@Daz:
Heh. Well put.
Anyway, I agree with the seintement of Marineford and the new era not switching things up as much as suggested, in the sense that (as Freedom remarks), We-that is, the Straw Hats- don't really feel any change yet. Onbiously some things have changed, and we hear about all the status quo updates, but we as readers don't really see the supposed new landscape the war whas wrought.
Take the marines. We are told that Sakazuki rules them now, that they've got "new powers", and that is bad because Akainu Bad! They have moved Headquarters to the new world to be more proactive…but this has not been felt by Luffy in his travels. Sabaody-a necessary pitstop for pirates before the New World- was no more guarded than before. Arriving in the New World, Luffy only encounters marines on Punk Hazard because Smoker camped out specifically for him. Punk Hazard itself had its geography altered by a marine fight, but Caesar had already worked there for two years at this point, and the cosmetic change was ultimately meaningless. At Dressrosa, marines were dispatched to investigate suspecious Warlord activity.
We know that changes have been going on. But it comes across as the same old, same old.
And then, the Blackbeard pirates. We know that BB is an emperor know, which is bad because BB Bad!! And he hunts devil fruits which is bad, because that means he hunts devil fruits offscreen. But most of all, we know that BB is doing bad things, because he will be the final villain. But 158 chapters into the time skip, we just have the expositions word for it, and Burgess sporadic appearances on Dressrosa aren't doing much to alleviate this.
We haven't seen a new, lean mean marine fighting machine, we haven't seen a trail of previously unheard of chaos created by Blackbeard. What we could really use to see this appearant "new" era are some showcasing of zealous marines going too far with Akainu sanctioned emergency powers, or the Straw Hats passing by the smouldering remains of what used to be islands until Blackbeard Glorped them up, or see BB squad 44D capture some hapless DF user, kill his crew, and ship him off for BB because thems the breaks of the New World now.
Some of these complaints are not fair. Yes, we're 158 chapters into the NW, but blame that to Oda's current pacing, not that nothing's happening. Hell, he still hasn't canonly let us see Sakazuki's or Blackbeard's full post time skip designs yet (Super Grand Battle X kinda jumped the gun on Sakazuki, showing him before the manga or movies. . .). And, as you've said, we've only seen Burgess from all of Blackbeard's squad. We're also 1 admiral short, 1 shichibukai short, and this new power the marines gathered, be it metaphorical or real power is still unseen. Also worth noticing is the fact that we know new Pacifista units exist, more powerful than the old models, but these are also so far not used on-panel.
We still haven't seen 2 of the 4 emperors, so what they might be doing currently is mostly unknown (well, not really, since we know Kaidou is amassing fighting units by the hundreds). And there's a fucking army of shadow silouettes ready to appear one of these days, aka the Shadow Brokers, which are apparently operating on a scale never before seen.
The fact that 3 years in we're still yet to see any of this stuff is baffling and maybe infuriating, yes, cause Oda has a new rule that says "no post time skip arc is to go below the 40 chapter mark", with Dressrosa probably going well to the 70's no problem. But when he's gone out of his way NOT to even let us see the main players faces yet, to complain that we've yet to see the status quo changes is not really fair. Complain once all the cards are laid on the table and, indeed, things remain the same or with barely noticeable changes.
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And to keep things on topic, I'd talk for the hundreth time about Marineford and the massive amounts of respect I think Oda deserves for doing it, specially comparing it with the absolutely disgracing attempts at big melees/battles/wars other mangakas are drawing. At an art level, Marineford is Oda at his most hardworking, exhilarating and positively busy. And the first chapters are such an adrenaline rush it's hard not to get excited by them.
But, yeah, it has issues. I still love the arc. But the issues are there and they are undeniable, and to some they broke the arc and its potential enjoyment.