@Daz said in Chapter 1090: Kizaru:
Nationwide famine enforced by the villains!
This actually bothers me. Who are "the villains" in that case? Are we talking about Kaido or the Beast Pirates in general? Given that Wano was a battle-centric arc where all Strawhats should have had a high stakes decisive battle (but that's another can of worms), the main perpretrator of that famine should be the one who at the end fights the Strawhat who is emotionally affected the most by it.
Assuming that Sanji would be that person and therefore deal with the famine subplot I would assume that the famine should be mostly exist due to Queen's influence, that is, Queen could be the driving force behind the food distribution. That way it would have added some additional interpersonal conflict into the final battle. Also it could affect the battle: For example, later on Queen could consume some special food, made from the ingredients which were taken away from the Wanonese, and gain quite some random weird extra abilities because that's just the way how it worked back then for the dinosaurs.
I'm not saying that's the only way it can be written. Of course not. But I'm just missing these proper interpersonal drama beats that elevate the stakes of these battles from the generic mindless powerlevel-based battles which only rely on external conflict. Why couldn't the famine just deliver some meat for actual interpersonal conflict for Sanji (or whoever from the Strawhats is the one affected the most by the famine)?
Basically none the Strawhats vs. Beast Pirates had these interpersonal conflicts. And in some cases, like the racism in Jinbe vs. Who's Who, it's just so terribly executed. Like the sole purpose of that fight just was to drop the name Nika - because Nika is soooo awesome and just think how awesome the payoff will be when Luffy turns out to BE Nika.
Of course, the pinnacle of lacking interpersonal conflict is Luffy vs. Kaido where the whole motivation for a lot of characters (why the borders were closed) was completely gated away to the reader by prophecy stuff and only revealed to the reader AFTER Kaido's defeat. Instead at the end of the battle we got that completely disjointed flashback which still lets me baffled whether we are supposed to hate Kaido or actually feel sympathy for him.
That said, it's perfectly fine to not be satisfied with how the famine is handled, especially regarding Sanji and the interpersonal drama revolved around him.