@Ned_Gutters:

I agree with most of your post, and I actually did enjoy this arc as well, though I am currently suffering from Arc fatigue. I think it'll be better in chapter form. (There was a lot of potential BS in this arc, but I am pretty open about what does and doesn't make sense in One Piece, and about why people do what they do, so a lot of it I don't mind as much as others.)

I do want to disagree with the two parts of your post I quoted above, though.

(1) While I agree that Luffy has more tricks up his sleeve, I'm not sure a gear 4th gatling is one of them. As far as I can tell, gatling works by throwing his arms behind him slightly and then launching them forward rapidly, taking advantage of his rubber body to "snap" his arms out after stretching them back. In gear 4th, however, he doesn't seem to use his body in the same way. His punches are launched by pushing his fists into his body, and then releasing them so that they fly out of him. So far, with both kong gun and king kong gun it looked like he had to push his fist into his arm and that it took a little bit of time to do that. Not much time, but more than between gatling punches. So, a gear 4th gatling MIGHT be possible, but if I understand gear 4 and gatling correctly, I don't know that it would actually work.

(2) I posted this a while back, but basically: Zoro bashed his katana against birdcage. He slammed his katana against birdcage. If he used axes, this would be enough to show he can't cut birdcage. However, katana are not bashing/slamming/chopping weapons. They are slicing weapons. Their ability to cut comes from a certain motion in which the blade is dragged against the target. He did not do this, and so his bashing tells us nothing about whether or not he could cut the cage. It would be like saying my gun can't pierce this window after bashing my gun into the window. Well… that isn't how guns work... try shooting.

Though I like this arc, this is one of my biggest problems with it. Zoro didn't even try to cut the cage, which I could forgive if not for: (A) "There is nothing I can't cut!" and (B) "How do you know it can't be pushed if you didn't even try!"
(I see a lot of people respond to (A) with: "But he told the giant the cage would be gone by the time he was awake, and he was WROOOOOOONG." Okay cool, but that doesn't mean he didn't honestly think it would be gone. And even if he CAN'T cut the cage, that doesn't mean he doesn't think that he can. Then he nearly immediately made the (here germane) comment: You don't know you can't unless you try. So, here's some facts: He thinks he can cut anything, and he didn't try to cut the cage (not even by bashing his katana at it). Why?

Personally, I think because the arc is too long as is and it would take too much time to show him try, and then have it just regenerate or something like that. Depending what Oda could think up about how the cage works, it would take at LEAST 3-5 panels, and probably more like half a chapter (or longer!). I think that's why we didn't see Zoro even try to cut the cage, despite thinking he can. It wasn't plot-convenience, per se, but rather a king of story-telling format convenience.

Interesting with your thoughts on Gatling. I agree that does seem to make sense that a certain level of retraction is necessary and a little bit of time. But I think the gatling is still possible for the following reason. When Luffy launches the punch and stretches his arm, on the recoil the arm will fly back to his body at high speed, at this point he can easily retract it into the compressed firing position and shoot it again, like a rubber band or a rebound and I think he will do this. It's like starting the punch he must contract his arm since he has no speed build up, but after he has launched a punch and his arm is retracting towards his body he can use that speed to cause the compression and retraction and fire another punch very quickly. I think his Gatling in this version is island level and might be what destroys fishman island.

2. Regarding Zoro I just personally believe from everything Zoro has shown that it's either one of two reasons. One was that he didn't have the power to cut the cage and he knew this instinctively and chose to slow it down or two, was that due to his pride and expectations of his captain in the new world is that he decided to NOT cut the cage since it was Luffy's battle that was underway with Flamingo and this would be interfering with your Captain's battle, which NO Vice Captain would do. The second explanation is fine to me and I don't see a problem with that. I do believe if Luffy failed Zoro would actually attempt something like Asura.

In relation to the first reason it could be that bird cage is that powerful, being a special preparation technique of Flamingo, a pirate who has been on the seas and in the new world perfecting his powers for many years. I do think the second explanation is more likely and Zoro was holding back. I don't have issue with this because Zoro has observation haki and his Captain said he would deal with it. That's kind of a sticky situation since a few of the citizens were close to dying to the birdcage save for Mansherry's healing but overall I'm fine with it.

@Vectorkov:

A broken Doffy begs Law to kill him and Law says "The weak don't get to choose how they die…" :happy:

That would be epic! But I do hope he is totally unconscious.

Things I observed:

1. Luffy is strong as shit. He would easily 1v1 Flamingo and beat him if they were both fresh. Luffy fought plenty of randoms and fought Don Chinjao as well, got very blooded by Bellamy before he even got to Flamingo. His King Kong Gun didn't look like all of what Luffy can do, and that attack is immensely powerful. We have rarely seen any strength destruction feat like that in the manga. If Luffy actually hit the ground with that attack it wouldn't surprise me if a large portion of the entire island was destroyed. The force of Luffy destroying Doflamingo's strongest attacks and then pummelling Doflamingo's body to the ground was what caused the impact, not Luffy's actual fist. Also that was the equivalent of a Gear 3 Pistol/Rifle in Gear 4. Luffy didn't even use Gatling…There's no reason to suggest he couldn't, or that this attack is a one time move by Luffy. The flashback with Rayleigh was while he was still with Luffy. At this time Luffy already had Kong Gun and Gear 4 and developed King Kong Gun shortly thereafter. Rayleigh said Luffy needed something more. Luffy had a further 6 months at least on the island himself so I'm sure he has Gear 5 or something crazy up his sleeve. I think he's ready to take on an Admiral or clash with a Yonkou (not saying he will win or anything), but it seems unlikely to me there would be any further training time skips with Luffy's tremendous level of power at the moment.

2. Flamingo's bird cage is very strong. It's a special move performed with prep time and using the string clone. It's not like his normal strings and is incredibly strong. Zoro hit the birdcage with force with his blackened swords as clearly shown in the panel with a large explosion of force. Zoro could not cut the cage. If he could he would. Admiral Isshou decided to help in the pushing, knowing that everyone was relying on Lucy, including him (whom he placed a bet on) to beat Flamingo as he didn't want to get involved as a Marine in the removal of this Shichibukai. This would obviously put his future goal of the removal of the Shichibukai system at risk and he clearly stated his position to Flamingo. I do believe if Luffy failed Ishou would step in and use his full powers to attempt to stop the birdcage.

3. I really enjoyed this Arc, one of my favourites. So much fun things happened and the issues most of the people have here on this forum don't seem to bother me or aren't even issues to me. I caught up reading weekly with One Piece just after Sabody.

@King:

You give way too much importance to 1-on-1 conditions.

Never mind that through a good deal of the fight, it was actually a 2 vs. 3, with Doula being assisted by Trebol and Bellamy, who both gave hits to Law and Luffy respectively. It certainly wasn't a fair fight.

This. Luffy also fought Don Chin and used several haki attacks. Luffy ran out of Haki in g4 after thundering flamingo. If flamingo didn't have his god healing ability he would have been done quickly. Even with it Luffywins 1v1 no questions for me.

Looks like Vergo is top tier Vice Admiral level. I really like that guy. He wouldn't get 1 shot by Sabo

@D:

The structure of your argument has the struct of A is human, A name is X, B name is also X ==> then B must be human. What makes you think that all yonku first commanders have the same power( Marco = Jesus, by your logic) and also why the first commander > second commander > third and so on? Answer me to this pls.
Also you said that Diamande was the top executive of DD. There was never mentioned that he was in a better position than Pica and Trebol, let alone Vergo. You made this up from your mind.
Finally, i said thatyour post had no value, because you know nothing about sabo, other how he fared against 2 opponents, only in a small brawl. Jesus and Diamante left the colosseum only with bruises and without any harm. From only that you can't say sabo is stronger. Yes you can say that he outwitted them, and get first in the mera mera, but not that he is stronger.

The argument was: is Sabo being Yonkou commander level baseless. It's not relevant that yonkou commander's differ in strength, we already know this. I didn't say he was stronger than any individual commander just that he is in fact commander level. We can see this easily in the structure of the story, as Luffy's older brother and who was on par with ace (close to drawing in combat), was trained by revolutionaries and again over the timeskip. His actions have shown utter confidence and now when he is seen holding off 3000 marines, a marine admiral and a vice-admiral you want to claim he's not on yonkou commander level? Don't make me laugh.

Diamante is not Dolfa's top executive but he is one of the top 4. The point was that Sabo easily dealt with a Yonkou commander and Diamante at the same time and took the fruit. They both attacked him and he easily dealt with their blows and took the fruit from them. They LOST in the contest for the fruit. Diamante even admitted "who would have known the 2nd in command of the revolutionaries would be competing".

You don't discuss manga facts and instead have gone on a tangent attempting to disprove something I wasn't claiming. Yes we can make inferences in a manga. Not all of them are impermissible. We can conclude Fujitora is an admiral and that Aokiji is an admiral so they should have relatively similar strength or at least enough to warrant being called an admiral. Please try again.

@D:

All the argument that you use, have no logic value whatsoever, its only your personal opinion. Plus i can't take you seriously with that avatar.

Lol really? Please explain why it doesn't because your post is worthless.

@Darth:

Baseless.

Baseless power levels arguments everywhere.

Ace= second division Yonkou commander

Sabo = should be at least similar power level but would actually be higher since with the revolutionaries. Then 2 years trained by dragon (implied since he had the resolve to get stronger) and from his feats he casually embarrassed the 1st Division commander of the Black Beard pirates and Dolflamingo's top executive Diamante at the same time.

That's a lot more than baseless to say he is on yonkou commander level. If you said it was baseless he was at admiral level you'd be closer to the truth.

@Darth:

Oh, now that I think about it, I like Senor Pink vs Franky.

So yeah, two things. Imagine that.

But didn't you just loooooooooooove how strong Sabo seems? Isn't that cool that he's standing up against an admiral? Hehehehehe

GO BOSAB!! 16 chars