I thought i'd raise the question over this and whether you all feel it's a positive or negative?
here's a post i made on the subject from the 428 Chapter Thread ()
@sabret00the:
Did i mention that i think that people disappointed with the FF being alive are well within their rights as much so as the people wanting Merry dead. Merry being alive negates the whole Luffy/Usopp drama. While the FF being alive detracts from the horrible tragedy and burden that is the Buster Call. In the last Buster Call despite intervention, Robin lost everyone and everything. To say that if she was 28 at the time everything would've been fine is well LUDICROUS and that's what the new Buster Call's ZERO kill rate is doing. I don't in any way think it's a good thing to see characters as vital as Zambai dying but to say that no matter what everyone survived a Buster Call is well cheap. I mean to say that the Mugiwara crew is the only crew to ever survive is one thing but over 60 random weaklings too? Of course the Galley-La and the Giants, though plentily weak as far as their involvement (at least since the Enies Lobby) to kill everyone would be bad and to be honest they have lives back at Water 7. I feel that Franky joining the Mugiwara through tragedy would've been good for the long term of the plot, for him what's seen as a corny, distracting character to join in a solemn mist of depression and have to fight through his loss in order to build his new friendships and loyalties would've worked. what starts of as an escape from reality turns into a new reality and the battle of his life, supporting his new nakama not allowing anything bad to happen to them. That would work. At this point if he joins it's gonna be like Nami joining, a rather corny goodbye with an overtly happy ending. This arc has been about sacrifice and yet the only things that have been sacrificed are building, it's incredibly weak and while this is a kiddies manga, this is overkill on the play nice and leaves less scope for mystery involving the coming arcs.
Now don't get me wrong, i'm not an advocate for random killings once every little chapter nor am i lustful to see that at least one or two of luffy's outrageously powerful attacks kill an enemy and put their threat to be for good, ok on the latter maybe i lied, just once though.
But i do question the ability of some characters to survive no matter what, i feel sometimes, just sometimes that it actually fails to benefit the storyline and if anything undermines it, case in point The Franky Family or another being Pell. I'd even question the point in undermining Ener's ability with the survival of Pagaya. And i would assume that we don't even have to go into the whole Merry thing.
But my question stands, do you feel that at times, Oda's reluctance to kill people hinders the story?