@Gear-4-Sauce

While I can understand these “meta-level” arguments for why X or Y things weren’t interrogated/got reacted to by a character, they don’t really change how the end result feels to read. Writing isn’t based on a quota system where if a character got (X) level of exposure previously the character has used up their ““points”” and the reader shouldn’t expect them to behave/react as previously. By this rationale it would be totally permissible if Usopp got absolutely nada exposure at Elbaf as long as he’d gotten a subplot of [Z] page length within [Y] chapters of Elbaf.

You can’t use meta-level parameters to calculate your way out of when it’s appropriate for characters to react in a way that reflect their previous characterization. So yeah in terms of Sanji and the Wano famine, Sanji had stuff to do in the prior arc, but there is literally no other character in the entire series with a stronger emotional link to the concept of famine in the series, and when this subject appears on the largest possible scale – Nationwide famine enforced by the villains! – this seems like a no-brainer to expect Sanji to react to. Again, I refuse to believe that if, around chapter 600 or whatever, someone had asked “hypothetically, If the crew visited an island with a countrywide famine enforced by the evil villain, do you think this would somehow be linked to Sanji?” the response would’ve been “Nah, if Luffy is angry about it we shouldn’t expect more”.

And no the fact that Sanji gets mad about food wasting when he is feeding the supposedly regime-loyalist capital, literally the only place in the nation unaffected by the famine, is not an adequate substitute; character writing isn’t making ticks on a clipboard of “We had Sanji involved in [Food related subplot]? That’s the quota met, no space for him reacting to [literal highest possible escalation of a food conflict subplot]”. For petes sake, theres more time allotted to Sanji reacting to bad Skyepan marinade than to the nationwide Wano famine, is it not possible to concede that its fair for people to find this odd? Regardless of whether or not Pageone knocked over a bowl of noodles at the capital soba stand?

These character-specific quirks and reactions are part of the bedrock of the series, of what made the characters endearing to begin with. And said traits can be iterated upon in new, fun ways to provide surprising outcomes, similarly to how Bender from Futurama can have the first dozen jokes about him being childishly callous. Oda once spent several panels to convey Zoro not being able to find his way South despite hanging out with a Southbird, including a whole precious page purely for a good joke about just how lost Zoro was, is this “wasteful” or “unneeded” or whatever? Since we’ve revisited Zoros poor sense of direction multiple times over the course of the series?
If we can get a horndog reaction from Sanji each and every time he spots someone without an Y chromosome, why can't he have more of a reaction when the subject of "starvation" appears every once in a blue moon?

And even if you find something like Luffys trait of absolutely not having when people mistreat their crewmates “repetitive” because it gets play several times in the series, it also makes him a strongly defined consistent character. It helps making Luffy feel like Luffy when you have an idea how he’d react to things, and he then delivers, as opposed to if they came across a crewmate-abusing villain and Luffy didn’t give a shit.

I mean, this chapter we get Nami having an angry reaction on Robins behalf due to York evoking the destruction of Ohara, and it’s a neat little character moment that people responded positively to and which builds on pre-established bonds and traits, showcasing the empathy and morality of the characters in a way that frames Nami as more righteous than the villainous York
But when the question is raised of of the Crew, with their history of objecting to child endangerment, unethical experimentation and robbing of free will, not having any sort reaction to the Seraphim suddenly oh no theres no time for that that isn’t necessary, that would just get in the way, we can surmise it ourselves between the lines it just isn’t possible in any way whatsoever to have included and also its not something we should care about to begin with? Come on.
No one is complaining that we get to see Luffy and Usopp excited about Elbaf again, or that we saw a humorous beat of Franky surprising Vegapunk by saying the Sunny is cola powered, but those beats are supremely redundant, cuttable, predictable, "unnecessary". Yet I fully suspect that if Luffy and Usopp had had no reaction at all to learning Elbaf was the next destination, the arguments would have been “We already know they’re excited, we Didn’t Need to see, Just No time for them to react” etc.

And this argument is just so incredibly generic and all purpose, you can slot it into any scenario, any discussion of something getting glossed over that should be a bigger deal to the characters. Until recently the all-purpose criticism dismissal was always that we should “wait and see” – wait for the Minks to get more exposure in Wano, wait for Kaidous Flashback, wait for Franky to shine at Egghead wait for Usopp to shine at Elbaf, but now the argument seems to be “we didn’t need to see that” if some element is depicted as lacking.
You could have the crew go to No Cartography, Orphans or Tangerines Allowed island, and if someone stated that it was weird that Nami had nothing to do and no real reaction to anything you could wheel out this argument; “Nami got X amount of paneltime in the preceding arc, you shouldn’t expect her to be a fixture of the No Cartography Orphans or Tangerines arc. It’s enough that Sanji was mad about Tangerines being absent. We know she likes children, we didn’t need to see it again”.

And like if you personally don’t care about seeing pre-established character traits enforced on-panel, of Luffy and Usopp excited about Elbaf again, or seeing Chopper get mad at multiple mad scientists, or about seeing Sanji take a stand against starvation or Nami against child endangerment more than “necessary”, that’s fine, but the story is explicitly engineered to get readers to care about such things, and so its fair for people to point out if their absence is felt.

If Oda will play the card of having Straw Hat characters reacting to the endangerment of children, or cloning, treating others purely as battle assets, robbing someone of free will etc then expecting actual on-panel followthrough on this regarding the seraphim is not some absurd notion, some unrealistic expectation to have. When Mr 3 meets Crocodile again at impel down he reacts in a way that reflects their prior relationship, but when the crew, with their entire backlog of personal principles and moral stances and reactions meet the seraphim people are unreasonable for expecting any sort of reaction or interrogation? Not even a tiny little bit?

Sigh.

I really disliked this chapter. It’s emblematic of a whole host of the things that bother me most in latter-stage OP storytelling. Parsing it is taking up considerable mental real estate for me, so why not dump it all here as a point-by-point numbered list.

1: Retroactive Tragedy Reduction: First things first, the reveals of this chapter massively reframes the scale of tragedy of the Robin Flashback. Interpretation is subjective, and I know that these reveals are expected/unsurprising to some, but to me the tragedy of Robins flashback was about how everything was stripped from her, how the entire legacy of Ohara end up contained within this one poor child. The scholars desperately try to save their research materials, but the materials are still discovered by the WG after the raid. Regardless of whether or not Saul is frozen with a move called “capsule” at the end the process is still visually indistinguishable from the previously established Quite Quickly Lethal Ice Time move, and Sauls final words is for Robin to find new friends since, you know, he won’t be around. Cue him going out with a laugh, D style. ”Returning things Robin thought she’d lost” by revealing that neither the research nor Saul were gone reduces the tragedy of the flashback, unless you wanna go full “Pells sacrifice still has weight in retrospect because he thought he’d die at the time."

Furthermore, in keeping Saul and the research alive…

2. Reframing Robin in the present: This might just be me, but for a longas time I viewed Robin as this pretty unique and singular factor in the series; the only one who could discover the Ancient Past, the Only one actively working to uncover said Ancient Past. Skills and goals that in turn made her a massive target, and in turn isolated, hunted and friendless. But as the series goes on, it turns out theres quite a few people sympathetic to Robins cause, including the Worlds Most Dangerous Man and his army of revolutionaries, as well as the Worlds Most Brilliant Man. And hey, Saul too is alive as well- good on Robin for finding some new friends as well in the time before a literal army sympathetic to her plight found her , and also her old friend is still alive too, nice.

The avenues for discovering Ancient History also keeps expanding, as does people with extensive knowledge of it, eclipsing even Robins. In the case of one giant Elephant, it even lived during the Ancient History! I know both these Things aren’t new, theres Precedence etc, but this chapter is just so emblematic of it, and leads to a separate issue:

3. Thrilling adventures in exposition! Again this might just be me, but way back when I thought the conceit of Robins character would be that we’d gradually piece the Ancient History Mystery together along with her, as the story progressed and she did Adventurous Archeology. And to an extent, we are learning of the Ancient History through her, but now it’s through more knowledgeable, senior characters telling Robin these things up front. It’s not so much about Robin uncovering these things, it’s about Robin being an excuse for other characters to exposit about it, because she’s the only one with the correct frame of reference. What started as this huge unknown void left for Robin alone to fill is now becoming other characters handing over their notes on the subject, pointing Robin in the right direction and going “you might find the very last puzzle piece kiddo, or at least appreciate the completed puzzle in a new way”. This is again an issue going back to the gang chillin’ at RayRays 560 chapters ago, and much like that chapter, a further problem I have with the Exposition here is…

4. It’s just so friggin boring to look at. Regardless of what the characters are talking about, regardless of the occasional insert shot of Robin looking sad/happy, I just have a really hard time finding this comic book chapter compelling when so much of it is a bunch of characters talking back and forth in a hallway. Half the characters literally can’t move, the other is devoid of personality and incapable of expressing emotion due to a Daft Punk reference (and possible Reveal Concealer). The insert flashback is mostly a conversation between a guy with a permanent scowl, and a guy almost incapable of expressing emotion due to a giant Einstein reference. Though at least they both stand up and sit down. The most dynamic panels in the first 13 pages are the ones quickly recapping a 670 chapter old flashback.

5. Selective Incompetence: Those books did turn out to be pretty important after all huh? Pretty wild that when sent on a mission to eradicate Ohara and its researchers for the crime of doing forbidden research, and you find a whole bunch of research materials the scholars were evidently very keen on saving, you just shrug and go “eh whatever, probably unimportant”. And then despite Ohara being branded highly evil enemies of the world you just, idunno, let the island and the leftover books be completely free of surveillance or barriers, allowing symphatizers to make it a memorial site and salvage the scholars belongings a few months later? Cool cool. I’d say the WG being incompetent is at least in character, but then again these are also the same guys who can learn of the illicit Oharan research in the first place, or Roger having a son, or the Pluton blueprints and so on. More like the WG is exactly as competent as it needs to be for the Current Plot Development to happen.

6. Interconnectedness and the shrinking of worlds: Also helping the plot expediation along is the increasingly elaborate Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon’ing of the Opverse. Like we need to have an excuse for why Vegapunk and also Dragon are invested in Ohara, so we get a retroactive rejiggering of Clovers character – 670 chapters ago he was just a kindly head of research, but now we need a reason for why Dragon would know such a guy I guess so now he’s also a rogueish adventurer who hunted the world for Lost Century Knowledge and amassed an army of followers! Which is a wrinkle that drastically reframes the whole Oharan research effort; instead of it being a generational effort of the entire culture it now becomes extremely Clover centric – there may have been research before, but he – this guy that Clover and Vegapunk knew – was the one that REALLY got Ohara going, which moves the needle from “WG discovers that the respected research institution of Ohara is doing forbidden work” to “Rogue and 10-times jailed Void Century enthusiast Clover and his group of personal followers were doing Void Century research? Yeah that tracks, wonder why it took us so long to look into that.”

The more details we get the more issues and inplications are raised, and on a personal level I’m just so exhausted by the amount of connections between various disparate characters/plotthreads, connections the story need to relegate time to address or awkwardly ignore. Going into a new island some of the new characters might have connections to pre-existing things, but here Vegapunk is juggling:

Being the friend of Clover and an Ohara sympathizer and also a friend/sympathizer to Dragon despite being the head of the WG super-science division, by Dragon also acquainted with Kuma whom was used as the basis of the pacifista lineup thus also making him acquainted to Bonney, this being a different pacifista project than the one that produced a super-soldier child clone of a SH pirate member the crew fought five minutes ago (we’ve moved on though, will probably get back to that shortly)

(inhales)

Vegapunk was also a former criminal as part of the MADS gang which included former antagonist and drugger of SH-befriending PH children currently getting de-giantification treatment Caesar Clown, as well as super scientist asshole father of SH Sanji, and also Vegapunk made the experimental DF of the SH’s good personal friend Momonosuke based off of preceding arc antagonist/Emperor Kaidou and has his hands in all sorts of other research projects, such as giantification…

I realize this is Endgame One Piece Babyyy but it’s just so much, and it makes the world feel small, inorganic and convenient to me; Like theres a singular panel of 5 different Straw Hats having 5 different parallel crumb-sized reactions to different parts of Vegapunks whole bombshell spiel. Theres just so much going on, but no time for anything more organic.

7. Clueless Best Friends: Lastly, the subject of the supposed depth of friendship in the SH pirates have been discussed several times here. Mostly it is what it is; OP is a series where you have to buy that the Crew will put their lives on the line for each other, despite the story showing making little time for deep moments showcasing bonding or deeper affection/understanding between them. And so in the CP9 arc, where Robins past/goal was this whole curse that prevented her from forging any connections, the story had the Crew go “We don’t know or care about Robins past, but like her regardless” as opposed to the more powerful “we know Robins past, but like her regardless”. It is what it is. But the problem with that former approach is that when you get a situation like this some 670 chapters later where Robins past/goals are explicitly brought up, the crews reactions make them seem clueless at best, insensitive at worst. You’ve got this new character whom Robin has never met before moving her to tears of happiness because he provides catharsis rooted in knowledge of Robins past and goals, while her supposed best friends go “DURH, WHY YOU MAKE ROBIN CRY YOU BAD MAN” to the side.

And on top of that, for three of the 4 other crewmembers, the reaction to the discussion of Robin/Oharas past is, the past that hounded Robin and made her friendless until she met the SH’s is…to freak out, to want no part of it. Oof. Beyond “Oh noooo the government is gonna get mad and target usss” being pretty outdated at this point, I’d just be so bummed out if I was Robin, and this was what I got out of my “accept me for who I am” friends. Like I know the two moments are displaced by real time and narrative YEARS, but can you picture this reaction playing during the Enies Lobby Raid? Like, this reaction while the crew are standing defiant before the tower of Justice? I certainly can’t, and it makes the bond between the crew seem puddle deep.

So yeah. I didn’t like this. I can understand why others might. But regardless of whether or not the current reveals “make sense” or could be expected”, I just can’t with the current OP trend of dragging past seemingly clear-cut things out in the present and retroactively reframing them, certainly not when it seems like it’s mostly for the benefit of efficiently propelling the plot forwards and managing its increasingly tangled Plotline Web.

Aaaaand I'm back! What a shiny new site, looking good. I've missed having an actual forum around, as opposed to commenting on articles on various sites where discussions have a shelf like of like, a few hours tops.

Now, to try and restrain myself so that I won't spend too much time on pent-up critical analysis.

I'm still kinda shocked how cavalier the straw hats are being about the fact that Vegapunk grew programmable child soldier superweapons of some of their major allies in vats without any sort of consent.

Like, Jinbes whole deal - to say nothing of the crew at large- is being staunchly anti-slavery, you'd think there'd be some objections to these completely free-will defunct creatures; Vegapunk has literally grown his own fishman who has to do whatever high ranking WG officials tells him to and whose sole function is to be a battle asset! The sole wrinkle giving the Seraphim any sort of agency is a complete genetic fluke, and Jinbe laughs at it, please don't give me any "We'll probably get more reactions to the seraphim later" nonsense, we somehow managed to segue from the crew fighting a child Jinbe clone to getting Giant Robot exposition with no one in the crew batting an eye

Even should a "proper" Kaidou flashback manifest, or a "Rocks in general" flashback featuring a slight Kaidou subplot, the ship has still pretty much sailed vis a vis the big emotional culmination of Wano, and using a flashback to develop Kaidou/his motivations as a villain and enhance the culmination of Wano. Even if we get new info down the line, you can't retroactively recalibrate emotional catharsis into an arc which should be able to stand on its own without gesturing at future promises of resolution.
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In general I think the increased "mysteryfication" and kicking of resolution-cans down the line is the biggest shortcoming of current One Piece, even if I get it from an authorial perspective in how it can help streamline/structure a massive story and facilitate reader retention. Though this means you lose out on the full catharsis of the arcs along the way (something that used to be a core strength of OP) because key puzzle pieces are being witheld or resolutions postponed for later, which is something you doubly feel for an arc like Wano, a 150 chapter behemoth which was poised as the culmination of a saga started all the way back at the beginning of the new world.

@zeltrax225 said in My Hero Academia II - A true Hero:

Well uh, hey, at least personally I'm glad I wasn't wrong about her character and what she represents. She doesn't belong with humanity and Horikoshi knows that it's better to kill her off than to tackle what is essentially a difficult subject.

Dude, the manga is near 100% unambiguous that Togas fate is an result of societal failure and villainization which could've been avoided had she had an Ochako in her life earlier hence this being a tragedy, I know you're commited to your stance but how is this your takeaway

Like yeah to a certain extent Toga dying is an easy way out, but its very clear that society going unchanged and producing yet more Togas would be very bad. Togas fate was clearly not an "sucks but whaddayagonna do some people are just psychos" inevetability

Egghead has been possibly the weirdest arc of all for me to read. With Wano, compromised as it may be, you were critizising how it fell short in the execution of a relatively straightforward plot. There was a story there. But after the lumbering beast that was Wano, I was hopeful for a smaller story with some breathing room, not beholden to a gazillion plotthreads and to the establishment of Lore. If Wanno was a subpar story buffet, I was ready for a more limited but well-prepared story meal.

Instead, I feel like I've gotten a hyper-compressed story protein bar with a massive bowl of sugary Loreflakes to go with it. And that's before we even start on the utterly dismal state of the Straw Hat pirates as featured characters. I can't even really get mad at Egghead for bungling the execution of its story beats, because said story beats barely feel like a priority. The priority seems to be to deliver pure unfiltered information, and then the storytelling happens around the margins of that. Theres no time for much beyond exposition; you'll still get the occasional character moment or joke, but they're like crammed into speechbubbles of panels that have like five other things going on at the same time.
Theres no time for anything really to build or sit, it's constantly on to the next thing - Vegapunk cloned Jinbe and made him fight the crew?? No time to process this, let's talk Ohara! Now theres a robot! Hi Sentomaru! Bye Sentomaru! In the most recent chapter we get a conga-line of instant status updates and reversals; " Surprise, we're at Sphinx! Surprise, Weevil and Bakkin is at Sphinx, defending it, despite being villanous earlier! Marcoh is grateful to them, with nary a mention of their past WB pirate massacring! Also surprise, Weevil got captured offscreen by a secondary Marine force! Speaking of Weevils heritage..."

And it's like, I barely care about Weevil and Bakkin to begin with. At least theres some blips of character to them, though it again doesn't get much room to breathe- like the idea of Bakkin as a "freeloader" is amusing, but not much is really done with it yet.

Beyond that, I feel like Oda is skimping on the fun personality quirks and character interactions, something that used to be his absolute force.
Vegapunk Sr is surprisingly bland and doesn't even grapple with the insane amount of things he's involved with in an entertaining way; the one time he popped for me was when he lamented the color of Momos fruit, otherwise it feels like he should be way zanier than he is.
The idea of him splitting his characteristics into 6 seperate entities is great, but the sattelites feel insanely undercooked as a concept to me. With them being condensed beings of "wrath" or "evil" or "wisdom" you'd expect them to be hyper-exaggerated caricatures, but they barely register; Liliths "evil" extend to being kinda brash, shouty and greedy, but not in a particularly remarkable way. Pythagoras and edison are kind of hart to sort apart and Shaka is a total bore. York and Atlas kind of have some spark to them, but overall the sattelites simply aren't doing enough to grab my attention. If this was pre-skip one piece there'd be almost a full chapter of them having fun interplay with each other, but this feels sorely missing.
And then you have Stussy who's big reveals I can barely muster any will to care about because Stussy is just so insanely unremarkable a character.

Idunno everything just feels so...surface. Like Oda is blitzing through almost anything that isn't directly forwarding the plot, including the core storytelling to get us emotionally invested. Like, Egghead supposedly has hundreds-maybe thousands?- of people living there as research assistants, and yet it probably feels the most hollow and artificial out of all of Odas settings. Like a videogame backdrop.

Sigh. Idunno. Maybe I'm being too harsh. But I just reread chapter 244, where Usopp Sanji, Luffy and Conis walk through angel island, and the difference in storytelling is massive.

Beyond the lack of reaction to Kaidous defeat, I was confounded that the "You have the blood of an Oni! The Samurai will hate you!" angle never got more play. Like, Wano closes with a photo of Yamato hanging out with the other retainers like they're pals...but we skip completely over the part where the other scabbards come to terms with the literal son of Kaidou wanting to be their friend. With very, very few exceptions I don't think they were even aware of Yamas existence before the group pose?

Yams' relation to the Beast Pirates by the end also felt weirdly undercooked. Despite his utter enforced isolation Yamato managed to make a genuine friend in that one six-legged Numbers guy...who then seems to fall out of the manga. The Beast pirates in general seems to hold Yamato in some esteem, though Yamato doesn't seem to care about them at all (apart from that one time he...briefly defended Onagashima from Ace? For reasons), but then at the end Yamato can use his status to compel the remaining Beast pirates to stand down...and then the remaining beast pirates, and Yamatos relation to them, also seem to fall out of the manga.

Yamato feels like a character cooked up by Oda in a fit of creative passion, like the supernovas, but only here the heat was on to immediately find a narrative use for Yamato, and nothing ever really stuck.

The whole "Korozumi Tama" "Korozumi were born to burn angle remains tremendously unfulfilling to me, a muddled conciet that doesn't amount to any coherent statement or messaging in-story; the idea that hatred might remain to trouble undeserving Tama one day is a powerful message that the HOO RAH WHAT AN AWESOME PUN ending of Wano abso-fucking-lutely does not commit to or reflect any awareness of. Theres probably all sorts of language nuances I'm missing, but I retain that in terms of the most straightforward flow of statement/retort it is in no way apparent that Hiyori is talking about just Orochi, rather than the Korozumi at large. Orochi says that the hatred of the Korozumi, the clan, something bigger than just himself, will live on, going "screw YOU korozumi Orochi, and JUST you" feels inappropriate as a badass retort.
And really, why would Hiyori restrict her response to just him? The notion that "well, she's not talking about cute little Tama of course" makes no sense, because as far as Hiyori knows, theres no Korozumi worth making concessions for. No one knows Tama is a Korozumi, I don't think Hiyori even know Tama exists period.

The whole thing feels like it might have been aiming for a meatier or more complex message early on, but then either got cold feet or forgot about the issue entirely. If the takeaway ultimately is that "this feels like it paints [characters] in a bad way and has disastrous consequences for [innocent, likeable character]" then this should ideally also be evident as intended by the storytelling, rather than "this just feels kinda weird and bad?"

Though I very very much wouldn't object to scenes of the SHs showing an active interest in what each other are doing/have been doing, I can mostly accept that OP is just not the kind of series that allots time for that, and roll with the straw hats as good friends just because. What sometimes break that perspective are the instances where newer SH's show complete ignorance to their crewmates prior adventures -being casual and living in the moment is one thing, but living together for months on end and apparently not having any conversations about things that happened in the past (the quite recent past!) just feels bizarre to me, considering what a close-knit, familial unit they're supposed to be. Like they don't need to sit down and have sould-searching conversations while they look into each others eyes, but it sometimes feel as if questions akin to "so, how did you spend your weekend?" or "what did you do for your summer vacation?" don't exist on the sunny

@Robby Oh I absolutely have nothing against the idea of "diverse younger maybe female Legacy Characters" (though I think its a shame they need to be saddeled with pre-existing monikers rather than carving their own from scratch, but thats just risk-averse businessmaking), I'm more just perplexed that the vibe of this new crop of characters seems so similar, at least to me.

I'm admittedly not up-to-date on the MCU as is, it just feels like if you did a "Young Avengers" style teamup of America Chavez, Tom Holland Spidey, Ms Marvel, Cassie Lang, Ironheart etc. it'd feel a lot more homogenous personality wise than the OG Avengers, where the distinct personalities used to be one of the MCUs main draws (and I'd argue, one of the main reasons the Guardians movies could stand firm as their own successful little thing)

@Shiebs What movie is this?

The lukewarm tracking for the marvels movie reflects my own attitude towards it, in that theres just really nothing about it that grabs me as a "must see". A big part of that is not having a real strong handle on these characters and their personalities, which is a problem when the hook of the movie is them teaming up - thats where you want the fun character dynamics to shine! Like Avengers being Boy Scout meets Broody Angst Man meets Grandiose God meets quippy Snarkster. But as someone who hasn't bought into the MCU TV shows, I know nothing about "Photon" (I think thats what she's called?) except that she exists, and don't feel the trailers sell her as particularly distinct. I can suss out Miss Marvels general vibe, but didn't we just have a spunky young sidekick in the Doctor Strange movie? Wasn't MCU Spideys whole thing being a Young MCU fan? And I think Hawkeye and Black Panther has some as well? And as for Capt. Marvel herself, I actually have seen her in a movie but...she really left no impression. Previously the MCU was very good at selling me on particular character archetypes specific vibes, I'm just not really getting that here.

Soul reapers are ghosts but also a seperate species or something, it was very weird

@Nobodyman remember that Isshin was dead for who knows how long before getting a meat suit and fathering children in the mortal realm

Just watched the premiere movie thingy for Tangled: The series and uuuuuuuuh this seems excellent? I mean, I heard this was good, but really god damn strong first impression

@Gear-4-Sauce
Usopps dream is about being brave, Sanjis dream and backstory are both explicitly cooking related, even his second backstory put his desire to be a cook and help others as a pivotal moment, and tried selling him as the epitome of kindness

And to clarify regarding Wano, if you are operating from a "The story could in no way have been written in a way to accomodate Sanji having a larger reaction to the Wano famine than a single-panel scowl also it would be a waste of time anyway" perspective, then any discussion on this subject is pointless. The story could've been written in infinite ways. At its most thuddingly efficient, Oda had a literal mink army get into the "impregnable" Wano and walk around unimpeded because it served the plot, he had Sanji and pals set up a food stand in the heart of enemy territory with no disguises whatsoever because it served the plot.

Fixed the start of the post, the fact that I decided to write Square brackets around X really screwed me over

If your series is all plot and no time for characters to be characters, why should I care any more? If the casts is fully flattened into empty husks with barely any time to express their endearing characteristics because The Plot Must Advance, why should I care about them as before? Usopp hasn't gotten any meaty exposure for literally 1/3rd of the series at this point, I can't disregard this due to sheer momentum, you can't just park the characters with nothing to do for hundreds of chapters and assume I still care as much. It'd be better to leave them behind entirely.

Even the new characters like Vegapunk are simply Things Checked Off A List. Theres no time really to make Vegapunk an actually endearing character with fun quirks and an extravagant personality, certainly not on the same level as before. He's simply here, on panel, expositing a lot, but that doesn't get me invested. I don't really care about Vegapunk. I absolutely get the idea of Oda being tired of the straw hats, its very understandable, but the tradeoff just doesn't deliver.

@Gear-4-Sauce

While I can understand these “meta-level” arguments for why X or Y things weren’t interrogated/got reacted to by a character, they don’t really change how the end result feels to read. Writing isn’t based on a quota system where if a character got (X) level of exposure previously the character has used up their ““points”” and the reader shouldn’t expect them to behave/react as previously. By this rationale it would be totally permissible if Usopp got absolutely nada exposure at Elbaf as long as he’d gotten a subplot of [Z] page length within [Y] chapters of Elbaf.

You can’t use meta-level parameters to calculate your way out of when it’s appropriate for characters to react in a way that reflect their previous characterization. So yeah in terms of Sanji and the Wano famine, Sanji had stuff to do in the prior arc, but there is literally no other character in the entire series with a stronger emotional link to the concept of famine in the series, and when this subject appears on the largest possible scale – Nationwide famine enforced by the villains! – this seems like a no-brainer to expect Sanji to react to. Again, I refuse to believe that if, around chapter 600 or whatever, someone had asked “hypothetically, If the crew visited an island with a countrywide famine enforced by the evil villain, do you think this would somehow be linked to Sanji?” the response would’ve been “Nah, if Luffy is angry about it we shouldn’t expect more”.

And no the fact that Sanji gets mad about food wasting when he is feeding the supposedly regime-loyalist capital, literally the only place in the nation unaffected by the famine, is not an adequate substitute; character writing isn’t making ticks on a clipboard of “We had Sanji involved in [Food related subplot]? That’s the quota met, no space for him reacting to [literal highest possible escalation of a food conflict subplot]”. For petes sake, theres more time allotted to Sanji reacting to bad Skyepan marinade than to the nationwide Wano famine, is it not possible to concede that its fair for people to find this odd? Regardless of whether or not Pageone knocked over a bowl of noodles at the capital soba stand?

These character-specific quirks and reactions are part of the bedrock of the series, of what made the characters endearing to begin with. And said traits can be iterated upon in new, fun ways to provide surprising outcomes, similarly to how Bender from Futurama can have the first dozen jokes about him being childishly callous. Oda once spent several panels to convey Zoro not being able to find his way South despite hanging out with a Southbird, including a whole precious page purely for a good joke about just how lost Zoro was, is this “wasteful” or “unneeded” or whatever? Since we’ve revisited Zoros poor sense of direction multiple times over the course of the series?
If we can get a horndog reaction from Sanji each and every time he spots someone without an Y chromosome, why can't he have more of a reaction when the subject of "starvation" appears every once in a blue moon?

And even if you find something like Luffys trait of absolutely not having when people mistreat their crewmates “repetitive” because it gets play several times in the series, it also makes him a strongly defined consistent character. It helps making Luffy feel like Luffy when you have an idea how he’d react to things, and he then delivers, as opposed to if they came across a crewmate-abusing villain and Luffy didn’t give a shit.

I mean, this chapter we get Nami having an angry reaction on Robins behalf due to York evoking the destruction of Ohara, and it’s a neat little character moment that people responded positively to and which builds on pre-established bonds and traits, showcasing the empathy and morality of the characters in a way that frames Nami as more righteous than the villainous York
But when the question is raised of of the Crew, with their history of objecting to child endangerment, unethical experimentation and robbing of free will, not having any sort reaction to the Seraphim suddenly oh no theres no time for that that isn’t necessary, that would just get in the way, we can surmise it ourselves between the lines it just isn’t possible in any way whatsoever to have included and also its not something we should care about to begin with? Come on.
No one is complaining that we get to see Luffy and Usopp excited about Elbaf again, or that we saw a humorous beat of Franky surprising Vegapunk by saying the Sunny is cola powered, but those beats are supremely redundant, cuttable, predictable, "unnecessary". Yet I fully suspect that if Luffy and Usopp had had no reaction at all to learning Elbaf was the next destination, the arguments would have been “We already know they’re excited, we Didn’t Need to see, Just No time for them to react” etc.

And this argument is just so incredibly generic and all purpose, you can slot it into any scenario, any discussion of something getting glossed over that should be a bigger deal to the characters. Until recently the all-purpose criticism dismissal was always that we should “wait and see” – wait for the Minks to get more exposure in Wano, wait for Kaidous Flashback, wait for Franky to shine at Egghead wait for Usopp to shine at Elbaf, but now the argument seems to be “we didn’t need to see that” if some element is depicted as lacking.
You could have the crew go to No Cartography, Orphans or Tangerines Allowed island, and if someone stated that it was weird that Nami had nothing to do and no real reaction to anything you could wheel out this argument; “Nami got X amount of paneltime in the preceding arc, you shouldn’t expect her to be a fixture of the No Cartography Orphans or Tangerines arc. It’s enough that Sanji was mad about Tangerines being absent. We know she likes children, we didn’t need to see it again”.

And like if you personally don’t care about seeing pre-established character traits enforced on-panel, of Luffy and Usopp excited about Elbaf again, or seeing Chopper get mad at multiple mad scientists, or about seeing Sanji take a stand against starvation or Nami against child endangerment more than “necessary”, that’s fine, but the story is explicitly engineered to get readers to care about such things, and so its fair for people to point out if their absence is felt.

If Oda will play the card of having Straw Hat characters reacting to the endangerment of children, or cloning, treating others purely as battle assets, robbing someone of free will etc then expecting actual on-panel followthrough on this regarding the seraphim is not some absurd notion, some unrealistic expectation to have. When Mr 3 meets Crocodile again at impel down he reacts in a way that reflects their prior relationship, but when the crew, with their entire backlog of personal principles and moral stances and reactions meet the seraphim people are unreasonable for expecting any sort of reaction or interrogation? Not even a tiny little bit?