@Sanigo:
Ace dying would be a very interesting development for the main character, and together with Newgate's death it would set up the stage for a terrific second half of the story. Ace living would force Oda to keep one of his worst characters (Not even a matter of opinion on this one. He's simply personality devoid) as a big figure in the story, and if we go by what you're suggesting, he'd be following a dream he will absolutely never accomplish (Inheriting Whitebeard's will and becoming the Pirate King). Him being a friendly rival to Luffy would be a horrible scenario I don't think even Oda could handle in a palatable manner.
Ok so I guess you would find it as an interesting development because you would expect Luffy to find an emotional middle ground from Ace's death, he wouldn't become emo darknessss, nor would he cry some but instantly bounce back after Ace's death next chapter as if nothing happened. So you would see him as maybe gaining some long term maturity from the death and moving on instead of just Oda reaffirming his strength of resolve? If that's the case then I could accept that outcome.
Now where I stand on Ace is that I understand that Ace seems like Oda just made him with the thought of, "Hey kids, look! It's Luffy's hip older brother who has cool flame powerz" but I haven't quite decided whether or not to brand him as a terrible character. Now my reason is that I haven't written off the possibility that Ace could become interesting if he got more screentime. Now I know that that may sound like a terrible reason, but for I noticed that the few characters Oda has that aren't full of personality quirks and are stern/stoic also seem like we just haven't learned enough about them. Whereas on the one hand quirky characters like Dofla are so out there that in a relatively small amount of panel time they are able to make the readers want to learn what made them how they are today. On the otherhand the more rational characters or the stern/stoic characters don't make us as interested in them so then we deem them devoid of personality.
But instead of just completely dismissing characters like Lucci, Mihawk, Akainu (kinda), Jozu, etc or Ace (who's had fairly limited screentime and who is more rational while lacking the tenacity of Luffy) I just naturally don't care much about them but I wait and see if Oda will do anything with them before I determine if they're terrible. Atleast showed us something new about Ace's character because before I would think that Ace would just be shown hating Roger for all the things that the townsfolk says, yet in this flashback he was actually beating the hell out of people for talking smack about him.
@Sanigo:
That's a terrible argument to discuss a what if. "I don't think it'll happen so I'll randomly claim if it did the main character would act completely out of character and become an overemotional faggot".
It's more like, "Because I'm pretty sure it won't happen I don't often think about the effects it would have on Luffy, but if it did I don't know if Oda would just use it to reaffirm Luffy's resolve in our minds and have him bounce back with no long lasting impact from Ace's death".
@Sanigo:
"It seems that he may actually"? What? Whitebeard will die 100% for sure that was obvious like a year ago.
I want to believe 100% (been at like 90 for awhile) but there's still some nagging cynicism that he might come out of this alive, and on the otherhand there's chance of him dying but not on the battlefield.
@Sanigo:
Yeah…no. This chapter's development is impossible to interpret that way, the way you're interpreting it is perfectly fine. However, if my theory is correct, we'll be getting more moments like this one until Ace ends up respecting his father for what he was and THEN he'll be ready to smile at the execution platform.
It's pretty much just tied to whether or not Ace will survive this, if he dies then it'll probably be as you say, if he lives then the chance of him actually becoming a more fleshed out character, with a stronger resolve will still exist.
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Nooo Whitey! Marco! Joz! Hang in there you guyz~! D'; Luffy is really pushing himself to death. :/ Wonder how many years of life he will have left after this.
