@Robby:
I don't know how anyone could be dissapointed in the Sasaki fight… every one of the dinosaur fighters with their "this is just what dinosaurs do!" chunk of insanity were brilliant. Flying triceratops had me cracking up.
It was fun enough, and miles ahead of the Senor Pink fight for me, but it didn't really have me clamoring for more. I personally think that Oda took the correct decision with the enemy players not really outlasting their welcome, I can easily see the F6's moves and visuals quickly becoming old hat if they were revived for a round 2.
@Robby:
because then you're lulled into the false sense that the heroes have won, and then you get the "oh shit!" moment when all their hard work turns out to be nothing.
If you do it during the first fight you're then obligated to do it every following fight and it stops being a surprise by the fourth or sixth time. Do it all at once and it s sudden huge reversal. (Same for the "big mom's troops arrive" theories.) Similar to the way everyone was waiting for Kaidou's hybrid form. There was no shock or awe when it came because we KNEW it was coming.
The trick to those twists is of course the generals would have needed to be defeated much earier in the raid to not be fatigued by it all. By the time they started actually dropping it would have been even more burn out and drag… the story would have needed to pace differently for it to work.
Like back on Fishman Island it was clear the crew had powercreeped way past normal fishman so the fishmen were given super steroids to power up.
I get the complaint, but why would you ever pull that move after over 2 volumes of fighting? In Marineford the reversal resonated because Luffy essentially accomplished what he wanted (Ace was freed), it's just that Oda managed to find a way in which Luffy both "wins" (meaning volume buyers don't feel cheated) while still suffering a terrible personal loss.
I don't think that idea can be pulled off twice, and it especially can't be pulled off when Kaido is as uncharismatic as OP villains can be, he's basically just an HP bar we're all waiting on to go to 0 (with some people weirdly hoping that it doesn't forever).
Also the FI fights had the underlying theme of legit sweat and tears (each of the SHs had 2 years of training under their belt) beating steroid users, aside from it being an opportunity for Oda to showoff his cool new move ideas.
@Robby:
Eh, if zoan awakenings can be forced through drug use, and they lose their minds when they do it in trade for the raw strength, it would have been fine.
But obviously since the big final payofff was Law, Kidd and Luffy awakening, yeah the minions had to hold back.
If Oda had ended Nami and Usopp's fights better I don't think the issue would have been speculated much at all.
Nami/Usopp's sequence was basically an Uncharted level in manga form, I personally enjoyed the spectacle, unpredictability and rollercoaster nature of it, even if it was terribly, terribly built by shonen fight standards.
I just feel that the solution really came down to making the fights better in the 1st place? Which is a ship that sailed at this point. But honestly, a lot of the ideas that are being thrown around to extend the shelf life of the arc villains just aren't appealing to me (I would have taken more Queen tho, that guy is great and probably my favorite Yonko henchman).