Posts made by Coruscation

It is a problem though since the hunt for PK will pretty much remain without a credible rival for Luffy while it also reveals a problem for BB. He wants to become PK and thus make it his era, if Luffy becomes PK, BB pretty much stays an empty villain who failed to achieve his goal.

That's why Luffy and Blackbeard will fight for who gets to be crowned that, obviously. Blackbeard will be Luffy's greatest rival and antagonist to the end, just as he's been set up to be. There's no one else who can fill that role. These two will decide the fate of the world. The only problem is that some people have decided this needs to happen at Raftel, but that's not remotely true. It's clear by now that this is going to be bigger than Raftel, it'll involve the whole world. Blackbeard, the man who proclaimed the coming era to be his, the man who speaks of conquering the world, the only evil D, the dark version of Luffy, the man with the power to destroy the world, isn't going to be anticlimactically knocked out of the picture before the great end war happens.

The ruler of the age is not the one who conquers WG and Marines, it was Rock´s age, Roger´s age, WB´s age, and in all through each era the WG remained in power.

Blackbeard has outright said he wants to conquer the world. He's not just aiming to do what Whitebeard did, sitting passive on a throne. Or what Roger did, reach the end and then do nothing with it. The evidence goes against that being Teach's ambition. Saying that he will be Pirate King doesn't have an innate meaning because it means different things to different people. For Blackbeard, we don't yet know exactly what it means but if you assume it means holding a title and sitting on his ass you're likely to be surprised.

I wish it was confirmed, at this point it´s people wanting that to be the case though, so that they can feel justified in their opinion.

The evidence is clearly stacked. Speaking about conquering the world, having an interest in ancient history. All the signs point to it and that's what good predictions are, based in clear clues and evidence. Nothing will be truly confirmed until it happens but it's as close as it gets.

If the leader of the world holds teh pictures of BB and Luffy up, he puts them up as threats against himself from a superior position, not as people who will remain in the end, there is no causality in that statement.
If anything, it underlines the ultimate stance and level of the WG, they are above all, everyone else plays in their pond.

Of course he is, he's in the superior position now, but these are the two people that will eventually threaten him and his rule. Blackbeard has announced his intention to conquer the world and that the World Government can basically go fuck itself because it's HIS era. By the end the WG won't be the biggest fish in the pond anymore, they'll be knocked off their thrones as the ones who rose to the top in the new era decide the future. We had even more foreshadowing for this extremely recently with Doflamingo, if you recall:

https://www.mangapanda.com/one-piece/801/9

@MiyamotoMusashi:

What i personally have a problem with, and this is up to Oda to make it compelling and credible if it comes to that, is BB´s eventual reason to still participate in the big war in which he has no real stakes in, unless Oda shifts BB´s role and aim from becoming PK to generally ruling the world with an Ancient Weapon like Crocodile wanted to. Because BB´s aim is without a doubt to become PK, unlike let´s say DD, his definition of becoming PK is not different to Luffy´s, get to Raftel, find OP. That´s why he is so happy when WB confirms the existence of One Piece, and it´s consistent with his insistence on the importance of dreams in Jaya.

But this also implies that BB will have no adversary role to play towards Luffy becoming PK since BB being still active in the final war and being Luffy´s last opponent to beat implies that the race for PK is over.

That's not really a problem though as there are already multiple clues that basically confirm Blackbeard having ambitions beyond "sit around being Pirate King, yay!". We just don't know exactly what they are yet because the main antagonist's true motives are being kept as a mystery toward the end, which makes sense, but the hints are there.

When he tried to convince Ace to join his crew he flat out said he wants to conquer the world and has already laid out his plans for it. He doesn't want to just have the PK title as some kind of badge of honor and sit on his ass once he gets it. When he stole WB's fruit in Marineford he basically announced that he'll overtake the Marines and WG as the ruler of the "age". And looking at material outside the story itself, Oda has given some heavy clues in the form of saying that Teach's profession would be an archaeologist in the real world. He has a significant interest in something far back in history, not just chasing a dream for the sake of an idealistic notion like freedom. All this put together pretty much confirms that his ambitions go beyond getting a title and sitting around with it.

What makes the most sense to me is that the war will have many different factions, like

• Straw Hats & friends
• WG loyalists
• Defecting Marines that can't accept the "world cleansing" (possibly in different directions)
• Revolutionaries
• Blackbeard pirates
• other pirates and people with their own agendas

and in the end it will be Luffy and Blackbeard left standing and deciding the future of the world. There's nothing else that has been built up as much as this. Even in this chapter which has revatilized the WG-for-final-boss crew, the secret king of the world is looking at Luffy and Blackbeard side-by-side as equal threats.

The Commanders' designs aren't instant classics, but I like them. I also like that, since this seems to be all of them now, the number of Revolutionary Army significant i.e. named members has been kept relatively small. It gives me hope for each of them getting individual focus in a way that many characters since the timeskip haven't.

@Count:

I do not care for Sanji wearing it I like his fighting style because it centers around his personality and cooking. He relies on kicking because his hands are too precious for cooking to risk and his fire attacks are loosely themed after spices/cooking heat and are created from friction/passion. All of that is consistent with Sanji's characterization in how he fights and acts. Getting a high-tech cyborg suit has nothing to do with what defines Sanji other than why he was picked on in his second flashback, and most of what these suits do is already redundant (advanced physical stats and leaping/air walking). The only thing it could add is some sort of elemental ability like Reiju's poison, Ichiji's sparks, Niji's electricity, and Yonji's winch fingers, but again, Sanji already has fire abilities.

Additionally, one of the most unique things about Sanji is his business suit attire. All of the Straw Hats change their attire for most arcs, sure, but that is what Sanji's design always keeps coming back to. A super sentai look just does not mesh with that. Hell, the raid suit design is the one thing I can concede works better for Usopp or even Franky than Sanji because those two like to act like goofy heroes who use technology, like to wear costumes, and do silly poses.

And I'm not even getting into how contradictory it feels for Sanji to wear a raid suit after his the second half of his character arc in Totland was proving his family's ideals of valuing royalty, strength, and technology over "peasant" duties like cooking wrong. In-universe, there is no reason for Sanji not to wear this suit other than pride. His crewmates in the latest chapter are right about science being valuable. But from a meta storytelling perspective, it only looks regressive. Why go from proving that you are already great without a tool your abusers use as a crutch to belittle you only to end up relying on that tool one or two arcs later? That is so contradictory.

I think I'm only fine with Sanji only using it once in a forced situation but striving to improve himself without it afterwards. It would make for nice gradual character development similar to Usopp building up bravery pre-timeskip.

Well, this guy pretty much said everything I wanted to say but twice as eloquently. I can't think of any future development for this suit business that I can feel both confident and comfortable with.

Just like everything involving the Vinsmokes it makes me feel like me and Oda are not on the same page anymore. He leaned so heavily into the flashy superheroes portrayal of them which was seemingly intended to impress and wow us readers, while their characterization remained both shallow and off-putting. It makes me afraid he's going down the same route with Sanji - and that I'm supposed to be okay with it despite the dubious writing because wowzers, power rangers flashy bang bang! My gut feeling is that Sanji will eventually put the thing on and Oda will portray it as something flashy and cool and badass, like he did with the Vinsmoke family members, and I'll once again be sitting there like "Welp, I'm not feeling this. Not feeling it at all".

The best way I can rationalize it is that Sanji "earned" the suit as a power-up by proving his family wrong about him without ever compromising on his ideals. I view Niji giving him the suit as a sort of twisted compliment and showing of respect in the only way the Germa can for Sanji. There's something vaguely satisfying about that reading.

So a use of it as a one-time deal in a dire situation, fine. That much I'm almost certain will happen. But I can't get on board with it as a permanent power-up for Sanji. It would change his entire fighting style both aesthetically and thematically in a direction I'm not fond of at all. Unfortunately given how fond Oda seems to be of the flashy superheroes theme, I'm afraid it may be a case where me and the series ends up having an irreconcilable difference.

1. Jaya-Skypiea
2. CP9 (Long Ring - W7 - Sea Train - EL - post-EL)
3. Baroque Works
4. Summit War (Sabaody - AL - Impel Down - Marineford - post-war)
5. East Blue

Jury's basically still out on the New World stuff not just because I've found the quality to be lower than before (which I do), but also because it's getting harder and harder to neatly categorize the story into arcs. They're so much more interconnected than before, every island has contained important setup for future ones and the story flows pretty seamlessly rather than being split up into self-contained story arcs.

Fishman Island was pretty good, but can't measure up the big 'uns all on its own. The "Doflamingo arc" (Punk Hazard - Dressrosa), despite being a huge disappointment in many ways, is stronger than the "Big Mom 1 arc" (Zou - Totland) for me. It had proper setup and build-up which led into kind of satisfying conclusions and closure on all the major story beats.

Even though I actually think the latest two arcs we've had are better, looking at their individual quality, they don't feel "done" yet in the same way. Zou was setup for Wano and beyond as much as it was set up for Totland and WCI left more threads hanging, intentionally eschewed closure than any other arc. That's not bad writing or anything like that, it's definitely deliberate, but it also means I can't really judge them the same way I would other arcs/sagas. My current gut feeling is that the time of neatly contained arcs is completely over by now and it's going to be one long seamless stretch from here to the end. By then we'll have one gigantic arc that contains everything from Zou to round 1 with Big Mom, to Wano/Kaido, to Elbaf/round 2 with Big Mom, and beyond.

As far as strictly individual arcs/islands are concerned:

1. Skypiea
2. Water 7 (incl. Sea Train)
3. Arabasta
4. Enies Lobby (incl. post-EL)
5. Jaya
6. Marineford
7. Impel Down
8. Drum Island (the MOST underrated arc!)
9. Zou
10. Baratie

Gets tough by the end. Whole Cake Island, Sabaody and Arlong Park all kinda duke it out for that last spot along with Baratie, it could really go either way. Zou remains the best post-timeskip arc in my books, it was short but executed to near perfection.

@theackwardstation:

I've never seen Sanji as this unshakable strong-willed character as Luffy and Zoro, although also being part of the Monster Trio. I'd even remeber that, back in Baratie, Zeff's speech to Sanji was all about how Luffy had this "spear" to go all out for his dreams while Sanji was too stuck in repaying his debt to Zeff instead of leaving to the sea in order to search the All Blue. During Zoro's fight against Mihawk, we're constantly shown that Sanji didn't understand the concept of dying for your dreams, claiming it was best to abandon your dreams intead of dying. However, at the same time, Sanji was always a dutiful man ready to fight to protect his friends, never shaking before doing the right thing. So what we find is this selfless person, ready to die for the others, but never for himself… something pretty close to the plot of WCI.

...

Didn't mean about becoming an entertaining character, but fulfilling its role as a threat. A villain is ultimately an obstacle for the main character to reach its development/conclusion and Smoothie was never put in that position. Smoothie was only there to build Big Mom's crew, although I think Oda could have done much better in making her entertaining. However, about other past villains, I don't think Oda did such a great job with all of them. Since you mentioned Skypiea, I'd argue that the only Priest to have a full-fledged fight agains the Shandians (the position Smoothie would fit if her role was to fight the Vinsmokes) was Shura and he's not better than Smoothie from what I can remember, just a typical bad guy with no interesting traits (only a cool design) that ended up defeated by Wiper only to show Wiper's strong will to use the Reject Dial. For each arc, I can think of a henchman that was completely underwhelming as a character, with the exception of CP9.

Yeah, but the whole point of where that led was Zeff telling Sanji that he's been a stubborn idiot who holds himself back and refuses to follow his own dreams. He has his own "spear" as much as Luffy and Zoro but was stifling it on account of feeling forced to repay his perceived debt to Zeff. He wasn't being honest with himself when he called out people for being idiots to follow their dream even at the risk of losing their lives.

https://www.mangapanda.com/one-piece/66/14

I agree that Shura is no more interesting a character than Smoothie but he made up for that by actually being a credible threat with an entertaining fighting style, who got into some pretty cool scuffles. This was a top lieutenant of the arc villain who never really had a proper fight with any SH and yet still figured as a credible antagonist entertaining enough not to feel like a disappointment… Smoothie has no excuse for not at least matching that, given her far greater stature and the greater length of her arc.

I certainly disagree that confrontations are only entertaining when it's the villain against the main cast. Seems like an arbitrary statement to make. Skypiea had some tense struggles between two entirely different groups, the Shandians (who weren't even necessarily allies at the time) and Enel's priests, and they were good and satisfying for what they were. The Germa were antagonists given a lot of screentime in this arc, they're not some minor group, and they would have been better served in something resembling a proper showdown instead of getting spread of getting the occasional spread-out panel of performing one flashy feat each before sinking into the background again.

Smoothie has the same position (technically even one step higher) as Cracker. It's not a good excuse that she didn't have a greater role in the story because it's Oda who writes the story. The whole point of the criticism made against Smoothie is that he relegated her to such a boring state didn't give her a greater role. The narrative isn't some independent thing that Oda has to go along with, he makes it, and he shouldn't have had a top commander of Big Mom be so limp and lackluster for a massive 75 chapter arc.

I wouldn't really call her a major problem either, but like I said, never before in OP has such a big name been given such an underwhelming treatment in a primary arc. So it just sticks out to me like a sore thumb and is one of the things that contribute to the arc feeling "off" alongside stuff like Germa's treatment.

I think part of it is because it's Sanji, specifically, we're talking about. He's a part of the monster trio and that has never just been about who can hit things the hardest. Those three are the pillars of the crew mentally as well and are ready to carry the heaviest burdens. They have absolute confidence in themselves and you'll have to practically break them to make them waver even an inch, as exemplified by how much it took for Luffy to finally fall in the Marineford arc.

This part of his past was far enough behind and he had enough good in his life since then. If we compare it to Usopp, the sharpshooter was always struggling with his insecurities in this crew of monsters and was pushed over the edge. And if we compare it to Robin, the only true happiness in her life for the past 20 years had been few weeks she had spent with the Straw Hats. I think those two elements, combined - his high confidence and mental stability plus having many happy years on the Baratie even before joining the crew - make enough sense of Sanji's situation. People are just different too, it's not always predictable how someone will react and be affected.

But that still does call into question why even bother giving him such a cartoonishly and disturbingly evil family, just like you say. In the end the Vinsmokes barely mattered. They were a plot device to get Sanji in that situation where he felt pressured from all directions to resolve things peacefully for everyone, and it's from there that all the good character stuff stemmed. Not from his feuding with his old family. The best thing I can say about the whole Vinsmoke situation is that it gave some insights into where his ideals and interests come from (I love what you brought up about his childhood consisting entirely of abuse and bullying from his male siblings and father, while only his sister and mother brought him any solace - I'm not sure if Oda actually intended this, since it seems like it's the later scene with Zeff that led him down his path of chivalry.. but damn it, I'm going to force myself to believe it's fully intentional). But in the end it's not enough to justify the unpleasantness and lack of satisfying resolution the group brought to the arc.

@DemonX:

Hey Corus, good to see you're back again/still around/still reading OP.
I was really wondering what your take on the last few arcs would be. All in all, I'm a bit surprised you aren't more critical. But I've yet to read the arc in one go, so my criticism might mellow out a bit.

What did you think of Luffy's fight/powerup? And what about Jimbe still not joining the crew? Also, are you seriously saying you got crewmember vibes from Carrot?
(and off-topic: are you going to show up more often on TMF/NF?)

I still need to re-read the arc, but I have to agree with this sentiment. Since I'm not that drawn into the newer arcs I really wonder if I'm outgrowing a phase here or whatever, but I still love reading the older arcs. Maybe it's just nostalgia, or maybe…Oda can't manage as well anymore, as you've said. Which is a pity, because I really really want to like OP. It's the first manga I've actually bought FFS.

Well as I said this arc was the least engaged I've ever felt with One Piece. For the last few months I kept forgetting that a chapter was even coming out, which is a sad state of affairs for a series I have so much love for. But now I'm increasingly sure the weekly reading really hurt this arc. It's not as bad as it felt at times.

Made my peace. Pretty disappointing, it's clearly a part of an intentional downer ending so I'm accepting it for now but the payoff has to be good. Yeah she's a lot of fun. Very lively and emotive, fun interactions with every crewmember, amusing quirks, and fighting abilities that I could see being both entertaining and cool. I'm not sure I get actual joining vibes, I'm more so saying she was fantastic to have around as an arc ally that felt on par with an actual crewmember in terms of personality and interactions.

@Icefae:

I gotta just whine more about the Vinsmokes. I really do think I would have loved the arc had it not been for them. Frankly it would have been nice had the Sanji flashback not existed at all, or at the very least been toned down in its severity.

As we've said, Judge and the Vinsmokes were built out as disturbing as hell Ramsay Bolton-esque villains. I actually loved this element at first because it was a great development for Sanji. Others would say that it was poor writing that Sanji defected from the Straw Hats but that flashback made it very clear that, similar to Robin's trauma surrounding the Buster Call in Water 7, he was acting out of a fear that was incredibly dark but relatable. The message was clear that Sanji's love of women extended beyond just what he was taught by Zeff, but also way back to his brothers and fathers beating and abusing him for years whereas Reiju and his mother especially were sources of comfort and validation. I thought that it was a bold move on Oda's behalf to explore Sanji's "misandry", overall distrust of men, and perhaps his unhealthy obsession with needing validation from women. I was literally declaring to people that One Piece had reached its absolute highest point with that flashback and the direction I thought the story was headed. I seriously thought that we were going to explore how Sanji's trauma had affected him, and this arc (the year of Sanji), would have been him confronting the demons of his past. I had even theorized that he would actually have to fight a woman in this arc as the ultimate character test. The scene with him trying to light the cigarette in the rain is one of my favorite chapters ever and easily in my top 5 panels ever.

So like… imagine my dismay when Sanji doesn't even confront his past or address his trauma in any believable way. He just runs back to Luffy and that entire subplot is dropped entirely. And for the rest of the arc, the Vinsmokes are portrayed as cool and heroic. I can't help but feel like it would have been better if it was just Sanji's father that cast him away but everything with Cosette and the treatment of Sanji's mother were cut. It helped to make Sanji's fear believable, but it was even weirder that he seemed to just be over it even though he's like 21 years old and probably isn't popping any anxiety pills or antidepressants (although he is a chain smoker). And the Vinsmokes torturing Sanji as a kid and then again as an adult only to like... turn up and be depicted as these heroes who save the day is just fucking like. God what? What the fuck? Just truly what the fuck.

If I'm going to play devil's advocate for my least liked part of the arc for just a moment, I do have an idea as to why Oda might have chosen to play it his way rather than something more expected like what you suggest.

I think the idea is that Sanji has become too strong, strong-willed and distant from his past demons to really be that affected by them. Or really needing to "face" them. They still shaped him, but he's already far beyond them, ten times the man they are all combined. He looks on them with pure disdain, loudly declares he doesn't view them as his family and would prefer to never see them again, punishes them when they do something in his view absolutely unacceptable (hurting Cosette). He's only ever cowed by threats he could do nothing about.

These arrogant bullies are absolutely nothing compared to Sanji and he doesn't need to prove himself to them. He's long since left his demons behind. He doesn't care about them in the slightest, besides the little part of him that says "you can't just let your family die like that, no matter how horrible". He's completely secure in who he is and firmly rooted in both of his new families-by-bonds. There's not much to even say between them, other than a blunt - you're not my father, you're a vile piece of shit and I never want to see you again, get it?

…that's what I want to say. And I do think it's roughly what Oda intended, but I don't think the writing is consistent in showing it. The problem, just as you've identified, does lie with the incongruence in how the first part of the arc is shown and what ends up happening later. The Vinsmokes are given free rein to bully Sanji around, beat him up and insult him at their leisure. He's treated like absolute trash by these guys. Sanji isn't exactly broken to pieces by this but he hardly takes it perfectly either. And sure, I buy that. He's not a robot, it would be unreasonable to ask him to be totally unaffected by the memory of that childhood trauma coming to life again in front of him. But the problem still remains that the Vinsmokes never got true comeuppance for their vile behavior. The very polar opposite, as they end up being treated as flashy badass heroes, and even get to embarass Sanji as he fails miserably to get anywhere with the cornered Luffy in the most baffling scene of the entire arc to me.

It just isn't satisfying. It's so off course for this series. One Piece is in the category of stories that says the true defeat villains suffer is not on the physical but on the ideological and mental level, and I absolutely love it for that. I believe every villain that lost to the Straw Hats thus far have been defeated that way, been served a nice juicy helping of poetic justice. They got what was coming to them. All of them, except the Vinsmokes, who were evil in an unsettling and disturbing way and ended up being treated like superheroes. Even them straight up dying to Big Mom won't work as a resolution, if anything it'd feel like they got off too easy.

The more I think about the stuff with Sanji the more I think it… does work, maybe not 100% perfectly, but it does (except I still don't buy into him actually thinking Luffy & CO would give up on him - NO fucking way, no one will ever sell me on that). But the Vinsmokes themselves just don't work in the way One Piece characters almost always do.

@theackwardstation:

Hi, Coruscation, great review overall, but I'd like to discuss this particular point.

Starting by your challenge, I'd describe Smoothie as arrogant and sadistic (primarily by the way she likes to abuse people with her powers). She's also clearly afraid of her mother (as shown in two instances) and maybe it'll become a joke that she's lazy, lol. Her quirk is how she uses her powers in very disturbing ways. That said, I agree with you (and everyone else) that Smoothie was not an interesting character, although I like her design. Above all, she didn't do anything relevant, as we know.

However, I absolutely disagree that Smoothie is proof that something was wrong with how Oda planned this arc, but rather the opposite. Her role being so undervalued in this particular storyline is only proof that Oda is very conscious of the power of a Sweet Commander. He can't let Smoothie have enough space to do stuff without facing a huge problem: the Strawhats are not powerful enough to deal with her. So there are two options: (a) Smoothie would be obliged to underperform in a circunstance where there's no excuse for such or (b) the Strawhats would have to be captured by her (not an option, really).

The dilemma is as follows: Smoothie must exist, because a Yonkou must have at least a third commander, but this third commander can't be allowed to interfere too much, because (s)he's too powerful for the protagonists (aside Luffy). And this dilemma is very noticeable in the way Oda has written a lot of moments in the last section of this arc. For example, when the Strawhats were surrounded by two fleets and Sulong Carrot had to do her stuff, Oda put Daifuku on the front and Smoothie on the back, because he couldn't make Carrot jump into Smoothie's fleet. That'd be mission impossible for Carrot (the end of the line for the Strawhats), otherwise a Sweet Commander would be completely subpar in strenght compared to the others (and people would think she's even lamer).

To sum it up, I can't blame Oda for his decision to underutilize Smoothie, since it was only natural given the circunstances. Sure, there're reasons to be upset with her character, but I wouldn't dismiss the construction of the plot for this reason. At the end of the day, we should understand that there's going to be a Part 2 against Big Mom and that's when Smoothie will get her time to shine, hopefully.

I should have disallowed "arrogant" since it's not so much a character trait of One Piece villains as it's hardwired into their DNA. Every single one of them is. But that's my bad, so you got me. She's arrogant. That's the extent of her character. I'm not sure you can really call her sadistic, but if you go with that then it means she has another generic villain trait that's forgettable enough you could miss its existence.

The rest: yeah, but… like... that is the disappointing writing I'm talking about. Or at least a part of it. There's no automatic correlation between a character being kept out of the action for plot convenience and them being a boring dullard with no personality. Those are two entirely separate things. Characters with less screen time and plot presence have been far more interesting and memorable in this series.

But as for keeping her out of the action, I didn't think it was done in a convincing way and nor do I agree it was a necessity in the way you've said. For example: the Germa could've arrived back on the scene much earlier than they did and she could have gone up against all of them by herself, having the advantage over them at full power and in their home territory as a true display of the terror of a Yonkou elite. It would've spared us the Germa's confusing, tone deaf rescue at the end of the arc while giving two groups that needed more to do, more to do. That's just my quickfix too.

As for the "There's going to be a Round 2 with the BM pirates, and all of this will be fine" notion… it's not something I can seriously take into account at this point in time. It's fine that Big Mom's own defeat will have to wait, but Big Mom was already fine in this arc whereas Smoothie wasn't. If such a thing happens it's likely hundreds of chapters away at the pace we're going, and there's absolutely no guarantee Smoothie that will be expanded upon and made an interesting character at that time. Even if she is, it still won't change how underwhelming and forgettable she was in this arc. It's not something you can salvage by adding something else later. The damage is done, we can only hope if she returns the same mistake won't be made again.

I'm torn between the "good" and "okay" ratings. On the one hand, the good in the arc has been good enough that at a glance it seems like it should be firmly in the former category. On the other, not once before have I ever felt so unengaged during the process of an arc as with this one.

Fishman Island suffered from one of the the weakest casts of antagonists yet but still managed to pull together a beautiful story in the end. Punk Hazard had a messy, messy middle but there were so many fun characters all bunched up in one place, and it had an outstandingly good both beginning and ending. Dressrosa was my greatest disappointment with the series yet, but even then I can say that I prefer its highs over anything Whole Cake Island brought to the table. Nothing from this arc has stuck with me as much as the Law, Doflamingo and Corazon storyline and the flashback which was top tier even within this series known for extraordinarily good ones. And Zou… Zou's the best post timeskip arc as far as I'm concerned, short but sweet heavily condensed classic One Piece goodness with near-perfect execution.

So I'm in an awkward position of knowing the arc was not really satisfying or fully engaging but having a hard time pinpointing the exact reasons why. I've reread the arc in full over the last few days, and I think I agree with the sentiment I've seen that this arc probably benefits the most from being read as a whole over being read weekly more than any other so far. There's more to like here than I was feeling from week to week. There are a lot of fun characters and Carrot already feels like a crewmember to me. The theming is strong, the Charlotte family has grown on me a bit as antagonists (still nothing compared to the Doflamingo crew - but the contrast to Doffy's family-by-bonds, for whom he was an incomparably greater patriarch and family head, is certainly appreciated), and Katakuri ended up being a thoroughly satisfying character in the end with his initial stoic blandness being subverted wonderfully.

But there's still no way I can consider it as up there as one of the best arcs, and as a nearly 80 chapters long arc with a focus on Yonkou and what was supposedly the "year of Sanji"... it should be, damn it. The reason I can't help but feel it's below par is more that it didn't manage to live up to those lofty standards than because it's actually subpar, if that makes any sense. It's subpar in the "big, epic arc" category.

So what are the problems making it so, then? As I mentioned I think it's much harder to pinpoint them here than it was in Dressrosa, which practically wore its flaws on its sleeve in the second half. For this arc I find you have to dig a bit deeper and consider more carefully what worked and what didn't.

The Vinsmokes
I think this is the easiest criticism to make and from what I see, many other agree. They were perhaps Oda's worst supporting character group/secondary antagonists ever in my opinion. The three brothers lack any kind of memorable personality and I could never see them as engaging characters, no matter how many flashy spectacle panels they get. Judge is also frustratingly shallow and uninteresting. He's your typical arrogant monarch that does little to stick out despite being such an important figure in Sanji's life, so most of his panel time felt thoroughly uninteresting to me. Being this genius scientist who used to pal around with Vegapunk and Caesar was the most valuable thing his existence brought to the table, and that's not really thanks to any part of the character himself being well done.

Lastly I want to say that the Germa have made me feel something One Piece never made me feel before - disturbed. They're extremely unpleasant in a disturbing way and never felt like they got their comeuppance for it. Not in a getting beat up way but in a poetic justice way, y'know? They battered one of their terrified servant women to near death out of pure pettiness just to spite Sanji. Judge forced his wife into an invasive surgery that tore the ability to feel emotion from her unborn children, pushing her into taking heavy drugs in desperation, which eventually led to her sickness and death. I'd like you to read that last sentence again and think about it for a moment. Maybe it's just me, but this all hits me as deeply disturbing in a way that feels out of place in One Piece, despite that it's far from the worst thing that has happened from a utiliarian perspective. And where does this all go? They get beat up by Big Mom's crew a bit and just kind of get told off by Sanji in Capone's fortress. Then they vanish for half the arc only to return in a series of flashy, impressive panels as they burst in to save the day. Of all people, they toss around Sanji like a ragdoll between them, insulting his skills as he completely fails at rescuing his captain. I was shaking my head at this both times. Why do that? Rereading the arc it was the thing that baffled me the most.

And now, if they go do out against Big Mom, it'll be in a vaguely heroic moment that doesn't feel earned or in any way satisfying. I don't feel for these characters in any way. The one moderately brighter spot about the Vinsmokes is Reiju, but even she can't be called remarkable.

Smoothie
Good lord is this a bummer of a character. I'm not even going to focus on her being underwhelming in her displays of power for a 3rd-strongest Yonkou crewmember, which in my opinion she very much was. Instead I'm going to do the RLM thing. What's her personality? What are her character quirks and reasons for being the way she is? I bet you'll have a hard time telling me because she has none of those things. Throughout the whole arc she was little more than a mediocre design with a 900 million bounty walking/sitting/standing around doing nothing. This is one of the biggest proofs to me that something really was wrong with the arc and I'm not taking crazy pills. Never before has such a high profile villain been given such a thoroughly lame treatment, and for this to happen in a 75-chapter arc where her crew were the main antagonists is just unacceptable. It may be a small point that one character in Big Mom's crew was weakly handled, but it adds to that feeling of something being "off".

Sanji
Okay, so I'm not totally negative about Sanji in this arc. He was decent. But decent simply isn't good enough to fully satisfy what the premise promised.

I don't think his whole leaving and sacrificing himself schtick could ever have worked. It's not an implementation problem. I think Oda was diligent in doing what he could to work it out. But there's just no way he could ever have sold me on this concept, this far into the journey, with a crewmember that's been there since nearly the beginning. I understand Sanji's reasons for being unable to do exactly what the crew convinced Robin to do way back. They make sense, even if they feel contrived to force this development to happen. But he should never for a moment have thought there was a chance that Luffy would let it happen. He should never have even entertained the thought of it. As a result, all this ended up feeling like a whole bunch of drama with no real edge to it despite all Oda's efforts. He put a lot of effort into all this, tying back to Sanji's childhood with the mirroring of him bringing food to his mother in the rain with doing the same to Luffy. It really would've been great stuff if I bought into the premise. It makes me genuinely sad that I can't connect with this aspect of the arc but it simply doesn't work in my opinion.

Then, the whole cake plot. I'm not the biggest fan of this but not its biggest detractor either. I'm of two minds about it. I like a lot of the other events that it forced to happen, like Luffy vs. Katakuri and a lot of cool moments with the other crewmembers. But the actual cooking was just not entertaining to me. I feel like this was a mission impossible for Oda. Shima he is not, Toriko this is not, and I don't know if there was anything he could have done to show the cake bake process in a way that lived up to how much he hyped it via everyone absolutely losing their minds. In the end I came away feeling like I was just being told about how godly a chef Sanji is instead of being shown him doing actually impressive things. Nothing in that cooking process was as memorable and entertaining as his fight with Wanze. A third rate sub villain in the transition between two real arcs! And while I'm much more positive about Pudding than some people seem to be, the constant gags and fawning did get old at this point, especially considering how her turn at the wedding happened in the blink of an eye.

The character development and thematic stuff Oda did with Sanji still kind of works. It's there, but it stands on shakey ground… and the execution just wasn't impressive or entertaining enough to match the lofty standards I will always hold this series to.

Pacing and structure
I think this is something else a lot of people have criticized throughout the arc. And while I've certainly felt the effects of it as well, especially read weekly, I once again find it difficult to pin down exactly what went wrong and what should have been done instead (unlike Dressrosa, where I'll take the big, mean meat cleaver to everything dwarf-branded). I will say the arc is too long. Probably by about 10 chapters. And I think there's enough content to cut it down without losing something of great value or fundamentally screwing up the arc's goals.

Luffy leaving the mirror for a break in his fight with Katakuri, only to return right to where he was, felt like pointless padding. I realize this stems from the flaw of Gear 4 as Oda designed it, and that design is justified, but he could simply have had Luffy grabbing Brulée in a similar way and running around off-panel. This chase sequence didn't need to have even more bloat added to it. I think the initial forest sequence probably also went on a bit longer than it should have. Not that it wasn't fairly entertaining, but I have to question whether it was even necessary. It strikes me as Oda feeling the need to recapture that good ol' adventure vibe at some point during these messy arcs full of a million people, plots and places. And as much as that sentiment is appreciated, I feel like he's trying to have his cake and eat it too. It's never going to feel natural in the way adventuring on Skypiea or traveling through Alabasta's deserts felt natural. It comes off as forced and the sequences themselves aren't as good as they used to be either.

I've also expressed my dislike for the Vinsmokes, but I realize it's simply impossible to cut them off entirely and still maintain the arc's core premises. Minimizing their panel time would likely just make them even less engaging and take away from the already somewhat lacking emotional punch their feud with Sanji has. So maybe the solution here is to make better use of the panel time? Maybe cut a few things here and there and use what's gained there plus what was already assigned to make them at least somewhat engaging characters.

Other than simply tweaking numbers, there's also been a fair share of the by now patented post-timeskip scene-skipping extravaganza on display. I never felt as bothered by it as in Dressrosa and for the third time it's harder to point out specifics (maybe after a 3rd full reread I'll have some), but I'm confident in saying that Oda could still get a lot better at structuring up these giant bloated arcs.

WHEW. That's already getting too long and it's getting too late here. But I couldn't stop myself from getting some of these thoughts out. I'm very glad this arc is finally over and I'm also glad that my first reread made me appreciate it more than I have weekly. There are still lingering disappointments and a total absence of that feeling the great arcs of One Piece used to give me (and I won't buy anyone trying to tell me that I'm just getting older and more critical or whatever, because that feeling was present in full force during the humble little arc called Zou; I know for a fact Oda hasn't "lost it", he's simply not managing to pull it all together during these massive arcs). It's been good to read the thoughts of other people and I'm hoping to see some more things that increase my appreciation of the arc further.

My face would probably explode from witnessing too much awesomeness if Shimabukuro drew One Piece. He is the unrivaled king of oomph to my mind. That said, I wouldn't really want him on the story. Despite how much attention to detail Toriko has, it's been going seriously awry lately, in a complete opposite way to OP's timeskip issues. Oda's pacing may have been slow lately, but as an on-the-fly adapted video game-making proverb says: a slow-paced story eventually pays off, but a rushed story is underwhelming forever.

I'd say it makes it different moreso than weaker. If it were due to his experiences in Goa he would have had an active reason to join them. Now it's more like he didn't even need a reason - they were his only family, the only people in his life, he grew up with them, was treated with respect and found himself among their ideals from the get go. Those ideals should have harmonized pretty well with his personality already molded by the experiences he had even if he didn't remember them. I'm not so sure he would have necessarily joined the Marines; I guess it would depend on which kind of Marine picked him up. If he found himself with the "Akainu" type Marine I imagine he would probably have once again ran away from home pretty quickly. He might have been become a "Garp" if he was picked up by a "Smoker" or "Aokiji", but that's a rather unusual Marine then.

What I like about this is that it gives us something pretty different. Sabo is now truly Sabo the Revolutionary, to the very bone, rather than Sabo the disgruntled child of nobles and aspiring pirate who decided to abandon piracy and become one out of gratitude or seeing what they were about, with his core character and personality still remaining intact since the Revs' ideals are pretty in line with freedom and all that. Only as an adult did his childhood memories come back to him. It ends up being a rather cool reversal and in that sense this route is more unexpected than I saw anyone really predict, and I haven't really seen anyone note this side of things either.

I'd like to hear some very concrete reasons why the amnesia play was allegedly a bad one for Sabo as a character or bad for the story. From what I've seen people's only beef with it seems to be "it's cliche". But I'd argue that it's arguably not. Cliche, at least according to all the top results on Google, implies something that's so overused and drab that it's become trite by default. It has a negative connotation. That, in my opinion, is not true for amnesia, because it would effectively imply that no author should ever use amnesia in a story. It's a very popular trope and it can certainly be trite if used badly, but with good execution there's nothing wrong with going for it. In principle it's no different from the much-derided "power of friendship"-boost from Usopp to Luffy in Enies Lobby yet that was a magnificent moment because of its strong execution and because Oda hasn't overused it in the context of his own work, which would be a way to quickly make it start feeling trite.

So I wonder if the problem here isn't that people were a bit too confident in their expectations of what the explanation would be, or rather, confident in their expectations of Oda to pull something really creative or unique and totally unpredictable from his sleeve. Instead he used a simple and perfectly logical explanation that gave us, in my humble opinion, and as someone who hasn't even been much of a fan of Sabo in this arc, one of the most heartrending and moving scenes we've seen in the manga for a very long time. Nothing else than memory loss could have given us this scene. Amnesia is, arguably, the only truly good, in-character explanation for why he never contacted Luffy pre-skip, as well as for why he abandoned his brothers all those years and abandoned their joint dream of piracy to join the Revolutionaries. In addition, this play gives Sabo a completely different dynamic than either of his brothers. I for one find it really cool and if anything less "generic" that he didn't abandon piracy for Dragon out of gratitude but actually grew up a full-fledged Revolutionary to the bone.

So I'm not saying everyone has to like it, if you honestly feel it's so overused that you can't appreciate it any context ever anymore that's up to you, but I have yet to see a concrete reason why it was, to put it that way, bad or at the very least not particularly good writing. I think it's perfectly sound writing and can't see how it clashes with anything pre-established or makes Sabo a less effective character.

@uniaka:

I don't like it that the supernovas reaction about this was too casual. Like they all had time to eat and react to it in the same time like it was nothing special, after luffy and law defeated one of the best warlords. What people did the other supernovas beat in their journey? Luffy got 3 warlords and CP9 so far.

The Supernovas seem to have high expectations of each other. We've seen it with Luffy as well when he said that he called Hody as tough as one of his own generation (an over-100 million pirate) after continuing to get up. I think that's pretty cool, they're all on the same train and all agree that if you don't aim big you might as well not bother. I liked it when Kid said that Luffy has the spotlight on him now (after the war) but he won't let him keep all the glory to himself, which ties in with the same theme of them being rivals that expect no less than making it big from each other.

@Go:

Hmm… Agreed on the analogy being somewhat faulty. But would you argue then that if the act was intentional (example: corrupt judge set the perp free), it would be morally justifiable for not law enforcers to not stop him, and instead allow vigilantee justice, possibly lynch, take care of it?

No, because that's not systemic. It's still an isolated incident of corruption. It's nothing like the entire upper echelon of government knowing full well that their system is morally abhorrent yet continuing to run it and intentionally covering up the incidents it causes, not caring about the damage to the people they're claiming to protect.

More so, Alabasta brings an interesting point: Why not simply convince King Cobra to come forth with his version of events at Reverie? That seems like a much more safer option than gambling with Doflamingo. And we just established this chapter that Fuji knows about how things turned out there.

Impossible. They already covered it up, it's years past. It would probably just cause the WG to discredit Cobra and wouldn't be a convincing argument at all.

Does he now? You will notice he does not consider going after him at any point. He makes a deliberate show out of it for his men. Argument that he would go after him himself is pretty weak, in my humble opinion, when he does not even mention the possibility at any point.

I mean, not even Birdcage being seconds away from slicing poor silly Dressorans to bits gives him a pause and even then, he still relies on Luffy, though he has no way of knowing that he will come through in time. I don't think we can say he actually considered saving Dressrosa himself, based on what we see in the manga.

He said to King Riku:

"I will not let Dressrosa to go to war." What do you think he was going to do? Sit down and get sliced by the Birdcage? Wait until every civilian had died and then interere? Neither option makes any sense at all, I'm sure you can see.

And lastly, why exactly is it necessary to gamble at all? I mean, Fujitora can still come forth with his apology and statement if he acted against Doflamingo directly. It would also appear to be much more convincing from military stand point, as it shows that Marines can actually take on one of the Shichibukai and win. At this point, another Shichibukai could take over a country, and, in the eyes of the Reverie Leaders, how exactly would abolition of the system help the matter? The only thing it gives them is protection from marines, who, as shown with Dressrosa and Alabasta, in their eyes, cannot deal with them directly anyways. The only thing that changes is that given Shichibukai won't have to bother with having even pretending to be law abiding, and they could abuse their citizens directly.

A regular pirate can never become a king. If a pirate becomes the king of a country he will be hunted down and overthrown by the WG. The only thing that allowed Crocodile (had he succeeded) and Doflamingo to do this is the protection they had from the Shichibukai system. Their piracy was made lawful and thus their ruling a nation became lawful. Without a Shichibukai system this could never happen. Yes, if the pirate is so powerful the WG actually can't defeat them - like with the Yonkou - then they could do it, but that's a whole other category of problem. Doflamingo could have been chased off of Dressrosa any time if he wasn't a Shichibukai. It's the fact that he was a Shichibukai that allowed him to keep up his vile reign for 10 years.

But what Fujitora exposes is not that the system is broken, but that marines are. All WG needs to do is go "We have performed extensive investigation following Dressrosa using CP. The rest of Shichibukai are clean and abiding the terms of agreement."

No it's not. If the system allows a horrendous cruel pirate to rule a country for 10 years, under WG immunity, that's a horribly broken system. And it did allow that. It's because the Shichibukai system existed that Doflamingo was able to do this. Otherwise he would've been chased out of Dressrosa as it was said in this very arc he would be if he lost his Shichibukai title.

And even if everybody buys that, again, the above mentioned flaw in that plan manifests itself: if marines are not competent enough to deal with one Flamingo, how exactly will the hunt down abolished Shichibukai?

The abolished Shichibukai just become normal pirates. They are hunted by the Marines like any other pirates. The Marines couldn't go against Doflamingo because Fujitora was forbidden to act. The Marines can't hunt down every pirate in the world, but the point is that the Shichibukai would no longer be sanctioned by the WG, their vile acts no longer enabled.

Important: Fujitora does not reveal he was forbidden to act. Because that would be a lie, and easily discovered one at that.

It's not a lie. The last words he was left with from Akainu, his superior, was that Doflamingo didn't quit the Shichibukai at all. A Marine can't attack a Shichibukai. He could have taken it upon himself and would likely have been forgiven and even commended for it, but he didn't inherently have that authority. He couldn't contact Akainu because of Birdcage blocking communications. It's a neat excuse. I never claimed that he said that already, I said that it's how it is. The last thing Fuji heard was: don't go after Doflamingo. Bastille was saying the same thing: they can't go after Doflamingo. That was the orders the Marines at Dressrosa had at the time.

I'm also unsure what exactly stops WG from going "System works, it's our man at the scene who screwed up, and now he is trying to shift the blame on us".

The fact that Fujitora is an Admiral is what stops that. This is exactly why he said that now that he's Admiral he wants to try and abolish the Shichibukai system. An Admiral isn't just any old "man at the scene" as you put it. The Admirals are the highest and most important symbols of the World Goverment's power. Their words and actions carry so much weight they're impossible to ignore or dismiss. An Admiral came out and bowed his head and apologized for Doflamingo's terror, stating that it was the WG itself that allowed this. You need to realize how much weight this carries in the OP world. No one can dismiss or excuse it, it's already spreading like a wildfire. In a lower rank he would never have been able to do what he did, just like you see Smoker commenting on in this chapter. But because he's an Admiral he has the power to actually bring forth change, not only through formal authority but through the informal weight of the position.

@Go:

And why, exactly, would kings at Reverie react negatively to Fuji acting proactively against Doflamingo? And why are they bound to react more positevely to him not doint so?

I disagree about marines having no real power to change anything. If that was true, A) Aokiji would not have fought against Akainu for Fleet Admiral position, because it would have been meaningless, B) It stands directly contrary to the manga, where it has been stressed multiple times that Admirals have great responsibility and influence on matters of goverment.

It's not about Fuji; it's about the Shichibukai system. Fujitora wants to engineer a situation where the world leaders decide to abolish it. Remember that the system exists largely for the WG to look better. If 7 very powerful pirates are on the WG's side, it makes them look better, more powerful. It gives them credibility. But as we know in practice that's not the case at all. If Fujitora exposes the broken system for all to see, and makes sure the WG can't cover it up, the system will quickly start to become more trouble than it's worth. It will start making the WG look bad when everyone realizes their Shichibukai are out of control, don't actually help the WG and cause more harm than good. And then it will be disbanded. That's the goal.

So if he acted against Doflamingo himself what would have happened is that the WG could simply say "The system isn't broken, it worked as intended: a Shichibukai went rogue and our Admirals stopped him". The same way they said after Arabasta that Smoker was the one who stopped Crocodile. Now they can't say that because Fujitora revealed to the entire world that it wasn't him that stopped Doflamingo, it was other pirates, while Fuji was forbidden by his superiors to act. It's true that he could have took it upon his own conscience to act anyway, but then he would have weakened his own argument. His abolition argument becomes stronger if he didn't act, which is why he decided to bet that Luffy would succeed.

@Go:

Now, Fujitora is in my opinion the weakest part of the chapter. Art on him is phenomenal still, and I like back and fort between him and Akainu… but here's a thing: All of the great theories about his non interference proved to be wrong. Fujitora did not act against Doflamingo... simply because he did not wish the credit.

Now, to me, this sends a conflicting message: This is a guy we are supposed to be rooting for, in this. At least to some degree that much is clear from the storyline, and lots of people agree, as seen by this thread alone. But he just gambled with lives of an entire country, simply because he did not believe that being credited with solving a problem his boss (WG) created was right.

I question this on following account also: Isn't this simply perpetuiting the corruption inside World Goverment, if good people do nothing to actively battle said corruption, nor fix the wrongs done in the past by goverment? That line of thinking seems potentialy disasterous. For example: let's say a murderer is released because of procedural error. Would it be correct for law enforcers to not capture him when he tries to murder again? On the sole basis of "It's my boss fault this guy walked, I can't possibly put him in jail now, that would be a hipocrisy!"? This seems somewhat twisted.

I dunno, Fujitora's explanation for his actions seems weak when you consider he did basically nothing to stop Doflamingo from killing the entire country.

Fujitora is doing the exact opposite of perpetuating: he's forcing a change, radically. The fault in your analogy is that the error was accidental, and the people in charge of the system would try to make sure it never happened again. The World Government know very well that their Shichibukai are often cruel, ruthless pirates. They've seen Crocodile trying to take over an entire country (a nation of descendants from the original 20 kings and hiding place of Pluton, no less) causing a civil war involving millions, and they did nothing to change the system after that. They shrugged their shoulders and covered it up with a convenient excuse. They prioritized keeping the "balance of the three great powers" that the Shichibukai are a part of in place over making sure a pirate could never again use his Shichibukai immunity to threaten and harm innocent people. Fujitora thinks the latter should be more important than the former. But he knows the WG will never change if they can keep covering up the Shichibukai's crimes and making excuses. So he used the circumstances on Dressrosa to engineer a situation that reveals the harm the Shichibukai system causes in a way that makes it impossible for the WG to cover it up, which he hopes will cause the world leaders in the Reverie to push for its abolition.

Fujitora didn't necessarily gamble as much as you think either. He may have risked the life of some people, but not everyone. He would have gone after Doflamingo himself if Luffy and Law failed and then Doflamingo would have fallen, saving the country. It's definitely a gamble with some lives, yes, but he did what he could to keep people safe without directly interfering and was ready to enter himself in case it went wrong. We're not supposed to think he's pure sunshine and rainbows. He's a risk-taker who knows that to win big you have to bet big, but with his heart in the right place.

@Daz:

"Wow, a marine admiral is kneeling! What a powerful sight…wait, did he just admit that he deliberately half-assed his efforts, and put all our lives at stake?"
"Yeah, it sounded that w- oh look, a report from the Dressrosa hospital. Apperantly, the nation hasn't suffered a single casualty today! Fancy that"
"oh well, no harm done then"
"Actually, my mom died"
"then go have an adventure, kid"

I mostly jest; the marines kneeeling is a powerful image, and sabotaging the WG by doing a pre-damage control broadcast is interesting. Also, Its just neat that Maynard gets something to do again.

My beef is just that Fujitoras appearantly deeply callous actions (as far as civilian casualties are concerned) doesn't really gel with Fujitoras characterization; Oda has framed him as a Good Guy who cares about people, now going so far as to have no one call him out on his refusal to fight Doflamingo.

Well, we'll have to wait and see on that. It's understandable that they haven't done it up until this point since they were a bit busy with running away and trying not to die. I have a feeling everyone isn't necessarily going to jump with joy at him next chapter, but we'll see. I do hope Oda does address outright why he didn't fight Doflamingo. Even though it's easy for us to infer, it should be a bit of an elephant in the room for the people on Dressrosa, as you've noted.

@kouch_lee:

The part that's shaky is when Fujitora said, at the start of the Star Game, to focus on the Strawhats and their allies. Unless, by that point, he still needed to gauge Luffy's true worth. . .but he didn't. He came face to face with them, Giant Pica appeared, everyone got scattered, Sabo appeared to fight Fuji and there started his whole "pretend to lose->bet on Luffy->??->profit" plan.

If instead of saying "focus on Strawhat and his allies, follow my orders", he ONLY said "focus on the citizens, no one gets hurt on my watch" which, btw, is something he did focus on afterwards (making Pica's fallin debris float to save the citizens offpanel, find some lost children, force Parasited marines to the ground with his gravity), everything would make a bit more sense. "Focus on finding and stoping Strawhat" - Fights Sabo - "I'm betting everything on Strawhat" is the one thing that feels weird to me.

I figure he just said that because, it's what an Admiral would have to say in that situation. "Ignore the Strawhats" doesn't look good for an Admiral. He had a reason they "couldn't" go after Doflamingo, they were forbidden from it, but Law was a traitor and Luffy an extremely infamous pirate that embarassed the WG before. But he knew full well his generic soldiers would never be able to stop them, and if he confronted them himself he would just half-ass it and "lose them" as soon as an opportunity arose. Which is exactly what happened.

@Daz:

He did allow Doflamingo to throw the country in to chaos though, and if he was planning to intervene in the end, he cut it real fine…like 60 seconds before mass genocide fine. Aside from Riku, you also gotta wonder what the average Dressrosans opinion is, but maybe they're just so moved by the two-page spread that they can't be mad at Fujitora

Yes, like I said it seems a bit awkwardly worded. I'd like to know how Stephen translated it or what, more precisely, the original intent of the wording is. But given the context it seems like he would have had to mean that he won't let it be destroyed, since it had already been thrown into chaos by that point. Yeah, he seemed to cut it close. But we don't know for sure what he could have done with his gravity powers, maybe he could have significantly slowed down the Bird Cage if he wanted to. And Doflamingo was pretty much a dead man walking at the time so for an untouched Admiral to take him out would've been a quick affair.

They probably expected nothing good to come out of the Marines' presence and were as surprised as their king at actually seeing him sink to his knees and humbly apologize. Trying to be angry at an Admiral to his face is, to put lightly, a bit of a risky move as far as the average citizen of the OP world knows, so we might not have seen that either way. But it should be interesting to see if Oda explores any further what they think (I'm a bit surprised at hearing myself say that).

@Daz:

I'm going to hold off with major Fujitora discussion 'till the very end of his involvement this arc, but my biggest gripe with him this chapter, and with the "He was enacting a plan to sabotage the Warlord system and thus did nothing", is that it makes him an insanely cynical bastard who literally gambles with the civilian lives of an entire nation. Firstly, he doesn't seem like that sort of person what with all the times he specifically mentions civilian safety, and being flustered at causing collateral damage (why would he give a shit if he's such a cruel cynic?), but secondly, his apology scene seems to ignore a rather glaring point, from the Dressrosans' perspective….

Fujitora: I apologize on behalf of the government for allowing Doflamingo to be King and letting this happen!!!
Riku: Wait, forget about what the government let happen 10 years ago, what about now? Why didn't you help fight Doflamingo? Why were you wasting time chilling at the plateau with me instead?
Fujitora: ...See, I have this plan to undermine the warlords, which in the long run might do you a lot of good, which might have involved me kinda sorta deliberately avoided solving this crisis
Riku: You had a "plan"? What the hell!? Hundreds of thousands could have died!
Fujitora: Look, I said the government is really sorry, okay?
Riku: Are YOU sorry?
Fujitora:........a little bit. But I made sure to call in some medics in advance, so we're all good right?

He told King Riku "I won't let Dressrosa sink into war" back when they first met each other on the plateau. Maybe it's a little awkwardly worded, but I took that as him saying that he won't just let Dressrosa suffer and die, but he, too, wants to bet on Luffy for the time being. Remember, Riku was there when Fujitora stated to Doflamingo that no matter what evil comes to light in his country he won't go against him. Riku didn't have much faith in the Marines at the time, but I felt like that was Fujitora implying, without stating outright, that he's not actually going to sit back and do nothing if it comes to that. But until then they'd unite in putting their hopes in Luffy. There may even have been an implicit understanding that Fujitora didn't think the Marines deserved to save the country either and that he'd rather bet on an honest-hearted pirate.

We don't know which position in the BB pirates' "hierarchy" Burgess occupies yet. You could say him being the First Fleet Commander indicates he should be in the top 3, but we don't know what those positions are based on. Could be seniority for all we know and the entire original crew will be the 1th, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Fleet Commanders. With Shiryuu being BB's personal send-him-out-to-get-shit-done man. Like Darth Vader.

Plus, it's important to note that Sabo ate a powerful Logia fruit in this arc and Burgess is still at the strength he was when he entered. If this was Sabo before the Mera Mera or Burgess also had a powerful Devil Fruit it might have been a bit different.

@Robby:

I like that the final villains are beatable, unpredictable, bad with plans, and flawed in general. (They are like mirror Strawhats after all…) It makes OP drastically different from say, Naruto or Bleach or Shaman King with their omnipotent untouchable villains that planned every last detail of the hero's life decades ago.

The randomness and unpredictablility is nice... and the series ain't over yet. These guys still have 10-15 years to grow (and we haven't seen most of them do anything in action yet) as do the Strawhats. The strength shown here won't be their strength at the end.

As for Sabo "needlessly" returning so soon, I dunno. WHile those of us that study the series closely knew hew asnt dead and picked up on the teacups thing, he'd been "dead" for several years already. Its unfair to the younger less observant members of the audience to hold that card in check for as much as a decade. Plus, Oda-san wanted to ease Luffy of the sadness of losing Ace (and Sabo himself) after all this time. Its similar to when he unveiled the mini-Merry at Thriller Bark just a few months after Merry's death. It's Oda-san helping the audience along.

I hope this chapter finally makes people stop harping on Fujitora... since he's now done exactly what we've been saying he'd do all along. Make it very clear, and very public, with zero chance f a cover up, that the warlord system is messed up and that the government did nothing to stop this. He would have stepped in more personally had things gotten any more desperate or if lives were about to be lost, but he was mostly holding back to let Luffy do what Luffy does... as he has with so many warlords on record already. (He's been known to beat Croc, Moria, and Buggy... and officially has credit for beating Hancock in a bear hug... as well as allying with Jinbe and Law... and surviving Kuma twice, and all the admirals... he had a track record.)

@Steven:

I think I posted a version of this before but: I think a lot of people are able to see the bigger picture, but Oda is still able to troll/work the portion of the audience that seems to organize everything by perceived power level. I just don't see the end of things being the Strawhats walking through rooms ranked on who the progressively stronger enemies are.

Even if we overlook the thematic importance and relevance of BB for as long as it has been there, and that alone is somewhat of a silly thing to do, I really don't understand the necessity for them to be these juggernauts knocking everyone over. Their vulnerability and moments of failure thus far have been so comically exaggerated and frequent that it is kind of difficult to not see the purpose behind it. Since Burgess is relevant to the discussion, I'll use a pro-wrestling term–their "heat", or animosity/reader-reaction is pretty much rooted in how underhanded, sniveling, and unsavory they are. I think Oda referred to them as the most piratey crew in the series, and there is a reason they are written that way. Outside of all the fate and let the chips fall where they may stuff, they are on the same journey as Luffy and have taken shortcuts to get to a very high position in the New World. They are supposed to be formidable, but ultimately unworthy of that position in terms of character and hard work. Both Shanks and Jinbei have observed that their is some unknown danger in them, and shouldn't be taken lightly. Everytime we see them be as clumsy and foolish, we are supposed to be distracted from that. At some point, Oda will have to pull some triggers and give us insight regarding that (the ideal way would have been Burgess F5ing Sabo into the dirt), but there's clearly a deliberate build going on. It can be a little frustrating in real time, but it's working for me.

I think these posts are very accurate and nail down how Oda wants to write the Blackbeard pirates, and the reason why they're so great as an (main) antagonist crew.

However.

Burgess still just feels lame in this arc. He lacks impact. I think the problem in this particular case is that we almost only got to see the pathetic, and not the other side of things. You can justify that by saying his opponent was Sabo, who's simply a bit out of his league, and reasonably so. But the fact still remains that it leaves Burgess without much of an "impact".

Personally, I blame it on the much-detested off-paneling. From a "fight perspective" Burgess still lasted 10 minutes and held Sabo's full attention as per his own admittance. If we'd actually gotten to see some of that it would have been apparent that Burgess isn't so pathetic, because he has obviously been able to endure many hits and keep Sabo busy with his own offensive strength. If Oda had actually shown some of it he could've given us some nifty fight choreography that highlights Burgess' strengths and makes him look more respectable, even whilst in the end getting beat down. He's done it before, we know he's capable of it. But we didn't get to see it, and so all we actually saw was Burgess first talking big and acting cocky, and then we skip straight to him lying on the ground all beat up. And so he just feels lame and pathetic. What happened wasn't bad; the way it was shown was.

In other words, it's more of another symptom of the Dressrosa disease than a problem with the character itself. I'm not the least bit concerned for the Blackbeard pirates because of this, but I feel that it was, like so much in the arc, a messily handled situation that could've been a lot more satisfying to read than it was.

If the dwarves were kicked, less time focused on the Rikus and the missing SHs came back I'd be pretty happy. A big cast can be an asset but going too far can, and imo did, cause problems.

@andy:

The characters were only left to long if you were reading weekly .
Every vol has characters taking part over the course of it and certain story points being done .

I don't think the characters were left too long. That's what I said, in order to avoid that (because that would be really bad) Oda had to scene switch like crazy and jump around with the focus nearly the whole arc. That's what I found to be a huge problem with the arc, one of its biggest weaknesses in fact. There are so many characters that there just wasn't enough panel time to go around to give everyone their due in a satisfying manner. That was a non-issue in other arcs because of their much smaller casts.

As regards the number of characters in the arc.

I think if one made a list of the characters in Dress Rosa compared to say, Arabasta or Skypiea, it would become pretty apparent that the number of characters could be a real problem.

In fact, I'll go ahead and do it.

!
I might have forgotten some, I didn't try to be absolutely exhaustive. I tried to consistently color code them roughly according to importance, (main chars - main villains - main "others", secondary/tertiary ditto) some might disagree with some choices and I have might have messed some up. But the point is pretty clear. Dress Rosa has both far more important characters and far more characters overall. The number of factions is much higher too. Obviously "Gladiators" isn't actually one faction, but it would have gotten ridiculous to name all those kingdoms and organizations.

And you have to keep in mind that length isn't the only consequence of this. It takes longer to deal with them all, yes, but it also means that much more changing scenes and focus to avoid some characters being left hanging for far too long and being treated very unevenly. For me that has been one of the largest issues with the arc.

The interaction with Sanji made her look like she had a pretty strong personality. But that's the thing and what disappointed me, all signs of a distinct personality seemed to mostly vanish after that. Obviously her initial behavior was partially an act but honestly I don't see why she couldn't have a stayed a bit similar to what her personality seemed like at that time. Passionate, prideful and a tad magisterial, but without being unkind or a bad person. Certainly would've shaken a lot more life and color into the Riku family and made her much more distinct as an individual. But nope. She just turned into the same indistinctly gentle, kind, timid person as her father and niece and turned into a plot device on top of that, and after dozens of chapters of that I had honestly lost interest.

She did a bunch of those things and acted pretty proactively in the beginning. I liked her then, I had hopes for her. I think her character design is pretty cool as well.

But after those first 10-15 chapters (bearing in mind this arc is 90+ chapters) her character almost disappeared. She felt more like a plot device than a character in nearly the entire Bird Cage section. Then after being essentially a bystander slash plot device for like 60 chapters, Oda throwing her in for a quick last-minute attempt at drawing out some emotion just didn't do anything for me. The scene was executed somewhat well but the character was just too inactive and had been given too little attention as an individual character for so long by that point. She had much more potential if she had been given more of a personality and active role. She was said to be passionate, as I said, but I really don't feel any of that. She's pretty much as timid, kind and gentle as the rest of the Riku family for the most part. Was it just an act? Doesn't seem that way the way Doffy spoke of it though.

@skoopa:

that's your opinion , doffy as a villain is good , the best no sorry i find crocodile waaaay more charismatic , some of doffy's appearance were pretty well planned like when he gets whats law's plans and rush towards the mugis but even then i didn't feel the threat the danger that crocodile or even arlong had , i think its because we know dofflamingo from a long time ago and we saw his abilities at the marineford war , we got no surprise , the awakening stuff wasn't greatly portrayed , and of course let's not speak about the clones and birdcage , as for the law flashback its a good flashback keep in mind that law is like a mugi now ( i totally see him joining the crew , Luffy proposed to him no ? ) or at least an all time ally , so yeah he gotta have a good flashback we only had doffy's flashback because of his relations with Law and to be honest its not that great of a story not meaningful at all , maybe it will be useful later when we will know what's the secrets he knows about the celestial dragons .

I didn't say that DD's threat level was the highest, it certainly wasn't, but he's much more of an actual character than… well, any of Oda's past major arc villains. Crocodile had style in droves and was a deliciously evil James Bond-esque villain. He was totally convincing as an enemy force and his power made for good fights. But he didn't have much of a personality aside from being really cruel and cunning. He certainly didn't have a backstory or motivations aside from (literally) taking over the world. He wasn't humanized, no attempt was made at having us understand why he acts the way he does, where he comes from, why he treats people like he does, why he has the relationships he does. Doflamingo had ALL of this. We've followed his whole life. We've seen him in moments of personal weakness, sadness and contemplation, seen the different aspects to his personality coming forth and mixing. We've seen him go on treasure hunts, celebrate and fight battles with his crew, diving in to saving his protegees and even letting the young Baby-5 cling to his leg and cry. We've seen him lose members of his crew that he genuinely cared for and seen him kill his own brother in a mixture of anger and sadness. It was one of the most surprising, memorable and impressive moments of Punk Hazard to me, to see Oda have the villains of the arc go out like that. He was a full-blown, explored and fleshed out character in his own right as good as any of the main characters, on top of being a strong opposing force to them as well as hugely stylish and charismatic.

That's, to me, better and more mature villain writing than we've ever seen before in One Piece. Doflamingo mixes the best of the old with something that's, for this series, quite new. Oda was always good at making villains threatening forces but that's usually all they were for the most part. I honestly feel like we may never see the likes of Doflamingo again in an OP villain. It's just something entirely outside of what I expected from OP to make him such a fleshed out and multifaceted character on top of being the cackling, manipulating cruel man we had previously seen him as.

I still don't think it can be chalked up that because the Cora flashback and Doflamingo as a villain are best-ever level quality. They're as good as or better than anything he has ever done in the past. That can't be the work of a man who's losing the touch he used to have. It doesn't make sense. If he was losing his touch we'd just get a bunch of stuff that feels consistently mediocre and fails to engage, I feel. Instead we get soaring highs with deep falls. Oda is not having problems creating highs, he's having problems avoiding the lows. We've seen a lot of weird and unfortunate decisions and strange priorities drag down the overall consistency of the arc but the highs are as high as they've ever been. I say that what he needs to do is get more consistent. All 3 post-timeskip arcs have the same issue, simplified. They've got some great highs but suffer from a lot of lows and scenes that just don't work very well. It's hard to pinpoint the causes, which probably aren't the same for each arc either. But there is an issue with consistency. It's more of an issue with implementation/execution than the content itself. It's almost as if you've got an entire top-notch arc in Dress Rosa as it stands if you'd just cut and copy and paste around its parts a bit to feel more coherent and better prioritized. I've never felt that with an OP arc before, Oda is having a lot of trouble getting his ideas onto paper as well as he used to, trouble structuring them up, prioritizing. It feels very messy at times. But the good part is that's something that can be addressed whereas if a writer has lost his touch, his engagement for the series, he's just lost it. I feel the complete opposite of that from Oda. He's ultra-dedicated and sprawling with ideas and the will to deliver them. I'm a mix of hopeful and concerned for the remainder of the series. I deeply hope he manages to execute future arcs more consistently but the really big stuff will probably be great regardless, just as Doflamingo was absolutely stompingly fantastic in this arc despite all its flaws.

@The:

A lot of this chapter will depend on personal opinions. Like you and some others, you don't care for the citizens or King Riku, and Gatz is a bit of a miss. Therefore, this chapter is quite weak because it didn't focus on the characters you wanted it to.

As far as the Gladiators, I don't think they needed to have focus on this particular chapter. This was about the country itself, and their stake in it. Some of the Gladiators had come for a certain purpose, but the country as a whole didn't matter to them.

While it won't make a difference, I feel there was a little more to the masses than you give them credit for. One thing that stuck with me was how many of the citizens became toys, and were forgotten. I still remember the scene where the toy dog tries to convince his child and wife, and is thrown away. It showed the darker side of the country, and how many citizens were being harmed without anyone knowing. You had the soldiers being forced to fight, and seeing them all injured but forced to continue fighting. I remember that along with the birdcage stuff and it makes it more effective to me.

I didn't want this chapter to focus on other characters, although I would have wanted the climax as a whole to do so. But this chapter was logically devoted to the natives of Dress Rosa. I agree with that. What I would have wanted, ideally, is for Rebecca to not have been so mishandled so as to make me stop caring about her, and Riku to not be so grey and bland I stopped caring about him. And maybe even for the citizens to be more engaging than they are, which leads to the next point you brought up.

The toys show a missed opportunity. I was also engaged and interested when they first came up and at learning how terrible their fate and their families' fate unknowingly were. It was well done. But halfway through it whimpered out and became all about them shouting and crying and running from Bird Cage and DD's threats as one giant faceless mass. For 45 chapters. I'll be brief, since this treads off-topic, but it would have been perfect if instead of the dwarves Kyros was leading a toy rebellion composed of the few that had been freed from the contract. He'd have a few lieutenants and central people; each could have a different story that's a little more fleshed out. Each could be an actual character for us to connect to. A kid, a husband, a wife. Different stories but one cause. Therein you would have representatives of the Dress Rosa citizens themselves. It would feel much more like they were actually fighting their OWN battle, led by their trusted and loved captain of the guard, which I think would help with one of the reasons they aren't engaging to some people right now – that the only thing they actually do is run around and wait for other people to save them, which in truth is quite a contrast to how Oda usually writes. If so much focus is to be put on the citizens as a mass it would really help to have more individual faces and personalities to build a connection to them. As it stands it it was only very briefly touched on, right at the start, and then left by the wayside almost entirely. It couldn't have resolved all the issues composing this underwhelming climax entirely, but having a direct connection to the giant mass that Oda made one of the emotional anchors of the entire climax through actual characters couldn't have hurt either.

@Maromi:

I definitely agree with you on this. When Rebecca first appeared, I was excited for a warrior lady who's willing to actually get hit to finally be in One Piece, but her character just went down the drain, and the whole thing was very disappointing for me.

The thing is, there've been so many comments on here that are like "lol i hope Rebecca dies" or "OMG SHE'S SO ANNOYING" and just… People blame Rebecca as an individual, people blame her as a character, instead of how she was written, and then all the misogynistic comments on here make for an extremely uncomfortable atmosphere if you're a girl, and you get scared to even post...

Yea, that's the internet for you. The only proper response is to give an argument the time of the day that it's earned by its content. I sometimes hesitate to post my thoughts in these chapter threads because of the unpleasant atmosphere that can occur when people get attacked for posting criticism. If you enjoy the manga and are tired of hearing complaints, just don't read those posts. It's not hard. Trying to silence dissenting opinions is not the way to go. Nor is taking out your personal frustration on people giving their honest comments in a reasoned and civil fashion. If someone posts critique in a legitimately trollish way they don't deserve being given any attention at whatsoever. They don't deserve the pleasure of spoiling and diminishing the prospects of civil and reasonable discussion between a vast majority of members. If someone posts critique in a legitimate and reasoned fashion, they deserve a response that's at the very least civil. If you can't give that, give none at all. Of course, what, in the mind of the majority, constitutes a trollish way and what doesn't can be a good indicator of the state of a forum's tolerance. It makes me glad to see posters like Daz speaking out against the, if you will, harsh and notably uncivil anti-complaining that is exuded now and then. That's no better at all than complaining in a trollish, exaggeratedly negative fashion. Either will do just as much to harm the atmosphere of civil and constructive discussion that the forum deserves.

I'm sure the sheer fatigue of Dressrosa contributes a lot, and like many I'm happy to finally be near the time of moving on.

What worked: The one part of this chapter that was very well done was Kyros. The call-back to his tin eyes that can't cry and how he's fought for Dressrosa's freedom from oppression and control all these years were well chosen. It reminds me of some of Oda's great past moments where a character just lets everything go and cries like a baby, unabated – like Chopper upon leaving Drum Island and seeing the cherry blossom fireworks, or Robin during her famous "I want to live!" moment. I think this is going to come off as an even better moment when the arc sinks in and fatigue and disappointment wears off. One of the better scenes in the arc, possibly.

What didn't: But everything else is just, welp, Oda commited to these characters so hard and so badly wants me to feel for them but I just don't. Rebecca has done essentially nothing but cry for far too long and has almost no personality. Viola was introduced as passionate but for almost the entire arc has done little but run from place to place whilst being protected or served as Oda's recap device. Riku has been, imo, uninteresting and bland for the whole arc. A generic kind gentle king is all well and good, but not interesting enough to carry such a large burden. Can the man even crack a smile if his life depends on it? Gatz, though I don't dislike him,came out of nowhere with no build up and took too much of a presence in climax. Meanwhile the characters that I care about are doing nothing (Cavendish), pushing the oh-so-contrived feeling Birdcage (Zoro, Franky, Sai, Bart, Kyros) or watching quietly (Law). It's as if there's a complete reversal of what I tend to expect from One Piece in this climax. The less colorful, less built-up characters are at the center stage of attention and tension in the very climax. Meanwhile the great, classically One Piece, emotionally engaging characters (which the arc has plenty of) are relegated almost exclusively to serving Oda's favorite plot device or doing what seems to be nothing at all.

And worst of all, the citizens of Dress Rosa. They are a giant faceless mass that have been bumbling around and running from Bird Cage forever. I can't get emotionally connected to a mass of faceless people just because what happens to them is sad. It doesn't matter how many panels of them looking sad or scared or overjoyed Oda hits me with (I think around 10-12 in this chapter alone?). It won't happen =/ The emotional connection I get to One Piece characters is through getting to know them and spend time with them, learn about their personalities, their history, and follow them through their personal struggles. It can be both on the small and large scale: Senõr Pink or Nico Robin. But it won't happen through simply being told "sad thing happened, now feel sad" and showing more and more panels of sad things happening to people that remain as faceless as before. The citizens of Dress Rosa being made such a huge emotional anchor was a massive mistake to me.

The next chapter is probably the one that will work, because it'll contain Law's reaction. He's the character that's both colorful and interesting and had a great deal of attention and love devoted to writing his emotionally engaging story full of characters just as colorful and interesting. But this one just couldn't do it for me. It's not because anything about it was wrong per se. It's natural to have exactly this happen as Doflamingo is defeated. It makes sense in-universe. It's what logically follows the story as written. But the characters focused on simply are not engaging. Without engaging characters, a character-driven story just isn't much to write home about. They exist in this arc, but they aren't these characters.

@Owain:

And it was Doffy who beat Law into unconsciousness. And who shot him. In a one vs one, I think it's clear that he has a significant advantage over Law.

Just as in the palace Law was already damaged and tired, from his Fujitora-Doffy beating, before he got to fight Doflamingo the first time. To numberify the whole thing, Doffy (100%) beat Law (75%) and brought Law to 1%. In round 2 he, still at 100%, once again beat Law, who then had recovered to perhaps 50%. Doflamingo is certainly superior to Law in a 1v1. That's indisputable. But precisely because of that, Law being forced to fight him while already injured is important to take note of. If you're already at a disadvantage going into a fight with a guy the last thing you need is to be injured and exhausted while the opponent is fit as a fiddle.

It's worth acknowledging that Law got the short end of the stick in his fights against Doffy is what I'm saying. Law at 75%-100% got to fight a 100% Doflamingo… Luffy is getting to fight a 50% Doflamingo while being at 60% himself (don't take the numbers too seriously). Luffy's fight is more fair and so it's natural he'd be able to perform better.

re: Doffy vs. Law: Doflamingo owned Law pretty good, but let's not forget the monumental beating Law took just a few hours prior. The man was beaten into unconsciousness and had bullets still lodged in his body until a minute or two before starting to fight. Doflamingo was practically in top condition. Even under those circumstances it took a decent bit of fighting for Doffy to put Law down and he didn't do it unscathed. In addition, we now know Law's real plan was to create an opportunity for his Gamma Knife.

Feat analyses aside, I'd say it's relatively clear Oda went to some lengths to make the conditions for the fight a little bit unfavorable for Law.

@Verus:

… You know what's my beef with that?

Every, and I mean every respectable goverment would deny any guilt regarding the incident and drop it all on Fujitora's. Probably give him dishonorable discharge as well.

"What? Our fault? We totaly have counter-measures to prevent that. That our own officer decided to not act within his rights when dangerous psychopath was slaughtering people? Well, he is to blame. We punished him. Severely. Have a nice day."

Seriously, at best Fujitora manages to forever sabotage his own position.

You're missing a vital point. Fujitora is an Admiral. You know the government's great might, the one that keeps the world in check? The one that makes the world ignore the Tenryuubito? The one that keeps the Yonkou in check? The one that the great majority of the world fears and is in awe and respect of? That's him. They don't have a whole bunch of potential Admirals just running around. Each of these guys is an army and a vestige of the government's prestige and power. They only just went through a process where they lost his predecessor to an unprecedented incident of infighting. Through an unprecedented "world conscription" they managed to find two, just two in the whole world, individuals capable enough of replacing what they lost. That gives Issho a heck of a lot of leverage. There's a reason he said this:

http://www.mangapanda.com/one-piece/735/17
http://www.mangapanda.com/one-piece/735/18

"Now that I'm 'Admiral', there's something I want to do."

He is using his position as Admiral to push this. If he was any old footsoldier or a lower ranking officer he wouldn't have the clout. They would, as you say, be able to pin the incident on a lower-ranking cog in the system not doing its job properly. But they can't brush off an Admiral. They can't afford another internal conflict with their own greatest military might at this point in time.

And Fujitora has his excuse ready to go. He was told outright by Sakazuki, his superior officer, that he's not allowed to go after Doflamingo. Since Bird Cage went up all communications are lost so he can't ask for new orders or be granted leave to take the offending party out. And he was oh-so-unfortunately held up by having to fight the Revolutionaries' 2nd in command so he couldn't even go after Straw Hat and Law.

That's the nice thing about Fuji's machinations. He's playing everyone and everything in his high-risk game. Nearly everything he's said and done since he stepped out of that forest on Green Bit has been to stall for time, wait for right the opportunity or to nudge events in the directions he wishes them to go. He's not doing his job. He's following his own agenda while making sure it looks just enough as though he's doing his job. From the very start.

Sorry if this has been asked before.

Do we have a reliable translation yet on that exchange where Luffy and Doflamingo noted that both were injured? I'd like to know more precisely what was said.

@Taggerung:

Trebol being defeated by one of the Shichibukai, a Captain of "The Worst Generation". If that was Jinbe, Doflamingo, Croc, Hawkins, Apoo, Hancock, or Kuma sitting there even that bloodied and bruised people would expect them to at least be able to handle someone like Trebol. Law does it and people are like WAHHHH the executives are such a push over.

Diamante loses to the undefeated hero of the Collesium, the Champion of Dressrosa. Too weak.

Pica loses to the First Mate of the Strawhat Pirates. Luffy and Zoro being the only ones who could stand up to some like Pica anyway. Too weak.

Vergo gets taken down by a slash that cuts a mountain in half. Too weak.

Trebol made the same mistake Vergo did and the same one people keep making about Law. He underestimated him. Doflamingo is the only one who grudgingly had given Law's fruit and ability to use it the respect it deserves.

As a poster above said, the issue isn't that the Seats/High Executives were too weak. It's that they didn't get nearly as enjoyable and extensive showings as they in mine and apparently quite a few others' opinions deserved. Diamante's showings were so, so meager and his fight was all broken up into little pieces, then ended quickly. Trebol's stuff has been spread out across the entire arc doing only very little at a time and virtually none of it, even less than for Diamante, happened in a context of fluid fighting. Pica had it the best but there were still problems, they have been discussed to death however. Now Vergo was very impactful in everything he did and went down well but I still would have liked to see more of him. Aside from beating on a hopeless Law he only had a short scuffle with Sanji and a short scuffle with Smoker on-panel. Again, elongated - in terms of sequential on-panel time, not in-universe time passed - encounters is what would have helped. I find it very frustrating that Oda seems to restrict these nearly exclusively to Luffy and to an extent Zoro these days.

In short, Oda is just being way too stingy with the panel time he gives to these guys imo. They have such great designs, personalities and interesting abilities but we just don't get any fluid focused fighting. Instead we keep getting these quick scuffle-type encounters which are constantly broken up into pieces and a lot of the time end very abruptly with the now-infamous "one-shots". It simply doesn't feel like these characters get the respect and focus that used to be accorded elite lieutenants such as Daz Bones or Kaku. I even think Chess and Kuromarimo got a more focused fight with more interaction of abilities and choreography than Trebol and Diamante…

I know criticism of this nature has probably been raised a thousand times before but this is where I'm personally coming from in finding the High Executives disappointing. It's not that I find them too weak at all. That's not my problem. I wanted to see more of them and see it in the good old style that's worked so well so many times before, sequential, fluid fighting with lots of interesting banter accompanying the interesting fighting. I love their concepts and I also really appreciate that Oda stepped outside the norm of simply lining up a bunch of convenient 1v1s. All the officers have been running around and doing their own things the whole arc compared CP9 and BW sitting in their lair and then going out for convenient 1v1 battles (with some mix-ups, granted). It made the officers come alive and feel more like individual characters than simply a battery of mooks to be fought and defeated. That's why there was so much promise here and why it stings so much that when the time came to deliver we mostly got a slew of rushed and broken up encounters.

Surely it did not take that panel for everyone to be clear on the fact that "Hardening" is its own thing? We've had so many panels of COA being used with no blackening effect…

@Gizmo:

The problem is Law's only apparent limitation to his abilities were stated early on to be stamina. So yeah, his only stated limitation not coming into play can be understandably annoying, given he just used a huge Room to pull of that surprise attack.

Like it's be as if early on we were informed of Zoro's inabilities to follow directions but now imagine that never was shown on screen and he's always able to be where he needs to be. The comparison isn't apples to oranges, but I'm pretty sure you get what I'm saying.

Plus, being able to control his limbs too undermines the big shock of losing an arm. The pains still there, but if he has full control over the arm still then a critical wound on Law has now just become a painful inconvenience.

I don't believe that's the case. He used Tact to manipulate his arm as if it were any other inanimate object, which, at the time, is all it was to him. He can likely put his arm back onto his body, but that's old news – we learned about him doing that very thing with the Brownbeard Centaur Crew back just a few chapters after his post-timeskip reintroduction. Being able to fix lost limbs is one of the miraculous powers of the Ope Ope no Mi. I think that's implicitly understood here, it's the only reason Oda went through with such an otherwise grave injury.

I trust the word about him not being a Logia according to the conversation, but it really would have made more sense if he were one. He could still create slime around him to trick people into attacking the parts where his real body isn't, just like what happened with Luffy there. Now the scene with Usopp is suddenly massively contrived. On the flip side, I am glad that he's not a Logia on the basis that "sticky sticky fruit" never seemed to fit as one to me. Logia are meant to be forces of nature. Even now we don't know what Trebol's substance actually is, so it fits better for it to be some Paramecia-produced substance than a supposed force of nature that's never even defined properly. If it stands between avoiding one contrived scene and keeping the Logia theming consistent, I'm happy we're getting the latter.

Trebol's defeat was hilarious, but I'm still left with the bitter feeling of disappointment about his overall character. We already had the scene where he underestimated Law and paid for it. We also already had a scene where he told Doflamingo not be careful with Law, and Doffy paid for being so. How many times in one fight can these jokers underestimate Law and pay for it? Making it the condition for the last High Executive's defeat, with Law in such an abysmal state, is a bit of a shame. I'm not saying I have any other brilliant ideas, but then, that's not my job. I've seen Oda make the boss's top lieutenants go down in so much more satisfying ways before. The reason it stings so much is that Doffy's top lieutenants, character-, design- and interaction-wise pretty solidly kick almost all the rest to the curb. My expectations for these guys were sky high.

Now then. We did get some of what I was afraid we wouldn't: elaboration on Doflamingo's relationship with the High Executives, how he met them, what they really are to him. This is pretty interesting. For almost 100 chapters now we've followed Doffy and his strange mixture of cruel and, when it comes to his family, caring. Even now it's hard to pinpoint just what his family is to him. He wants to feel like the all-powerful family head he believes himself fated and entitled to be. He wants his family to obey him absolutely, even die for him, and in return he is protective and fair. But the 4 original executives hold a special place amongst all this. According to Trebol the true family are the five of them. We know since before they're Doffy's true core crew, the ones who really know him. They even believe themselves to be the ones that turned him into what he is today and what he'll be in the future. But then Law raises the question of whether even that is true. Maybe as Doflamingo grew into maturity, or maybe even from the start, they were puppets to him, albeit puppets he sincerely cared for and shared more of his real self with than anyone else. I don't know the answer. But I do know that the fact that I'm even pondering something like this is a testament to the quality of these antagonists. This kind of thing wouldn't even be a question with any past group of villains. They were effective in their villainy, sometimes very effective, but mostly one-note. Comparatively, Doflamingo and his family display so much more diversity, complexity and humanity in their characters and relationships with one another that they completely steal the show in this arc even in spite of the often shoddy execution.

Luffy and Doffy's little skirmish was good fun. It's a bit annoying that it was the what… 5th "little skirmish" this arc to be swiftly broken up by some plot thing Oda really wanted to do. But it was the best and longest one so far and definitely shed the most light on their abilities relative each other.

I'm on the more "negative" side when it comes to Dress Rosa, I suppose. But what that means for me is that an arc which should've been a 10/10 and had all the potential in the world to be so has only managed to be an 8/10 because of a lot of unfortunate problems and bad decisions. I've been harshly critical of Oda from time to time but it's simply because I've come to expect so much from the quality of his past work. Much and more on Dress Rosa tells me Oda's creativity and penchant for engaging and entertaining drama hasn't remotely run dry, but his execution has slipped so much when I compare it to how well-told and focused of a story Skypiea was, or how Arabasta is an expertly executed classic Shounen romp, or just how much we felt for our beloved main characters in the CP9 saga. The bloated narrative is the chief problem here. It seems to me that it's the source of most other problems. The jumping around so much, the lack of focus, the extensive filler-like run-from-place-to-place, some characters doing practically nothing but hanging around… it's all a result of the narrative having more characters and subplots than it has the panel time to adequately deal with.

But I also think, with absolute sincerity, and I don't really know how controversial this is around here, that a lot of the characters here simply aren't very good ones by OP standards. The entire Riku family and the dwarves are my chief culprits. They have little personality, have generic backstories and bland objectives. Maybe people like Pell, Chaka and Cobra, or the Shandian chief and Conis, weren't all that much more colorful. At least Gan Fall could facefault and Cobra could goof off. But in any case characters like this took up much, much less panel time. Oda focused almost entirely on what was most important: the Straw Hats and Vivi battling Baroque Works. On Dress Rosa these supporting characters have taken up colossal amounts of panel time. A lot of people seem to blame the Colosseum fighters, and while I admit the Colosseum did the least for the plot, and would probably be the first thing to cut from a cold hard logical perspective, I would never want it gone because its characters were colorful. They are packed to the brim with personality, variety and OP's trademark mixture of badass and quirky. This makes them easily engaging to me because these are some of One Piece's strengths as a series. I'm more interested in Sai due to his colorful personality and stylish… style... than I am in Kyros despite the latter's page up and page down of sad backstory and save-the-kingdom/save-my-daughter plot. From the kids on PH, to the Riku family's story here, I'm concerned that Oda seems to think that simply making something sad is enough for it to be engaging. So much time has been spent on these two groups of characters and to me, at least, it's just not paying off proportionally by a country mile. Oda's done more with less before.

Senõr Pink's simple little backstory worked so much better to me than all of the Riku family's combined. It's not that it was better in concept, per se, but it was better in execution and involved such an incredibly likeable, colorful character. We see how incredibly well Law's flashback worked and it owes that in large part to its wonderful characters. This, that a large portion of the cast is just not very likeable, is one of the arc's biggest flaws for me that can't be entirely pinned on the bloated narrative. Oda most definitely spent as much time as was justified on the Riku family and dwarves but they're still not doing anything for me. Part of it is the lack of focus, but if the characters were truly interesting I imagine I would have felt more like I do about the Donquixote family – great in concept, but I wish I'd seen more. Instead I just feel... meh. At best it's just "OK". And it's just not up to Oda standards, judging by his past work, to spend so much time on something only for it to be OK at best.

Anyway, not sure if this belonged here... but the faults of Dress Rosa was brought up and I thought I'd try to explain some of what I feel has been lacking. I honestly don't feel I'm being unjustifiably negative. I think this arc just had so much more potential and it's been harmed a lot by its execution.

@King:

Impel Down had a resolution though, regardless of Ace's fate. That's the point.

Finding out who shot Iceburg and Robin's involvement in that incident didn't really resolve anything, it just raised more questions and plot points (that were solved at Enies Lobby).

Water Seven had more or less as much of a resolution as Impel Down. It resolved internal plots but left the resolution of overarching ones for later. In both cases the main plot running through both is simply transferred to the next area. It's about saving Robin - it's about saving Ace. Impel Down's internal plot was simply to get through all its traps and obstacles to save Ace. Water 7's internal plot was to find out what Robin was up to and get her back. In both cases Luffy failed and had to move on to a new location with some new allies on his side. The only difference is that Impel Down had different people under the WG trying to stop Luffy. Otherwise the main character, his objective and (nearly) his allies all carried over and it's still the WG as the main villain. There was no "internal main plot", for the lack of a better term, of Impel Down such as the giants' fight in Little Garden, or Caesar's experiments on Punk Hazard. It was the same exact plot as Marineford - save Ace from WG - in a different location. The antagonist is the same entity, merely wearing a different face. So the only real difference between ID and W7 is that between ID and MF all the individuals among the antagonists were replaced by others (while still coming from the same overall entity) while from W7 to EL some new individuals among the antagonists were added (while still coming from the same overall entity). That can not possibly be the deciding factor as to whether one is a real arc and the other is somehow not. I understand the notion that Magellan was the antagonist and he was defeated in that he failed to stop the prison break, but he's merely one limb of the body of the main antagonist of the save Ace plot, the World Government.

And Water 7 did resolve its own internal plot points, much like ID. It resolved the friction between the Straw Hats, Iceberg/Galley-La and the whole city. Solved the attempted murder mystery. It answered what Robin was up to and got rid of the SHs' doubts. It set them free from the chains that had bound them so they could next move on and save their friend. These were all internal parts of W7 much like Mr. 2's resolve and actions and escaping Magellan were internal parts of Impel Down. But neither arc resolved any overarching plot points. They wouldn't, because they're both set-up arcs for the climax and post-fighting calm that will eventually resolve them.

It's helpful to look toward Amazon Lily to clarify the distinction. AL did have its own internal main plot, which was cleanly resolved and progressed us a step further in the saga's plot. Both arcs and sagas have main plots, but sometimes the main plot of the saga is put aside for an arc to have its own main plot. Little Garden is an example, Drum is another. So too with AL and PH but not with Impel Down, Water 7 and Whiskey Peak (last one being the most arguable). For me that makes the latter three set-up arcs. Their purpose is to set up the coming arc, but they are still arcs of their own. When you make the argument about vital plot points not being resolved, this is basically the core of that. An internal main plot will always be resolved. That in a sense is what a story arc is. But some "arcs" don't have internal main plots; the main plot of the overarching saga is inserted as their main plot directly. ID and W7 are both such arcs. The same exact plot ran through them, merely changing locations because Luffy failed to get the job done in the first location. Either that should mean that neither is an arc of their own, or both ought to be considered set-up arcs.

Couldn't you say the same thing about Whiskey Peak? Some time into the arc the goal became "help Vivi take her kingdom back". This wasn't resolved until Arabasta. There was never any real main plot because the crew just got onto the island, partied and napped, and once Zoro began fighting the bounty hunters it wasn't long before the real main plot was revealed. So it's much the same as finding out partway into Water 7 that the real goal is to get Robin back. Some plot elements were resolved in Water 7, namely the Straw Hats finding the real assassins and clearing their own names and beef with Iceburg. But the main wasn't until later. Just the same, in Whiskey Peak, Zoro did beat up the bounty hunters and prevented them from killing the crew but the resolution to the real plot never happened until Arabasta.

I've never seen anyone say Whiskey Peak isn't an arc, though.

Here's a different way of viewing it. I actually think One Piece arcs can be broadly split into three categories: main arcs, set-up arcs and side arcs. Main arcs either have an isolated, self-contained story to them or are the main arc - the part where the boss is fought, the conflict resolved, you get the drill - of an overarching story containing multiple arcs. Your main arcs would be every arc in East Blue - although it could be argued to be an entire saga - Arabasta, Skypiea, Enies Lobby, Thriller Bark, Marineford, Fishman Island and Dress Rosa. Set-up arcs are arcs that build up toward the main arcs; introducing villains, foreshadowing conflicts, setting up pieces, fighting parts of the villain's organization without fighting the boss themselves, and so on. Side arcs are arcs which are chronologically between arcs that relate to one another but has a self-contained plot for itself. Very short arcs, like Loguetown, should probably also fall under here. The kicker is that nearly every non-main arc is a combination of a side arc and a set-up arc. Take Punk Hazard. Every villain answered to Doflamingo, were a member of his organization, his business, his operations. But with the main villain, Caesar, he was also the antagonist of a story of his own, with the kids and other experiments. This would be the side story aspect, and it's about 50/50 with the Doflamingo set-up stuff. Most arcs are this way but the ratio changes. Davy Back arc was 90% sidestory, then 10% set-up with Aokiji at the end. ID had some small subplots of his own, but it was 90% save-Ace-from-WG. There are probably only two exceptions. With W7/EL, W7 is virtually pure set-up. Drum Island is the opposite end of the spectrum where the main plot was completely cut loose from the vs. Baroque Works plot. You still had some common themes but the plot was independent.

I always thought that with One Piece "arc" is practically synonymous with island. Each island the Straw Hats go to is an arc in and of itself. It can be huge in scope and length, like Skypiea or Dress Rosa, or it can be a five-chapter deal. Maybe the more appropriate term for some of them would be mini-arc. A "saga" is an overarching structure that contains multiple arcs, and usually has a pretty definitive ending whereafter the SHs move on to entirely new things. As far as I know this is how things are generally categorized, even officially. This doesn't necessarily correspond to the "story arc" definition, but you have to keep in mind that we're not operating with absolutes here. Oda is pretty leisurely in how much he lets things from one island spill over into another and how much of the "main plot" of a saga any arc deals with - for example, WP was pretty strictly main plot, Little Garden less so, Drum almost none at all, then Arabasta goes back to 100%. It's easily arguable whether PH-DR constitutes one or two story arcs, depending on the perspective chosen. W7-EL is definitely one overarching story arc, but at the same time, W7 also has distinctive elements to it. Even more connected than W7 and EL are Impel Down and Marineford - the goal remains the exact same the entire way, save Ace from the WG, it's merely the stage that changes - but those are seldom considered a single arc.

I wonder, though, if this distinction will break down after Dress Rosa. So many things that will happen after Dress Rosa have already been foreshadowed and even directly dealt with. Luffy talking with Big Mom, Jinbe going to her, Sanji & CO confronting her or some of her crew and Kid being in conflict with her has already lain down the threads that will lead to her. The threads from the SMILE business lead directly to Kaidou. All of this has been set up during the two full story arcs since the timeskip, Fishman Island and Punk Hazard-Dress Rosa. Oda has never structured his story this way before. The Doflamingo portion of the story is as lengthy and fleshed out as any of the 4 sagas before it but it isn't going to have an ending whereafter we move on to brand new adventures. Rather we just stay on the path toward what's already been quite heavily set up, foreshadowed and indeed even started to happen already, what with half the crew already fighting Big Mom's pirates.

Perhaps we should describe this as a "supersaga", which itself has individual arcs and sagas contained in it, namely the FI arc, PH arc and DR arc, of which PH-DR constitute a "normal" saga. Or maybe the entire New World is going to be a "supersaga".

Aside from semantics, it's at any rate interesting to note how different Oda's story structure is here and I'm very curious as to whether this is something that will continue and make part II of One Piece read quite drastically different from part 1.

@Speeddasher01:

Out of all the big arcs in One Piece, The Dressrosa Arc is officially the worst. I seriously don't understand how it got to this point. The arc started out pretty epic with the Coliseum (yes, I actually liked that part), Fujitora bringing down meteors, Don Chinjao, and Doflamingo doing his thing. Then we have quite a few chapters dedicated to storming the palace/freeing the captive toys. Not the most interesting, but it was decent build up. No, the biggest problem I have with this arc is the Donquixote Family. They are some of the biggest jokes I have ever seen in One Piece. Out of all the members there, the only members I would say are impressive are Dolfamingo himself, Vergo (not in this arc technically, but still, full-body armament haki), Senor Pink, who is my personal favorite (come on, you gotta love this dude), Gladius (honestly, he had the best fight so far in this arc), and to some extent Pica (only really for his ability to become essentially a moving mountain). Everyone else, terrible. Buffalo is worthless, Baby 5 has a cool power and not much else, Jora is a complete joke (this girl got taken out by Leo, a Tontatta), Sugar is pretty much just a plot device, Machvise is just terrible (pretty much his whole fighting style is just belly flopping on people), Dellinger is meh, Lao G is meh, Monet was alright I guess, but nothing special, Diamante was beyond disappointing, and Trebol is looking pretty mediocre right now as well.
Why is Fujitora even here? He's literally done nothing ever since he stopped fighting Sabo (which should've continued, as it's a fight everyone wanted to see, plus it would've given Fujitora an actual purpose in this arc). All I can say it that there better be a good reason as to why he absolutely refuses to fight Doflamingo.
And now with this latest chapter, it looks like me might be getting Luffy vs. a wounded Doflamingo. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? This had better not be the case, cause this fight is literally the only thing I'm looking forward to in this arc right now.
Sorry for that, I just really had to vent after this chapter. It's not even like there's nothing good in this arc, or that it's a bad arc. Infact, there's plenty of great moments in it (Law's flashback was amazing). Maybe I've just been spoiled with the previous big arcs, but I would just really hate if this is the new standard for One Piece. Out of all the long running shonen series, One Piece is by far my favorite, and I look forward to reading it for years to come. So please Oda, let this final fight be epic. I want a fight that will put Luffy vs. Rob Lucci to shame.
Also, Kaidou's crew had better be BEASTLY!

It's funny how much opinions can differ.

For me the Donquixote family is the overwhelmingly greatest saving grace of this whole arc and, by far, far, far away the best full cast of antagonists this series has ever had. For me the difference in quality between the Donquixote family and DD himself, and much of the rest of the arc is so great that it teeters on approaching Mass Effect 3 levels.

While yes, they haven't all been treated with equal levels of dignity, they are still so much more fleshed out, diverse, interesting and humanized than any other previous antagonist group. That applies both to personality, power and relationships with each other and with their captain. That's despite there also being more of them than in any other previous group and in spite of the seven zillion characters taking up space in the arc. Although I do have my misgivings about how several of their fights were handled, the fact that they're still the highest quality antagonists we've ever seen by a long shot underlines just how good Oda did creating this bunch of misfits. This is the first One Piece arc where I can say without a shred of a doubt that the villains were by far the best and most memorable thing about it.

@Daz:

Thats true. But If Laws move truly destroys your organs instantly, then the only way to recover is to immediately get new organs. Which I guess leads us to your suggestion that Doffy is getting by on cloth-based organs, which …would be borderline Mayuri level hax.

Yeah, I doubt Doflamingo is creating new fully functional organs. That doesn't really add up with his powers while "stitching" the wounds at least makes sense on a conceptual level. I had the impression that Law's technique damaged him internally, gradually but fairly quickly (since Law was so confident that Doflamingo would die, I have to imagine that the effect doesn't take long to reach its full potential) and Doflamingo is countering it by stitching them together, providing a makeshift solution that can at least keep him going.

What herpdat wrote in his excellent analysis of the underlying points of the Doflamingo, Law, Luffy relationship really rings true in this chapter.

As Doflamingo lies on the ground and Law stands above him, they both note how someone like Rocinante was too good of a person to actually "pull the trigger", but that Law himself is capable of doing so. Doflamingo states that Law is just like himself and Law agrees and states that he's fine with that. But he earlier stated that he will never become someone like Doflamingo and that Rocinante saved him from that fate. Clearly, it's not really "fine" if Law is just like Doflamingo. But, enraged by Doffy's comments on Corazon, he attacks him in anger and attempts to extinguish his life.

But Law's chance to kill his nemesis is ripped out from under him. Instead of the success he thought he finally had he is met with failure. And for the first time he seems to truly give up, covering his eyes and repeatedly exclaiming his anger and grief at his failure as he can't even move to escape the foot ominously approaching to end his life by stamping out his brains.

But instead of his life ending there and then Luffy, his newfound ally, friend and fellow D clan, with his good-natured personality, steps in. Law's burden is passed to Luffy who takes it upon his own back and in it becomes a bit like a new Corazon to him, helping him carry a weight he couldn't carry on his own and steering him away from a darker path. Law wasn't allowed to personally execute Doflamingo because in his drive for revenge he teetered so close to becoming what he didn't want to become. Through his genuine friendship with Luffy we instead see camaraderie and humanity overcoming the evil of Doflamingo. In a way it's similar to how Kyros didn't allow Rebecca to fight, though, in my opinion, much less hamfisted than that, and more appreciably (light) grey due to Luffy and Law being, after all, genuine pirates.

As such Luffy helping Law defeat Doflamingo takes on more of a meaning than the apparent face-value of how it "requires two Supernovas to beat him" or how "Luffy repays his debt from Marineford". While those may also be true, seen in light of the above (fully credited to herpdat) it can help you really appreciate how Oda has woven the stories of the two together and what Law's struggle from 13 years ago all the way to the present time is about (since a lot of people seem to have become a bit jaded with him these days, I think it's a good time to highlight his qualities as a character).