These Kaido flashbacks with King give me this weird retrospective minor pet peeve about Oda keeping King's face hidden for way too long or even was it that necessary to hide his face, the Lunarian reveal was during the fight as well and didn't super tie into his appearance? I guess you'd lose the imposing first impression. But I kinda just dig the vibes between King and Kaido and it really helps just seeing King's facial expressions. And in retrospect I think I would've enjoyed the King/Zoro fight more as well if I went in seeing his expression earlier vs starting him out as imposing cool man.

I wouldn't close the book on Kaido yet and make a final judgment. Kaido still feels incomplete as fuck to me as a character with the way he's been presented to us and I am still 100% convinced a flashback is still coming. There is too many gaps in between his behavior that the snippets we get from other characters don't really answer anything as well.

Like Oda even in the raid has made it a point to show his drunken moodswings and show us Kaido being much more jovial from King's memories. These things he's lost over time. While there is a lot I think I want a Kaido flashback to address I'm somewhat confident that we'll know clearly in the end what made him go from "I'm going to be joyboy to I'm going to seek a glorious death".

Feel free to rip me apart if this ends up wrong but people that think this arc is gonna last another 50+ chapters cause Oda gonna do the 5 act meme because people are kabuki experts after reading a wiki article when people more familiar with it have already stated 5 acts isn't some kind of kabuki law, are on some clown shit.
I'm pretty darn confident just based on general story telling structure that this arc been heading to its end ever since the first strawhat duel started. It's not gonna rebuild another showdown after this last power up which was the big climax. Again call me out if I'm wrong but I'm fairly confident in this because the story is already suffering from all the little meandering and nothing would be more destructive and outright terrible on a structural level than Oda deciding Wano needs to go on for another year + at this point. If Oda does any of the weird fanfic suggestions like "big mom pirates show up and we're heading to act 5" I'd be seriously concerned with him losing the thread. But so far he's never disappointed on such a fundamental level so I'll die on the hill that it won't happen.

I was on board with the kurozumi tama theories like some odd 40 chapters ago but whenever she had her big moment of helping to turn the tide I feel like that kinda finished any potential Tama plots bar celebrating along at the end. Like people still think there is somehow like 2 more years of Wano I feel with how many additional things people want to happen but I think it's kinda clear that Wano has been pushing to wrap up ever since Oda started all the strawhat matchups.

@tatermoog:

Serious question, is there even anything in Elden Ring that shouts GRRM instead of typical Miyazaki lore? Seemed extremely in line with all the other FromSoftware games to me.

All the elden lord names starting with G, R, R or M :ninja:

Yep it's not an awful reason. Square didn't see a good return on running their western studios vs the cost(like I saw some tweet digging through financial reports and crystal dynamics had like a below 1% return vs operating cost). That said I do think a big reason for that is that square just has no clue on how to run their western side. Not sure if these studios can bloom under Embracer Group since we have no clue how they're going to run things but I/O interactive is an example of an IP/studio faring much better outside square than inside square.

@Shiebs:

I find it funny no one thinks Momo is joining

I mean I assume it has to do with everyone assuming he'll become Shogun, but I find it hard to believe if he was an attractive girl that would be the same

It has to do with what the manga says. It's probably different people here but hard to not be confused how people can go momo won't become shogun and yams will stay as a guardian when both are exactly opposite of what is currently stated in the text.
Momo WANTS to fill his father's shoes, protect Wano and fulfill his duty as Shogun. He FEARS he is unworthy and imo he NEEDS to learn that he doesn't need to become his father but that he himself can protect Wano in his own way.
Now this is mostly in counter to criticizing people mostly sticking to the text for their conclusions because god knows this place is super bad at actually understanding the text and imo theories would be better for it if people understood that first before they make wilder assumptions. Basically I'm mostly saying this that there is nothing funny about going with the most obvious conclusion.

That said if we're strictly talking possibilities while I think it's unlikely right now but I don't think it's impossible that Momo learns that he needs to make the journey too, to actually protect Wano and leaves it to his retainers to deal with the immediate aftermath and mirroring his father.
It's not hard to picture that being a thing. That said to me when I look at his character story Momo isn't meant to mirror his father 1 for 1 and any action that will make him more similar to his father I think is done with consideration. When I look at Momo's story it's meant to contrast his father, meaning that readers should particularly be attentive to the differences between Momo and his father. Momo isn't meant to become Oden 2.0 in my opinion but become someone great in his very own regard that has no need to measure up to Oden.

I mean the main thing with great base material is also One Pace actually improves the viewing experience. I know I tried One Pace cuts of some fishman island episodes and while it wasn't as stretched out you couldn't get around the fact that the base material was just awful.

@Robby:

It had good pacing for the first three years. It was good up until Alabasta, which is when they pretty much ate the first few years buffer and caught up. they'd hada few standalone filler episodes up till then, notable fleshing out Logue Town and having Ace spend soem tiem with the group (and Apis) but not a whole lot of filler overall.

It got iffy but still watchable during Skypeia, which is when they switched from two chapters per episode to 1.5, then outride bad during Water 7 when it went down to 1. And ewwww the filler they did during the Foxy arc. I stopped watching long before it got to Thriller Bark but I remember the complaints being pretty heavy for it at the time.

The pacign being good for the first 130 episodes and then bad to awful for the next 400 is not in any way "not that bad most of pre-timeskip."

It's fair to have issues with pre timeskip pacing but the main thing most of pre time skip wasn't 1 or less than 1 chapter adapted per episode that is just another dimension of bad too me. Personally I thought the anime was still very watchable up to thriller bark when 1 chapter per episode started to pop up more and more they also still did filler arcs back then which by design made things less bad than now.

Thing is pacing didn't use to be that bad for most of pre timeskip. It's not like they don't know what they're doing. I don't get the One Piece anime can't be better defense it's something I heard when I was complaining years ago about how bad marineford was visually and pacing wise before dropping it as a weekly watch and mostly returning it here and there. Zou was the first time I felt like the anime became enjoyable to watch again which it wasn't to me since right before pre timeskip.
Now we reached Wano and even if I put aside my distaste at how immensely over the top flashy it has become at times it's just plain fact that One Piece never ever has looked better in its TV anime form than in Wano. It's a testament that things can be better if the powers that be around it will it so. While I understand excuses like animators were overworked during the bad years of the TV anime because of other projects I don't see why I should care as a consumer because it actually just makes it worse that the people in charge overwork their workforce to the bone to put out such a lousy product and they should have been held responsible way sooner. Barking up consumers to feel for the animators just felt weirdly misplaced. When it should have been the animators aren't really at fault but blast away at the idiots steering the actual ship.