I'm not voting for Buggy because of the goddamn messianic meme. He was awesome BEFORE he was the jailbreak messiah.

The whole Buggy's-rise-to-celebrity subplot in ID/the war only confirmed what Buggy fans already suspected – that Oda could and was willing to give him a bit more depth while still allowing him to be comic relief. Buggy's finally about to face up to what it means to be an inheritor of Roger's legacy, even if he was merely a cabin boy two decades ago.

It started out as a great big joke, to be sure, but with Ace and Whitebeard dead, his name all over the media, and that tantalizingly mysterious letter from the government, there's no way Buggy's not going to make SOME significant move in the New World. If anything, Buggy's status as the joke of the pirate world is only getting funnier. He's got a lot of parallels with Usopp; he does a lot of stupid shit in the interim, but in the clutch he actually buckles down and shows some spine and ingenuity. You really get the sense that he's a lot smarter than he lets on; he just lets his ego roam a bit too freely.

Rayleigh's cool and all, but there's no way I'm voting for him just to spite Buggy's memedom. Buggy is easily my favorite character in OP who isn't a Straw Hat. Forget the messiah memes and vote your conscience for one of the greatest characters in One Piece.

Law's all right, but I'm still waiting for him to do something before I vote for him over Nami.

I won't deny Nami's a very inconsistent character, but really it's not her fault. She's basically designed to be Bulma pt. 2, which is progressive by shonen female character standards, but she's still subject to many of the standard shonen-girl pitfalls (gag fights, vulnerability to random sexual humiliation, being relegated to little more than crying and cheerleading while the "real" action goes down).

So with that said, why the hell did I vote to her? Because when she's off, she's off, but when she's on, she's pretty damn on. She was handled fairly well in Enies Lobby and Skypeia, had some great moments with Zombie Lola in Thriller Bark (probably her strongest performance to date), and personally, I tend to find it funnier on average when SHE takes Luffy to task moreso than the other Straw Hats. I feel like I have to stand up for her because she's the closest thing the Straw Hats have to a straight-man foil. It can't all be Franky and Luffy and Brook sticking chopsticks up their nose all the time. I really feel like she helps balance the humor associated with the Straw Hats' slapstick-heavy antics (her and Robin, who is probably the more consistently effective foil).

Also, I really have to respect how often the girl changes her outfit, especially considering how infrequently Luffy changes HIS clothes. Thank your supreme universal force of choice every day that you're not a manga character, because you'll NEVER have to know EXACTLY how awful Luffy smells. The man eats nothing but meat (and he's a messy eater, so you know he's smeared with grease and sauce afterwards), rolls through god knows what in the midst of his bloody, sweaty fights, and bathes maybe once per arc, tops. You could probably smell him from East Blue, wind permitting.

I like Hancock. She could have been just a gimmick, but Oda has done a lot of interesting stuff with her simply by virtue of making her Luffy's ally on the "inside" with the Shichibukai. It was surprisingly badass when she saved him from Smoker, too. It'll be very interesting to see what she does when Luffy and friends finally hit up the New World. (And if Buggy really does make Shichibukai, no doubt Oda will try and play the two off each other. Hopefully Buggy won't get petrified TOO frequently…)

That said, I can't really vote for her over Zoro just yet. Yes, yes, main character vote, blah blah. I don't really care. Zoro is awesome and he's somehow managed not to die despite a sense of direction so bad it's awe-inspiring. Gotta love a guy who can go between badass and goofy without skipping a beat the way Marimo does.

Dude wears some awesome shirts, to boot. The wife beater and goggles were a good look for him on Skypeia, but that fuckin' Wendy's shirt he wore on Sabaody worked surprisingly well. Dude's shirt collection is probably second only to Nami.

Voting for Luffy because he and Ed Elric are the only modern-day shonen protagonists who don't piss me off. Let's go, Stretch!

@toiim:

truth

My sentiments exactly.

T-Rexes are cool and all, but there's just no contest here.

All hail Warlord Buggy!

I like both characters, but I gotta go with Magellan for this one because I think he's one of the best villains One Piece has introduced in recent years.

The guy is badass and has cool poison powers, sure, but he's also oddly easy to sympathize with despite his status as an enemy of Luffy. The guy works for the thoroughly evil World Government, to be sure, but it's not like he has time to go around kicking puppies for the Tenryuubito or anything. He's a busy man, running Impel Down and all.

Sure, he keeps some decent people like Ace and Jinbei in his awesome superjail, to be sure, but other than that the guy actually does the world something of a service by keeping most of the real nutcases locked away from the wider world (at least until Luffy and Blackbeard rolled through).

He's respectful and professional to his staff, keeps his cool in even the most dire of circumstances, and for the most part avoids unnecessary sadism. Would that all high-ranking correctional administrators could be so upright.

And make no mistake, Mags doesn't take shit from ANYBODY. Straw Hat Luffy? Poisoned that little fucker. (Although apparently he got better and showed up later with an army of transvestites.) Legions of dangerous criminals out of their cells? Nothing a little poison can't cure. Marshall D. "Blackbeard" Teach? Mags was having NONE of that shit, and BB and his posse took a long, painful ride on the Venom Road. (Although apparently HE got better, too. And with a half-dozen superpowered freaks from supermax instead of a legion of deviants. This was NOT a good day for poor Magellan.)

Vote for the man who rallies order against the forces of chaos.

Vote for the man who gets shit done even as he takes a shit.

Vote for one of the few people on the planet who Luffy and Blackbeard just can't fuck with.

Re-elect M. A. Gellan for Warden of Impel Down.

@Miadestroystokyo:

snip

I fucking love you.

You and roughly 400 other people at the time of this posting, of course.

How the fuck could I NOT vote for Hannyabal?

A dedicated career man (with a vigilant eye for upward mobility), connoseiur of big-ass titties, who bravely stalled the strongest character in the OP universe (let's face it, even if he stalemates a couple of times on the way, at the end of the day nobody can pierce Luffy's plot armor and mutant healing factor) in the midst of Impel Down's darkest hour?

This man's not a villain. He's a goddamned HERO. He's gonna be king of the wardens!

Voted for Dragon because I never was a fan of Marco to begin with (he knows Whitebeard, big whoop, he was a bitch in the war to boot) and because Dragon strikes me as one of the few foreshadowy characters in OP who seems like he might really, really, REALLY pay off when he FINALLY does something besides loom dramatically. The way I see it, I'm investing in the future!

Why the hell would things get LESS exciting now that the war is over? I only see things getting MORE exciting after the war. Coming attractions still include:

• The inevitable Straw Hat reunion with boosted power levels, no-longer-emo-Luffy, and a considerably fatter Usopp (I hope they keep him in his lardass state long enough for us to see Fat Sogeking).

• The shifiting power balance in the New World and the chaotic pirate battles and bids for power yet to come, which OBVIOUSLY Luffy and pals will not get involved in in any way.

More World Gov't cover-ups, more Tenryuubito dickery, more Yonkou fighting over Whitebeard's old turf, more Supernovas staking their claims, more Shichibukai and Garp doing whatever the fuck they want while Sengoku looks on in disgust because nobody seems to listen to him anymore (except that damn goat)…how would any of that be considered boring?

(Except maybe Mihawk abandoning his post to go drinking with Shanks. AGAIN. Your tax dollars at work...)

• Dragon and Shanks will finally DO something besides make speeches and go drinking with Whitebeard (although maybe that was one more than the other)! This isn't speculation, this is simply a matter of time. They're one of Oda's many Chekhov's guns, and Oda seems like a prudent enough writer to fire them before OP comes to a close.

• The great and ultimate reveal of the DEEP DARK MYSTERIOUS NATURE of the Dark History, WG origins and cover-up, what's really on Raftel (besides a bunch of discarded Dixie cups from Roger's celebratory beer pong tourney) and what the fuck One Piece is, which warehouse the flying saucers are in, all that good stuff. You can read all about it in Robin's book, I'm sure (published by Nami and printed from Franky's crotch).

• Blackbeard gains the Sharingan and blows up Konoha---wait, there's nowhere clever I can go with that. Forget I said anything.

OP is an adventure manga first and foremost, not a pure fight manga. There are good fights, to be sure but OP is at its strongest during the journeys to its big reveals and climaxes. (See: the amazing progression of Thriller Bark, to a lesser extent Skypeia...hell, as much as Water 7/Enies Lobby annoyed the piss out of me, those were extremely well-paced as well during stuff like the train gauntlet and the great escape at the end.) To say that nothing in OP will ever top the war is not only to underestimate Oda, but also to misunderstand what OP is really all about.