@lpzie:
Ubiq makes a good point about the Buster Call, and bounties… but it falls short. His whole position is held up by the Marines fire-power, and in the thinking that the Buster Call is the creme of the crop.
When did I ever suggest that the ships in a Buster Call represent the creme of the crop? Any self-respecting pirate with enough ships or even enough personal strength could beat such a fleet. That's what I've said ever since the idea first came up in the storyline.
The problem wouldn't be the loss of the ships or even the Vice Admirals (though I doubt that the Navy can easily absorb such losses as they're stretched pretty thin anyway) so much as it would the fact that this loss came right on the heels of a major embarrassment of having pirates successfully raid Enies Lobby to rescue Nico Robin, and the massive failure of an intelligence operation that has lasted for a decade now.
To have the SH's defeat it now would place them in a whole new ballpark, and that conflicts with the "speculated" future of One Piece that he has in his head.
They're already in a whole new ballpark. The problem with seeing a Buster Call lose to the Straw Hats is that it wouldn't mean anything emotionally to have a bunch of characters that we vaguely know along with hundreds of faceless Marines lose to the Straw Hats right on the heels of a major fight that had been building for months now.
Either Oda uses several Vice Admirals that we already slightly know supplemented with newly introduced characters or introduces five new Vice Admirals just to have them turn right around and lose. Either way, it will be a mere footnote to the the battle between the Straw Hats and CP9.
Oda is a master of introducing characters and quickly developing them, but why jam so much material into a single story arc?
That's my take on it. I'm favoring the whole closure/liberation thing rather then the 'after-this-arc' bounty/marine problems as the primary consideration factor towards what's going down in this arc.
See, I don't buy the notion that defeating a bunch of random Vice Admirals will really grant closure. That'd be like Nami beating up Kaboti because Arlong was a bastard.
None of the Vice Admirals that we know were responsible for the loss of what little family Robin ever really had, that was Sakazuki. They didn't kill her first real friend, that was Kuzan (who Robin actually fears more than the Buster Call itself). John Giant didn't assign the ships or Vice Admirals to the mission, that was Sengoku. It wasn't Crane or Garp or Comil who shot Clover or who even ordered it.
The only way for Robin to get closure is for the World Government to collapse. If the Straw Hats beat a Buster Call task force, then they've done so. Big deal, so they beat the first five Vice Admirals the Navy could find and send out. That only leaves… hmmm... well, everybody actually responsible for Ohara still in power. That's closure?
@CosmicDebris:
He's a well-respected man, and if he blows the whistle on them about the attempted assasination, it could be a very embarrassing position for the government.
True, but they're already embarrassed by the situation anyway, which puts them into a corner. From the World Government's standpoint, they have to recover something from this debacle, even if it's only the personal satisfaction of ruining Iceburg's reputation by having his former secretary expose his gross incompetence or the fact that hundreds of witnesses saw his employees attack World Government employees.
Ultimately, it becomes a he-said, they-said scenario and it will depend on who people believe. In Water 7, they'll believe Iceburg, but whether the majority of the world will is another matter.
He might work out some sort of deal to keep quiet about the assasination in place of pardoning the other Galley-la members. Or something like that. :/
That's entirely possible. Considering that the World Government lost the plans to the Pluton, Nico Robin, and will suffer a major blow to their reputation if news of Enies Lobby gets out, the price will be very high.