized every big player in OP (the Yonkou, Admirals, Roger, Gorosei, Dragon) is human. Wish I didn't realized that…
It's been teased at least two times that Kaidou isn't quite human.
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Until we have more than "strongest creature in the world", I'll stick to what he looks like.
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@.access:
Until we have more than "strongest creature in the world", I'll stick to what he looks like.
If you want to stick to what he looks like, then notice how he has horns like Oars and Oars Jr. Whom Moria coincidentally desired to get revenge on Kaido.
Spoiler:
"Life's not about finding out which card is yours, but finding out which cards you're not."
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As does Moria himself.
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Or Hannyabal. I think we got to a point that we can accept humans in One Piece can have pretty much anything sprouting out of their bodies and come in every shape and size. Or we can take BM library/prison as a hint that there are many more humanoid species than the ones we were presented and maybe all those weird humans will turn out to not be regular humans at all (or be hybrids).
Now that I think about it, could Masira and Shojo be the first minks to appear in the series? I know they were stated to be humans, but now minks were introduced maybe Oda changed his mind.
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@.access:
Or Hannyabal. I think we got to a point that we can accept humans in One Piece can have pretty much anything sprouting out of their bodies and come in every shape and size. Or we can take BM library/prison as a hint that there are many more humanoid species than the ones we were presented and maybe all those weird humans will turn out to not be regular humans at all (or be hybrids).
Now that I think about it, could Masira and Shojo be the first minks to appear in the series? I know they were stated to be humans, but now minks were introduced maybe Oda changed his mind.
I'd say, their grandfather might have been a monkey. Same with Merry (Kaya's butler)
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Didnt wanna start a new thread JUST for this but…
Who the hell is Commander Snack?
do yall believe we'll see him this arc?
if we do, have we seen him already or are we expecting someone new?
If we've seen him already does any of the other siblings match who he may be?
and last question, Perospero had a bounty of 700M and Cracker had 860, Whats an estimation do you think of Snacks Bounty? -
The best hope is getting a brief Urouge flashback like how Blackbeard flashed back to Thatch during the fight with Ace. Which would have to happen after this arc ends.
Spoiler:
"Life's not about finding out which card is yours, but finding out which cards you're not."
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Dunno whether I should care for him. He seems to be almost as insignificant as Smoothie.
Forum user Bartholemew Bear passed away in a very moving and touching way. I, ARTEMlS, therefore carry on the Will of DArth for good unto its final fulfilment.
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@Count:
The best hope is getting a brief Urouge flashback like how Blackbeard flashed back to Thatch during the fight with Ace. Which would have to happen after this arc ends.
definitely possible. Feel like it would mean more if we had a better gauge if we're just hyping up urouge. Perospero is worth 700 and he's not a commander. Are commanders that for their strength or their strategic purpose? for simplicity purposes we could assume snack is a strong commander who probably has a higher bounty than perospero but my mind doesnt work that way, and i feel like the story isn't alway straight forward.
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definitely possible. Feel like it would mean more if we had a better gauge if we're just hyping up urouge. Perospero is worth 700 and he's not a commander. Are commanders that for their strength or their strategic purpose? for simplicity purposes we could assume snack is a strong commander who probably has a higher bounty than perospero but my mind doesnt work that way, and i feel like the story isn't alway straight forward.
Definitely strength. That is how all of the high faction ranks in One Piece work. Bounties are easily fixed, but titles kind of aren't. Which is why the Admirals are so highly ranked for their strength while its often lower ranked soldiers that do menial brainwork jobs. Not that Admirals don't do paperwork and reports, but that's hardly ever focused on.
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In fact the reason Garp did not want to be an admiral was the amount of desk work he would do. Or something along those lines.
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Dunno whether I should care for him. He seems to be almost as insignificant as Smoothie.
her insignificance aside, the information we've gotten about who she is helps strengthens the big mom crew some.
overall, i feel the big mom pirates aren't handled well this arc. the arc has focused more on big mom and pudding and it makes sense and now we've focused on katakuri but for someone who has 85 kids i feel like i only know 5 kids: perospero, katakuri, brulee, pudding and cracker. cracker already played his part even tho we didnt get much of him so he's done, but pero and kata are the prime antagonist and brulee and pudding being important to the plot. everybody else just falls short.
in comparison, doffy had less members and more members played the roles similar to cracker but atleast we saw something of them. arc isnt over so im expecting some of them to fill those roles but i still feel like im going to feel closer to the doffy family than i do with the charlotte family.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
@Count:
Definitely strength. That is how all of the high faction ranks in One Piece work. Bounties are easily fixed, but titles kind of aren't. Which is why the Admirals are so highly ranked for their strength while its often lower ranked soldiers that do menial brainwork jobs. Not that Admirals don't do paperwork and reports, but that's hardly ever focused on.
i definitely think strength is a factor as i dont really expect a non combatant to be a commander however i see alternative. When we look at whitebeards crew the commanders where not aligned based on just strength. Ace was the number 2 and he definitely wasn't the second strongest. This also means the position was vacant. Whitebeard had 16 commanders which we can see has an array of strength. why did big mom only have 4? the ministers dont follow strength. We also have information of spandam being the leader of cp9 but he was basically a non combatant. I guess i just wish i knew how the crew itself was assembled.
we know big mom, 3(4) commanders, and then some strong members. this is too vague for my liking. The lack of organization is bad to me. with the huge numbers i feel its important now than before to show some structure as to why these yonkous are the threat they are.
doffy had his elite officers, regular officers and mooks
crocodile had his baroque works
whitebeard has his family.i need some charlotte family structure (sorry for the random rant)
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I think it is something like:
Big Mom
Token first mate: Streussen
4 Sweet commanders
Ministers
Elite soldiers (Bege, Pekoms, etc)
Chess soldiersHidden:
Try out my first game! All feedback is welcome, enjoy and thanks. Heroine: Kiku
Hidden:
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@K.:
I think it is something like:
Big Mom
Token first mate: Streussen
4 Sweet commanders
Ministers
Elite soldiers (Bege, Pekoms, etc)
Chess soldiersi can see
Big Mom
3(4) Sweet commanders
chess soldiers
but that blank area incorporates a lot of ppl. We kinda know the big mom pirates are like chess pieces. (rook, knight, bishop, pawns) but what importance are the ministers? is the title separate from the crews dynamic? what about the children? none of them seem to be considered a chess piece.
so is it
Big mom
Commanders
other children
chess officers (tomago, bege; knight, rook)
and then chess pieces (pawns and homies)–- Update From New Post Merge ---
also to mention, we know that she's supposed to have crews married to her children yet we've ONLY seen sun pirates and firetank.
and only mention of 1 husband.i really, really hope oda gives us more info in the sbs or somewhere. i like when my stories build a great world.
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but that blank area incorporates a lot of ppl. We kinda know the big mom pirates are like chess pieces. (rook, knight, bishop, pawns) but what importance are the ministers? is the title separate from the crews dynamic? what about the children? none of them seem to be considered a chess piece.
The minister position, I could be wrong, is reserved for children of Big Mom. Mama is the emperor, and each island has a minister that is part of her crew, but is related to her biologically as well. They manage and are in charge of that island. Each specialized in food I assume to be ready for any of Mama's tantrums.
Big mom
Commanders
other children
chess officers (tomago, bege; knight, rook)
and then chess pieces (pawns and homies)The other children would be the ministers each controlling an island.
also to mention, we know that she's supposed to have crews married to her children yet we've ONLY seen sun pirates and firetank. and only mention of 1 husband. i really, really hope oda gives us more info in the sbs or somewhere. i like when my stories build a great world.
I think it would have been funny if Pound had reunited all of Big Mom's ex-husbands for the finale. Otherwise, it does not seem that they are killed immediately after if we assume that all of them were treated like Pound. The latter was annoying because he kept asking to see her daughters, one of them was Lola, someone that seems to enraged Mama on the spot. So they could be living around Tottoland. Well, not all marriages would have to be between pirate crews. The Vinsmokes are not pirates, so the marriages could have occurred as she gained more territory.
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I think Ministers are just that, the head of an island. I don't think that position necessarily equates strength. Or does anyone cosider Lola or Pudding actually strong characters?
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This post is deleted!
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A random thought: Do you fine people think the people of Wano have some sort of special ability like the Minks/Fishmen in that their samurai armor is like super strong or something?
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@S.C.:
A random thought: Do you fine people think the people of Wano have some sort of special ability like the Minks/Fishmen in that their samurai armor is like super strong or something?
Raizou already showed ninjutsu and Kin'emon can cut fire. Just get in more of that, I guess.
Spoiler:
"Life's not about finding out which card is yours, but finding out which cards you're not."
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@Count:
Raizou already showed ninjutsu and Kin'emon can cut fire. Just get in more of that, I guess.
Also, on that note. I do hope more then just swords atop of swords. Samurai used quite a variety of weapons and also had the hand-to-hand art of Jujutsu, too.
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I cannot sleep for the life of me and there is a lot on my mind, so I've just got to scream into the endless void that is the internet for a while. I don't mean to be a party pooper, and while I've been reading One Piece since 2005 when I was just 13 years old, I feel like it has just taken a total fucking nose dive since we hit the New World. I'm really sorry to be "that guy" and I know I'm not breaking new ground here, but I just have to get some of these criticisms off my chest.
The biggest one to me is the pacing. This is far and away the biggest problem and it is shockingly bad in almost every single arc post time-skip barring Zou (which I'm not even sure really counts). The story either moves at breakneck fucking speeds or slows to an absolute crawl for months and months on end. I was nervous from the get-go WAY back when the Straw Hats were reunited on Sabaody and immediately dove underwater into Fishman Island. I really needed a scene where the Straw Hats were just kicking it and letting the reader take a breather, adjust to the new character designs, but the ONLY scene we got was a couple of pages where they were discussing how Kuma guarded their ship. This was the only scene that even remotely seemed to almost chill out for me, and I didn't even really notice it at the time until I went back and reread it. Fishman Island wasn't a terrible arc in hindsight but it was very messy in power scaling, stakes, and a lot of needless attention given to random ass characters like Caribou which didn't seem to tie into the arc or the overarching narrative at all. I really just wanted a chapter or two devoted to the Straw Hats talking about the kind of stuff they went through, because they all felt like total strangers to me. I was bothered that so much time was given to characters like Caribou when I wasn't getting any time to bond with the Straw Hats and when his story seemingly went nowhere. That might seem nitpicky now, but it illuminates a much greater problem that just gets worse and worse as the story continues.
There are so many fucking characters, guys. This was really a problem as early as Punk Hazard because we were getting introduced to so many subplots all at once with Kin'emon, Caeser, Law, the body mixing, the heart thing, this grand scheme involving Doflamingo… This was totally exacerbated by characters like Brownbeard and Vergo and even Smoker and Tashigi to some degree. I'm not ashamed to admit that while Punk Hazard was running I had a seriously hard time following the story because there were so many characters and subplots in play and only 20 pages at best to get through them all. Punk Hazard had some cool moments, but it was just totally fucking wild to me and I was frustrated that I still didn't get my breather chapter. I had pretty much given up on my breather chapter when Baby-5 and Buffalo entered the story, because I knew we were only going to be thrust into the new arc way too fast. My issue with Punk Hazard is that more than half of the arc takes place in a goddamn lab so you'd expect that it would be a pretty small, self-contained story, but it so very wasn't. There were still a bunch of unnecessary characters, plot developments, and just weird coincidences that made the whole experience just blend together as a fever dream. This is one of my least favorite arcs in the series, honestly... Pre-timeskip, One Piece typically only had characters that existed for an explicit reason, and I think that worked massively to its benefit. I don't see why many of the characters post-timeskip can't be rolled into fewer, more well rounded characters.
Dressrosa is really where shit hit the fan. My eyes were glazed over throughout the entire fucking thing. We got like one chapter were we actually got to explore the place a la Water Seven but it's immediately undercut by the introduction of Fujitora and the dwarves and it's just this and this and that, yada yada yada. I just wanted the hold the plot down by force and just give us a few more establishing shots of the city, really draw us into the island, make it feel like a place that we would want to go to. The Coliseum, holy shit, this is easily the lowest point of One Piece to me. We are dumped with a fucking million characters, some of which are important, others are total fodder. I could not be assed at this point to even follow the characters motivations - I just decided to wait it out and see who was still standing at the end of the arc and pay attention to them later when I reread it. Between the dizzying array of characters and the introduction of the dwarves and the CP0 and the rapidly accelerating plot on Green Bit, I was just so fucking done. It was like Oda had decided that I must have had the world's most intense strain of ADHD imaginable. The hackneyed plot to take down the SMILE factory was established and then Dressrosa entered that final slog to take down Doflamingo, who, let's be real, was so poorly handled as a villain. After the years and years of build up that this guy was this cunning genius who was always outsmarting people, he just turned out to be another hulking, evil, fuck, who owed nearly all of his success to an incredibly overpowered (and seriously vaguely defined) devil fruit. In the end, with all of his cunning, the fight just turned out to be this fucking DBZ fist fight that went on forever. We saw Doflamingo use what many speculated was his signature move, the puppet strings, one (1) time on Luffy and he just breaks out of them like it's nothing. Where was my fucking Doflamingo manipulation of the Straw Hats? Wouldn't it have been so much more interesting to have Dofla sow seeds of discord amongst the ranks of the pirate alliance or many even the Straw Hats themselves? This was such a massive opportunity and what we got was such a letdown. The supporting cast in this arc is the fucking epitome of bland, too, but we don't talk about them.
I don't want to get ahead of myself here, but there were chapters of Dressrosa where I was all but certain that OP had gone full Fairy Tail. There's just no excuse for that.
The transition to Zou was clunky as all fuck in traditional post-timeskip fashion: weirdass jumps to forests and bizarre flashback sequences. It takes a long time for us to get our footing and get situated on what the hell Zou is and how/when the events transpired. There is a reason that many in this fandom agree that Zou is the one of if not the best post-timeskip arc, and it's because it actually puts its characters in a room for an extended sequence of chapters and just lets them fucking talk for awhile. They re-contextualize the SMILE factory takedown, Kaidou, the four emperors, the Road Poneglyphs. See what some actually well paced exposition can do for a story?
I was hyped for Whole Cake Island because I trusted Oda's "year of Sanji" line, and I was one of many who was seriously bothered by how complete shit he was post-timeskip. And credit where it's due: WCI up to a point is incredibly strong, even if it does feel sort of derivative of Water Seven. I loved seeing Sanji's circumstances stacked so wildly against him. I loved the idea of an infiltration arc (seems hilarious now) where the "loner spy" of the crew was a central figure, with all this mystery surrounding Pudding's motivations and cryptic warnings etched into the Sunny's walls. I loved the further characterization of Sanji as this abused kid and I was looking forward to seeing Oda actually tackle themes of domestic abuse since it would have fit the bill for some of the other, more preachy (but well-intentioned!) arcs like Fishman Island. I was even looking forward to picking apart Sanji's rampant masculinity, that maybe after that scene where he finds out Pudding doesn't love him, he would understand how his naive love for women was his greatest flaw (almost got him killed on FI, great job man). The main villain of the arc was Big Mom - I was speculating whether or not Sanji would break his cardinal rule of not hitting women. This was a real opportunity for growth. Zoro put aside his pride to train for Luffy's sake. Usopp became strong for Luffy's sake. Now it was Sanji's time to finally prove himself and get some character development.
WCI fucked me so badly, guys. I imagine I will be salty over this for as long as One Piece is running and probably well after it has concluded. Just when I'm really enjoying the weekly releases and the pacing, it feels like Oda just straight up abandons everything that he's built. Sanji's cuffs turn out to be fake. Due to some asspull, Reiju allows him to escape. Sanji feeds Luffy, they have a cry, and then we're onto the Big Mom assassination plot. It just all feels so anti-climactic to me. I get that the point is that Sanji is the "love cook", but is he really? Was Oda secretly building Sanji out to be "the character who loves everyone no matter what?". Because that may be true for Sanji but I wouldn't say that it's core to how Oda has built out his primary actions and I frankly wouldn't say that he's more exceptionally caring than most of the other Straw Hats.
This is, as everyone knows, where WCI starts to really drag. It's insane to me just how long ago in real time it was that I last enjoyed WCI. I don't think it's a worse arc than Dressrosa, but the fact that all of this awfulness is just compounded, it really starts to exhaust me. There are still huge issues with pacing. There are still way too many goddamn characters that take away from the main cast and their struggles. I don't think I was wrong to want some REAL characterization in this shit, dammit. It's been done before in One Piece. I wanted to see Sanji change and grow, but the core message is that he was perfect all along. And in the recent chapter, his abusers come back to half-heartedly save him after he is getting his ass kicked. The way that Sanji's dilemma with his family has been handled is just shockingly tone deaf. It makes me wonder if Oda has ever once in his life ever actually spoken to someone with abusive siblings or parents, but actually... why wonder? The answer is plainly obvious. Would I could just turn my brain off and enjoy the weekly releases, but it is moving SO damn slowly and I cannot for the life of me believe that this shit with Sanji is STILL unresolved when it feels like years ago that these characters were introduced and we're still on this island JESUS someone please kill me and end my suffering.
I know this is a bigass rant and it's inconsequential and yada yada I'm some whiny baby on the internet. I get it. It just sucks that this used to be a series with really strong, self-contained, arcs that tied into a greater narrative and now it's just a clusterfuck of bizarre padding, haki fight scenes, writing that feels like it's being done on a week-by-week basis, and big tits in revealing clothing. It feels like any germs of good ideas that I can gleam from these weekly chapters at this point, these notions that maybe One Piece is more than just a dumbass fight manga for teenagers, are wholly coincidental or even worse turn out to be canonically impossible within weeks. New World is a bunch of nonsense. Remind me again what makes this shit different from Fairy Tail again? Alright, I'm done with my fucking rant WHEW I need some water and a nap my dudes
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Gotta love to see your critic at Wano xD
WCI is New World's greatest arc at quality… yet, the second half of it fails miserably... my point to start thinking about the "drag" is Katakuri's introduction tho. Your point of Sanji looks logical to me, but i simply care for things that i like and don't care for things that i dislike, Sanji is in my dislike group.
Dressrosa involving marines fucked my POV about it, Punk Hazard is like a big chapter of Coyote and Roadrunner and i reserve any good opinion about Fishman Island... cause i put on-hold OP after leaving Sabaody to go underwater... and picked up when Smoker appeared... even like that, it bore the hell out of me.
As i stated before, i'm seriously thinking in doing the same for Wano... to really taste those past flavours of One Piece's glory.
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I know this is a bigass rant and it's inconsequential and yada yada
Honestly that's well written and there's little in your criticism that I find myself not agreeing with to some degree. The way I see it, all New World arcs (except Zou) have in common that their build-up phase is incredibly full of promises up to a turning point where everything goes downhill. The later part of arcs still has nice action, well-developed characters and enjoyable scenes, but pacing is all over the place and there's no shortage of loose and/or poorly-handled plot threads where the seams are starting to show and some downright dumb plot choices.
In Punk Hazard…Maybe after Zoro slayed the first dragon? Or when the Yeti Cool brothers (urgh) made their entrance ? The early arc really felt like adventure on a completely crazy island, until it became that nonsensical indoor run sequence.
In Dressrosa I'd say that turning point was when the whole island was rearranged by Pica, or maybe much earlier when the Coliseum began. In restrospect many of these characters turned out to be relevant for the future, but they were still detrimental to actually showing the Straw Hats do some stuff.
In WCI I'd say the turning point was when Luffy made his dumb claim to wait for Sanji after they'd clashed.I don't know what can possibly explain this. The build-up phase of arcs shows that Oda is brimming with inspiration and still creates compelling character arcs, but it's like at some point he's thrown too many pieces in the air to keep juggling them all.
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It is true that Oda never really gave us a good topology of Dressrosa compared to Alabasta for instance. Like how am I suppose to know if we are in Accacia or Sevio ? Is the colosseum in any of those towns ?
Same goes for Fishman Island, we know that the palace is in a bubble on top of the island. But we get to see like 5 different town that we can't really locate.
Even in the lab of Punk Hazard Oda drew a lot of maps to let us track the spreading of the gas.
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I cannot sleep for the life of me and there is a lot on my mind, so I've just got to scream into the endless void that is the internet for a while. I don't mean to be a party pooper, and while I've been reading One Piece since 2005 when I was just 13 years old, I feel like it has just taken a total fucking nose dive since we hit the New World. I'm really sorry to be "that guy" and I know I'm not breaking new ground here, but I just have to get some of these criticisms off my chest.
The biggest one to me is the pacing. This is far and away the biggest problem and it is shockingly bad in almost every single arc post time-skip barring Zou (which I'm not even sure really counts). The story either moves at breakneck fucking speeds or slows to an absolute crawl for months and months on end. I was nervous from the get-go WAY back when the Straw Hats were reunited on Sabaody and immediately dove underwater into Fishman Island. I really needed a scene where the Straw Hats were just kicking it and letting the reader take a breather, adjust to the new character designs, but the ONLY scene we got was a couple of pages where they were discussing how Kuma guarded their ship. This was the only scene that even remotely seemed to almost chill out for me, and I didn't even really notice it at the time until I went back and reread it. Fishman Island wasn't a terrible arc in hindsight but it was very messy in power scaling, stakes, and a lot of needless attention given to random ass characters like Caribou which didn't seem to tie into the arc or the overarching narrative at all. I really just wanted a chapter or two devoted to the Straw Hats talking about the kind of stuff they went through, because they all felt like total strangers to me. I was bothered that so much time was given to characters like Caribou when I wasn't getting any time to bond with the Straw Hats and when his story seemingly went nowhere. That might seem nitpicky now, but it illuminates a much greater problem that just gets worse and worse as the story continues.
There are so many fucking characters, guys. This was really a problem as early as Punk Hazard because we were getting introduced to so many subplots all at once with Kin'emon, Caeser, Law, the body mixing, the heart thing, this grand scheme involving Doflamingo… This was totally exacerbated by characters like Brownbeard and Vergo and even Smoker and Tashigi to some degree. I'm not ashamed to admit that while Punk Hazard was running I had a seriously hard time following the story because there were so many characters and subplots in play and only 20 pages at best to get through them all. Punk Hazard had some cool moments, but it was just totally fucking wild to me and I was frustrated that I still didn't get my breather chapter. I had pretty much given up on my breather chapter when Baby-5 and Buffalo entered the story, because I knew we were only going to be thrust into the new arc way too fast. My issue with Punk Hazard is that more than half of the arc takes place in a goddamn lab so you'd expect that it would be a pretty small, self-contained story, but it so very wasn't. There were still a bunch of unnecessary characters, plot developments, and just weird coincidences that made the whole experience just blend together as a fever dream. This is one of my least favorite arcs in the series, honestly... Pre-timeskip, One Piece typically only had characters that existed for an explicit reason, and I think that worked massively to its benefit. I don't see why many of the characters post-timeskip can't be rolled into fewer, more well rounded characters.
Dressrosa is really where shit hit the fan. My eyes were glazed over throughout the entire fucking thing. We got like one chapter were we actually got to explore the place a la Water Seven but it's immediately undercut by the introduction of Fujitora and the dwarves and it's just this and this and that, yada yada yada. I just wanted the hold the plot down by force and just give us a few more establishing shots of the city, really draw us into the island, make it feel like a place that we would want to go to. The Coliseum, holy shit, this is easily the lowest point of One Piece to me. We are dumped with a fucking million characters, some of which are important, others are total fodder. I could not be assed at this point to even follow the characters motivations - I just decided to wait it out and see who was still standing at the end of the arc and pay attention to them later when I reread it. Between the dizzying array of characters and the introduction of the dwarves and the CP0 and the rapidly accelerating plot on Green Bit, I was just so fucking done. It was like Oda had decided that I must have had the world's most intense strain of ADHD imaginable. The hackneyed plot to take down the SMILE factory was established and then Dressrosa entered that final slog to take down Doflamingo, who, let's be real, was so poorly handled as a villain. After the years and years of build up that this guy was this cunning genius who was always outsmarting people, he just turned out to be another hulking, evil, fuck, who owed nearly all of his success to an incredibly overpowered (and seriously vaguely defined) devil fruit. In the end, with all of his cunning, the fight just turned out to be this fucking DBZ fist fight that went on forever. We saw Doflamingo use what many speculated was his signature move, the puppet strings, one (1) time on Luffy and he just breaks out of them like it's nothing. Where was my fucking Doflamingo manipulation of the Straw Hats? Wouldn't it have been so much more interesting to have Dofla sow seeds of discord amongst the ranks of the pirate alliance or many even the Straw Hats themselves? This was such a massive opportunity and what we got was such a letdown. The supporting cast in this arc is the fucking epitome of bland, too, but we don't talk about them.
I don't want to get ahead of myself here, but there were chapters of Dressrosa where I was all but certain that OP had gone full Fairy Tail. There's just no excuse for that.
The transition to Zou was clunky as all fuck in traditional post-timeskip fashion: weirdass jumps to forests and bizarre flashback sequences. It takes a long time for us to get our footing and get situated on what the hell Zou is and how/when the events transpired. There is a reason that many in this fandom agree that Zou is the one of if not the best post-timeskip arc, and it's because it actually puts its characters in a room for an extended sequence of chapters and just lets them fucking talk for awhile. They re-contextualize the SMILE factory takedown, Kaidou, the four emperors, the Road Poneglyphs. See what some actually well paced exposition can do for a story?
I was hyped for Whole Cake Island because I trusted Oda's "year of Sanji" line, and I was one of many who was seriously bothered by how complete shit he was post-timeskip. And credit where it's due: WCI up to a point is incredibly strong, even if it does feel sort of derivative of Water Seven. I loved seeing Sanji's circumstances stacked so wildly against him. I loved the idea of an infiltration arc (seems hilarious now) where the "loner spy" of the crew was a central figure, with all this mystery surrounding Pudding's motivations and cryptic warnings etched into the Sunny's walls. I loved the further characterization of Sanji as this abused kid and I was looking forward to seeing Oda actually tackle themes of domestic abuse since it would have fit the bill for some of the other, more preachy (but well-intentioned!) arcs like Fishman Island. I was even looking forward to picking apart Sanji's rampant masculinity, that maybe after that scene where he finds out Pudding doesn't love him, he would understand how his naive love for women was his greatest flaw (almost got him killed on FI, great job man). The main villain of the arc was Big Mom - I was speculating whether or not Sanji would break his cardinal rule of not hitting women. This was a real opportunity for growth. Zoro put aside his pride to train for Luffy's sake. Usopp became strong for Luffy's sake. Now it was Sanji's time to finally prove himself and get some character development.
WCI fucked me so badly, guys. I imagine I will be salty over this for as long as One Piece is running and probably well after it has concluded. Just when I'm really enjoying the weekly releases and the pacing, it feels like Oda just straight up abandons everything that he's built. Sanji's cuffs turn out to be fake. Due to some asspull, Reiju allows him to escape. Sanji feeds Luffy, they have a cry, and then we're onto the Big Mom assassination plot. It just all feels so anti-climactic to me. I get that the point is that Sanji is the "love cook", but is he really? Was Oda secretly building Sanji out to be "the character who loves everyone no matter what?". Because that may be true for Sanji but I wouldn't say that it's core to how Oda has built out his primary actions and I frankly wouldn't say that he's more exceptionally caring than most of the other Straw Hats.
This is, as everyone knows, where WCI starts to really drag. It's insane to me just how long ago in real time it was that I last enjoyed WCI. I don't think it's a worse arc than Dressrosa, but the fact that all of this awfulness is just compounded, it really starts to exhaust me. There are still huge issues with pacing. There are still way too many goddamn characters that take away from the main cast and their struggles. I don't think I was wrong to want some REAL characterization in this shit, dammit. It's been done before in One Piece. I wanted to see Sanji change and grow, but the core message is that he was perfect all along. And in the recent chapter, his abusers come back to half-heartedly save him after he is getting his ass kicked. The way that Sanji's dilemma with his family has been handled is just shockingly tone deaf. It makes me wonder if Oda has ever once in his life ever actually spoken to someone with abusive siblings or parents, but actually... why wonder? The answer is plainly obvious. Would I could just turn my brain off and enjoy the weekly releases, but it is moving SO damn slowly and I cannot for the life of me believe that this shit with Sanji is STILL unresolved when it feels like years ago that these characters were introduced and we're still on this island JESUS someone please kill me and end my suffering.
I know this is a bigass rant and it's inconsequential and yada yada I'm some whiny baby on the internet. I get it. It just sucks that this used to be a series with really strong, self-contained, arcs that tied into a greater narrative and now it's just a clusterfuck of bizarre padding, haki fight scenes, writing that feels like it's being done on a week-by-week basis, and big tits in revealing clothing. It feels like any germs of good ideas that I can gleam from these weekly chapters at this point, these notions that maybe One Piece is more than just a dumbass fight manga for teenagers, are wholly coincidental or even worse turn out to be canonically impossible within weeks. New World is a bunch of nonsense. Remind me again what makes this shit different from Fairy Tail again? Alright, I'm done with my fucking rant WHEW I need some water and a nap my dudes
I don't know if you're ever going to read my reply, but here I am. First, I must say that you bring some valid criticism to the series that I also share with you, but you have just overblown it over the top for me personally. Sure, I do think the post-time skip arcs are suffering from "too much content" for their own good, but I wouldn't undermine the importance of a lot of what is Oda is trying to do, after all each arc is not only a story in itself, but worldbuilding for later too. So Oda probably feels he has to throw a lot of new and old characters in all these arcs because he won't have the chance to do so afterwards and that can hurt the bigger scheme of the storyline. If Smoker is not on Punk Hazard, his positioning in the series is lost; if Fujitora isn't presented in Dressrosa, we're leaving the new admirals for too late; if we don't have the colosseum, we don't have a grand fleet (of mostly boring dudes, true); and we can go on forever with this. If we take just Punk Hazard as an example, a lot of things that happened there are still reverberating in the story, most recently the gigantification of people and the gas bomb in Zou. Sometimes I put some thought into Oda's planning for the New World and it's kinda impressive.
Of course, the above justifications do not excuse the manga if reading it is bad. Is that the case? In my opinion, Dressrosa is the first actually bad arc in One Piece and Punk Hazard has major detriments to it, although both of them also have a lot of good in them too (a roller coaster in quality). So yeah, things could have been handled better. Maybe a good alternative would be making more arcs than what we're getting, but shorter and more concise. Who knows… but, in the end, Oda can only stick to the ideas he came up with and he can't know if they are going to work until they are done. Some of them are good, others not as much, some are better in a reread than in a week to week basis, some were mistakes. Sometimes the problem lies in us too, since we can be a little impatient when the story is not going the way we want to and we don't invest ourselves into the mood of the moment.
That said, I wouldn't put some of the bad things as drastically as you, so I'll comment more specifically some of your complaints.
- "Pacing" seems to be the word of the day in the One Piece fandom and I can't say I agree with the way people are using the concept. Pacing is rhythm, not length. Sometimes One Piece do have some weird pacing (I agree), but overall I'd argue that, instead of pacing problems, the manga is too eventful, causing it to be longer, just like a Mahler symphony can go beyond 90 minutes. Take WCI as an example... in the last 30 chapters, it's not that the pacing is slow, but that A LOT of (unnecessary) things have happened. That may be bad under a particular perspective, since we get stuck in this moment for longer than was needed to finish the plot, but that also lets the series breath so that many characters can get their moments to shine outside of their role in the plot (including the Strawhats). And I think Oda gave us some amazing highlights that will be remembered in the future. For me, this whole run away was fresh because there was never something quite like this before in One Piece (naval battles, riding waves, baking cakes, sulong transformations breaking helms, allies getting behind along the way, watching a Yonkou crew [arguably the most interesting cast of characters outside of the Strawhats], clever fightning against Big Mom herself, the whole development of Katakuri, and let's see what the cake will deliver to us). Above all, I absolutely love the interactions between the Strawhats in WCI right now. This team is a blast!
And you even complained about pacing in the wedding… that I don't get at all.
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I love how you complained about the fact that we didn't get a proper reunion of the Strawhats in Sabaody, an emotional moment for them to celebrate their friendship. Yes, I totally agree. However, apart from this absent moment, I believe that you and I were suffering from extreme blue balls at that time. We were missing the Strawhats so much that we just couldn't get enough of them. Oda even wrote the longest travel we've ever got in the descent to Fishmen Island for us to savour a lot of small interactions, but we just wanted more... to the point that you even seem to have the impression that Caribou got more screentime than he actually got. Btw, Caribou was inserted as an element for the Strawhats to react to, just like the Kraken, like a part of their adventure. Then, in Fishmen Island, Caribou barely appeared anymore and his role was to get the info about Poseidon (for further purposes). To conclude this topic, nowadays I think that Oda did the right thing in spreading the Strawhats' little moments throughout the journay. Even though at the beginning I felt like I wasn't getting enough from the Strawhats, now when I look back to the whole adventure post-time skip, I have a lot of memories from them that I hold dear in my heart.
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Why did One Piece get full Fairy Tail? I don't get it. My complete apathy towards FT comes from the fact that its arcs didn't have stories or themes to tell, it was all just set up to fight a group of villains. Err... Dressrosa may have a lot of problems, many of them the ones you explained, but I can't say it lacks a story (many stories, actually) and motivations.
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About your whole Sanji rant, I think you need a reread when at the end of WCI. The main reason is because the plotline is not over; it is on hold for other developments. After Sanji discovered that Big Mom was planning to murder everyone anyway, he abandoned his previous plan (to stay and marry Pudding to protect everyone and Zeff) and accepted Luffy's aid and to come back to the crew, but the consequences of his acts towards the crew are still hanging to be forgiven (Nami's words), especially after Pedro's death. If the plot is not over, we can't be sure of where Oda wants to go with all these developments.
For now, I can tell you that this plot is not about how Sanji is perfect guy or the loving man. The point is that he is emotional and that gets the best and the worst out of him (and this is not new, since Baratie established him in a very similar way). You can see that his actions can be both impulsive and imature or very redeeming and righteous. That's it. Then you can agree with Luffy or Judge regarding these characteristics. Other than that, I don't understand your criticism of how Oda handled child abuse. The Vinsmokes are saving Sanji because of their "royal pride", but nobody is forgiving them. Sanji has cut all his ties with his biological family and still harbors grudge against them. This fact doesn't change only because he decided to save his family from Big Mom.
Honestly, I think that you are so intoxicated with One Piece right now that it is warping your judgement. It's difficult to be fair when we're exhausted.
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I don't know if you're ever going to read my reply, but here I am. First, I must say that you bring some valid criticism to the series that I also share with you, but you have just overblown it over the top for me personally. Sure, I do think the post-time skip arcs are suffering from "too much content" for their own good, but I wouldn't undermine the importance of a lot of what is Oda is trying to do, after all each arc is not only a story in itself, but worldbuilding for later too. So Oda probably feels he has to throw a lot of new and old characters in all these arcs because he won't have the chance to do so afterwards and that can hurt the bigger scheme of the storyline. If Smoker is not on Punk Hazard, his positioning in the series is lost; if Fujitora isn't presented in Dressrosa, we're leaving the new admirals for too late; if we don't have the colosseum, we don't have a grand fleet (of mostly boring dudes, true); and we can go on forever with this. If we take just Punk Hazard as an example, a lot of things that happened there are still reverberating in the story, most recently the gigantification of people and the gas bomb in Zou. Sometimes I put some thought into Oda's planning for the New World and it's kinda impressive.
Of course, the above justifications do not excuse the manga if reading it is bad. Is that the case? In my opinion, Dressrosa is the first actually bad arc in One Piece and Punk Hazard has major detriments to it, although both of them also have a lot of good in them too (a roller coaster in quality). So yeah, things could have been handled better. Maybe a good alternative would be making more arcs than what we're getting, but shorter and more concise. Who knows… but, in the end, Oda can only to stick with the ideas he came up with and he can't know if they are going to work until they are done. Some of them are good, others not as much, some are better in a reread than in a week to week basis, some were mistakes. Sometimes the problem lies in us too, since we can be a little impatient when the story is not going the way we want to and we don't invest ourselves into the mood of the moment.
That said, I wouldn't put some of the bad things as drastically as you, so I'll comment more specifically some of your complaints.
- "Pacing" seems to be the word of the day in the One Piece fandom and I can't say I agree with the way people are using the concept. Pacing is rhythm, not length. Sometimes One Piece do have some weird pacing (I agree), but overall I'd argue that, instead of pacing problems, the manga is too eventful, causing it to be longer, just like a Mahler symphony can go beyond 90 minutes. Take WCI as an example... in the last 30 chapters, it's not that the pacing is slow, but that A LOT of (unnecessary) things have happened. That may be bad under a particular perspective, since we get stuck in this moment for longer than was needed to finish the plot, but that also lets the series breath so that many characters can get their moments to shine outside of their role in the plot (including the Strawhats). And I think Oda gave us some amazing highlights that will be remembered in the future. For me, this whole run away was fresh because there was never something quite like this before in One Piece (naval battles, riding waves, baking cakes, sulong transformations breaking helms, allies getting behind along the way, watching a Yonkou crew [arguably the most interesting cast of characters outside of the Strawhats], clever fightning against Big Mom herself, the whole development of Katakuri, and let's see what the cake will deliver to us). Above all, I absolutely love the interactions between the Strawhats in WCI right now. This team is a blast!
And you even complained about pacing in the wedding… that I don't get at all.
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I love how you complained about the fact that we didn't get a proper reunion of the Strawhats in Sabaody, an emotional moment for them to celebrate their friendship. Yes, I totally agree. However, apart from this absent moment, I believe that you and I were suffering from extreme blue balls at that time. We were missing the Strawhats so much that we just couldn't get enough of them. Oda even wrote the longest travel we've ever got in the descent to Fishmen Island for us to savour a lot of small interactions, but we just wanted more... to the point that you even seem to have the impression that Caribou got more screentime than he actually got. Btw, Caribou was inserted as an element for the Strawhats to react to, just like the Kraken, like a part of their adventure. Then, in Fishmen Island, Caribou barely appeared anymore and his role was to get the info about Poseidon (for further purposes). To conclude this topic, nowadays I think that Oda did the right thing in spreading the Strawhats' little moments throughout the journay. Even though at the beginning I felt like I wasn't getting enough from the Strawhats, now when I look back to the whole adventure post-time skip, I have a lot of memories from them that I hold dear in my heart.
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Why did One Piece get full Fairy Tail? I don't get it. My complete apathy towards FT comes from the fact that its arcs didn't have stories or themes to tell, it was all just set up to fight a group of villains. Err... Dressrosa may have a lot of problems, many of them the ones you explained, but I can't say it lacks a story (many stories, actually) and motivations.
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About your whole Sanji rant, I think you need a reread when at the end of WCI. The main reason is because the plotline is not over; it is on hold for other developments. After Sanji discovered that Big Mom was planning to murder everyone anyway, he abandoned his previous plan (to stay and marry Pudding to protect everyone and Zeff) and accepted Luffy's aid and to come back to the crew, but the consequences of his acts towards the crew are still hanging to be forgiven (Nami's words), especially after Pedro's death. If the plot is not over, we can't be sure of where Oda wants to go with all these developments.
For now, I can tell you that this plot is not about how Sanji is perfect guy or the loving man. The point is that he is emotional and that gets the best and the worst out of him (and this is not new, since Baratie established him in a very similar way). You can see that his actions can be both impulsive and imature or very redeeming and righteous. That's it. Then you can agree with Luffy or Judge regarding these characteristics. Other than that, I don't understand your criticism of how Oda handled child abuse. The Vinsmokes are saving Sanji because of their "royal pride", but nobody is forgiving them. Sanji has cut all his ties with his biological family and still harbors grudge against them. This fact doesn't change only because he decided to save his family from Big Mom.
Honestly, I think that you are so intoxicated with One Piece right now that it is warping your judgement. It's difficult to be fair when we're exhausted.
these two posts combined is longer than my last essay hahahahaha! sorry guys good discussion tho
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This post is deleted!
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is chopper ever going to have a moment
i guess he did something in punk hazard
will we ever see scope again
You are on a quest to become the Pirate Prince, and you decide your fate!
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@Game:
is chopper ever going to have a moment
i guess he did something in punk hazard
will we ever see scope again
Kidnapping Brûlée was a good move and saving the citizens of the Mokomo Dukedom was also great but yeah Chopper's been lacking. I enjoyed his showing at Fishman Island, I liked when he(Franky?) was out of control and attacking the Yeti Bros and Luffy, and I liked him defending Nami against Big Mom's palm swipe.
Still it seems like his great feats(be it fighting or doctoring) haven't been as pronounced as the other Straw Hats. At least in the eyes of the audience maybe.
I want to see him get in that Horn Point again and wreck somebody! Then I want him to figure out what the heck is causing Big Mom's hunger sickness!
Hopefully Kaidou or any one of his random animal goons takes notice of the Rumble Ball and that becomes a focal point in the story.
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The Kaido arc will be choke full of Zoan users, there should be enough opportunity for Chopper to shine
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We said that for the arc with the Minks, the Alice in Wonderland nightmare arc, the arc where kids were in dire need for the best doctor, and the arc where the most important mook was an evil doctor.
I'm not too keen on Chopper getting development or much of focus.
3DS FC: 0516-7666-3837
SW-4128-8032-0729
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Looking into the Reverie, I find it interesting that Bello Betty is not part of the infiltration mission. Her sole presence might have put Shirahoshi in danger. I mean if Bello Betty's cheer cheer power releases the latent power that someone has and Shirahoshi was able to summon those massive Sea Kings out of a moment of distress what would happen if all her power is suddenly activated by the cheer cheer fruit? am I reading too much into it?
Would you like a Blast?
100000000000000 Berries please.
Blasting Destinations: Gotham city, Jaya, central perk, E. R.
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Looking into the Reverie, I find it interesting that Bello Betty is not part of the infiltration mission. Her sole presence might have put Shirahoshi in danger. I mean if Bello Betty's cheer cheer power releases the latent power that someone has and Shirahoshi was able to summon those massive Sea Kings out of a moment of distress what would happen if all her power is suddenly activated by the cheer cheer fruit? am I reading too much into it?
I don't think the villagers became more aggressive they just became stronger. So while it might give Mermaid Princess a boost either in range or her ammount of control I doubt it would influence wether or not she make the sea kings attack.
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Now I'm imagining Sea Kings climbing the Red Line.
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I don't think the villagers became more aggressive they just became stronger. So while it might give Mermaid Princess a boost either in range or her ammount of control I doubt it would influence wether or not she make the sea kings attack.
To be fair I wasn't addressing her as becoming more aggressive. But the sheer size of the sea kings (SK as of now cause I'm lazy) is enough to destroy a town at least partially by just standing on it. For comparison's sake take Sodomma or Gommorrah and compare them to one of the SKs. Now think about their rampage and destruction at Ennies Lobby. Obviously their size can't compare to the SKs. That being written if Shirahoshi can't control her power as of now, the danger of a 100% release is Legit. It is clear that the sea kings are sentient beings and judging by Oda's depiction of them akin to Dragons in the sense of wisdom and intelligence, yet summoning such power where there is already a power pool would unleash nothing below chaos of the highest caliber.
On a slightly different note the large number of factions involved in the Reverie reminds me of a sleeping bomb praying to be ignited by a foolish traveler. I'm looking at you dwarves…
Would you like a Blast?
100000000000000 Berries please.
Blasting Destinations: Gotham city, Jaya, central perk, E. R.
Nothing exists; even if something exists, nothing can be known about it. Even if something can be known about it,
