@Daz said in Chapter 1066: The Will of Ohara:
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.
Yeah, I didn't have much time in my original post to address some of my petpeeves but thanks for reminding me. I agree that this is just ridiculous. I've seen a couple of excuses (upon checking the spoiler thread) such as soldiers just being soldiers thus not having the knowledge what those books are about. B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T! Law enforcement troups in this case soldiers might not have the in dept detail that the higher ups, who make the decisions have but they are always briefed on what they are setting out to do. Even if the briefing is wrong and manipulative informations the troops will have to know what they are set out to do.
And in this specific situation they are setting out to destroy the entire supposed island of knowledge because the scholars are said to be demons whose research aims to bring destroy the entire world. And then after everybody was annihilated the soldiers find thousands of books in a lake and draws a conclusion between scholars and books? Are you kidding me? And on top of that, even with that background information, having thousands of books in a lake is not a common occurance. Like how was that not reported to the higher ups? Honestly, they were sent to check there and see if everything is normal or something out of the ordinary. A lake full of books definitely counts among the latter. Especially if we're talking about an island of supposed demon scholars. Horrible, horrible writing here.
All those years I thought that the WG got hold of the books because you know, that's what law enforcement does when going through the belongings of those they consider criminals. They confiscate them. It's not an alien concept is common proceedure. But nope, no need to double check if the dangerous idiology we don't want to spread even commited genocide to keep hidden possibly might have been recorded somewhere. Let's just leave everything there for others to find. Holy fucking shit is this bad writing!
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.”
That also rubbed me the wrong way. Like before that Ohara as land of knowledge had more mystisism to it as it seemed like something that existed for a long time. But nope, Clover seems to have created that entire place within a few decades only by just making him flock other people with the same idiology fly to him like moths attracted by a fly. How could this country ever get such a high standing within the WG if Clover was known to be a rowdy looking into problematic things? That just didn't sit well with me.
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.
I felt the same. It's like they are listening to everything that's going on and then while witnessing the things Vegapunk reveals and Robin clearly crying out of joy, the Strawhat's are not only incapable human speech but also are so emotionally detatched that they can't even tell Robin is sharing tears of sheer happiness? Get out!
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.
Yeah, what's this entire "the WG is going to come after us if they find out we know about this history?" nonesense? Do you guys know who the heck you are? To just name a few of the more prominent things you've done, you've invaded the WGs judicial island and declared war on the WG right there, have several times destroyed a link in the Warlord system and hurt two Celestial Dragons and are now considered to be the main crew of an Emperor.
Honestly, I still love One Piece, the lore, the characters, the adventures and whatnot. But Oda has too many horrible writing choices for it to just be labeled an occational hickup. Either way I've come here and I will follow this story to its end.