Since my view on Nami vs. Kalifa has been broken down from a pane glass to nothing but sand, I thought, what do others deem as a bad fight in One Piece? Since this is in the General section, you can complain about both cannon and non-cannon fights (betting a bunch of you guys are going to rant about Don Accino).
Some things:
- explain why you dislike the fight, don't just put "oh Usopp vs. Perona" (who in the world disliked that fight?) and call it a day. I want discussion, not random opinions.
- don't name a fight because you dislike the protagonist; that's cheap and utterly biased and empty. You can with antagonists, for the most part. I mean, who liked Absalom's fight?
- grand debates based on your preferences isn't going to get you anywhere.
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To start off, I'm going to call on the ever Straw Hats vs. Oars and Gekko Moriah fight, then later, Luffy vs. Gekko Moriah.
First of all, I gotta give credit where credit is due: there are some star moments, like Docking 6(?), Franky building stairs, and Luffy's crew glaring at Oars. The idea of pain as something that is key to life was cool. Knowing more about Moriah's ability was something.
So, I dislike SH vs. Oars because of how long it took, how repetitive things were, and how Moriah has lost the potential he had as a great antagonist. The fights with Oars all look the same to me when I read the chapters. One time, I forgot to bookmark what chapter I was on, and forgot which chapter it was. I skimmed through the Oars stuff, and I found what I thought was the chapter I was middle-through; well it turns out it wasn't. Oars' fight was dragged out; I'm going to give though, almost all the other arcs that had giant or powerful things on their tails had about the same amount of chapter as Oars; fight, some even more (gigantic thunderbolt of lightning anyone?). But there's something about Thriller Bark Arc's resident huge-thing-that's-going-to-kill-us if-we-don't-defeat-it-in time (minus Day Light) that feels poorly done compared to other Arcs'. It was the same "stop trying to hit me because it's not gonna work and I don't feel pain" kinda thing. The way the fact that pain is supposed to be a sign of life was more-or-less used weakly.
My complaint about this fight is that Gekko Moriah became complete bullshit despite piquing my interest to it's pinnacle. First, Gekko Moriah had so much potential - his power to manipulate shadows, his past with the Yonkou Kaido, and his complete utter lost of hope of getting new crew mates after his old ones were wiped out; there was so much to him that he could have done.
But what happened? He's too lazy ass and rather would pull a Super Sentai: Horror Mode with him inside Oars as the cheap-looking gigantic monster with cool laser beams and the Straw Hats as the resident "rangers" (It just occurred to me that Thriller Bark's climax was essentially a parody of Super Sentai shows). The fact that Oars basically became the climax and main fight bothered me. It would have been fine and dandy if the Oars Fight was interesting, but it felt like the endless fights in Enies Lobby where a group of people say "We are dog unit or whatever and we are the strongest unit!!!!111" and subsequently gets defeated, so another group comes in, claims that they're the strongest, get's defeat, rinse and repeat; only in condensed form (well, larger form if you mean to literal) as Oars.
In the end, we finally get Gekko Moriah out of his awesome suit of armor. I was fucking excited about that: "Are we finally going to see this guy do something amazing?" You don't how much I wanted Gekko Moriah to do something other than sitback and relax.
Well, he did do something; Gekko Moriah was told he can be anything, so he became a pufferfish. Yay!
Subsequently, he became a punching bag. I mean, they could have just hung him on a tree, get a paddle and a blindfold, and have a party withe Moriah as a Pinata.
I thought, "Wha…what? That's was it? THAT WAS FUCKING IT? After endless and tedious fighting with someone, or something, that I thought was just pre-boss fodder, we get a Moriah not even having power over the shadows." I Know Moriah got tired during the Oars fight...wait, what the hell? Couldn't Moriah just left when Oars was getting beat up? And how the hell did he get really hurt even if he stayed inside? The stomach was rarely attacked after Nightmare Luffy came; all that was attacked were the Oars' body parts. It's Kalifa's fight; Moriah forgot everything he can do and became food for the heroes. So Moriah got beat up while he got flung all over the place inside his little pod? Realistically, that would have been devastating...but even Sandy could survive that, and Moriah somehow is supposed to be stronger than Crocodile.
The whole Oars and Moriah fight is basically a wasted potential. Both characters had key elements to them that were barely and poorly used. It leaves an awful taste on your mouth after the crap that were Sanji and Nami vs. Absalom, and Chopper and Robin vs. Hogback and Cindry. Usopp's fight was the only redeeming fight in the whole arc.
I still have hope for what's to come with Moriah though. But fuck Absalom; I hope that guy gets mauled by Richie or something.
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So, which fights did you think were sub-par?
EDIT: Might as well touch on the good fights.
Hang in there, Kierkegaard.
