@Deicide:

I got a lot of flak a few months ago when I said Yamato's role in the story was to enable other characters' stories.

We need someone to have Oden's journal.
We need someone to protect Momonosuke.
We need someone to stall Kaido once Luffy is thrown outside.
We need someone to teach Momo how to be a dragon.
We need someone to be Momo's mentor figure while Luffy is busy.

So, someone was made to fill those blanks. How do you make people interested in such a character? Create big expectations about him.

I do see Yamato having a character arc, it's just does not seem to be the one people want. If it's meant to make him fond of Momonosuke and realise his role is as Wano's "Guardian Spirit", every choice so far makes sense. He starts in Point A ("I want to go to the sea") and ends in Point B ("I see this is my place after all"). Wants vs Needs. If not, then it's questionable while he got those roles in the first place. His character arc should have been something else.

You know, given his background (20 years of isolation and suffering, with pretending to be another person being the only thing to keep him sane) I thought Yamato would be a little too naive, or a little too nutty, or a little too sheltered or all of the above. And he was like that in the first few chapters, but then as soon as he met Franky he was basically the most mature person in the entire Onigashima already and then he went on to become Momo's mentor. Even the Oden thing was kinda dropped.
It all felt a little artificial, I don't know how to say it

Vegapunk is so fun. We've been waiting for more than half of the series' runtime to meet him, but so far it's been worth it.
The idea that he didn't split only his body, but also his personality is really cool. It both makes for a fun cast of weird scientists, and creates intrigue for just what kind of person is the main Vegapunk going to be. He has made many ethically questionable things to say the least, and it's a bit telling that two of his personalities are devoted to "negative" traits (Lilith is Evil and Atlas is Wrath), while the other four are more impersonal (Edison and Pythagoras just do "cold" scientific research, York just does bodily functions, and Shaka... seems to be a decent guy?), but everyone spoke very well of him in his home island, and overall we've been getting an ambigous vibe from him.
An entire body being devoted to eat/poop/sleep and seemingly not even being able to talk is pretty creepy, though. I wonder how far Oda's going to explore this potential thread.

The fight with Seraphim Jinbe was cool, him having Pink's fruit is also a stroke of genius. Can't help but feel worried for Pink though... Maybe he's dead and that's why his meeting at a bar with Franky was drawn as a non-canon chapter cover. I always found that a little weird, but it's only clicking now.
Otherwise, Vegapunk can now wholesale copy Devil Fruits. He already did that with Kaido's fruit but that was supposed to be a secret, at least to the WG, while now DF clonation is public. Assuming Pink is still alive, of course.
The final reveal isn't super surprising, with the Ancient Kingdom having built Pluton and all the similarities to Atlantis assuming they were very technologically advanced was sort of a 2+2. I'd agree that these reveals are being introduced in a bit of an anticlimatic way, but so far the set-up of the island is still very intriguing and these are easily the most fun chapters we've had in a long while.

Let's do the not disappointing ones now.

Kidd - It might be because of his punk rock theme but I really like Kidd. He hasn't been as developed as Law did during Dressrosa, which is a bit of a shame considering they're the two most prominent members of the Worst Gen (sans Luffy and Blackbeard)... But I don't think his role is finished. In any case, I like what we got. His bond with Killer is really well made, you can feel they're every bit as close as Luffy and Zoro, but unlike our two main characters they're also allowed to fail, which made for some interesting scenes. The scene where Kidd and Kilelr are brought back to Udon in particular really hit hard for me for some reason. Killer got basically disfigured, and Kidd rushed to his aid despite having just managed to escape the prison... It's nice stuff. And they also have each other's back during Onigashima, which is also pretty cool. Then, the gags with Luffy, Law and Kidd have been consistently fun and I just like the way he fights, like yeah he uses magnetism in a very unrefined way but it fits the character - plus, the skeleton mecha, the metal bull and the final laser cannon were all really cool. Also I think he's by far the supernova who got the most natural shift from mainland Wano to Onigashima. Law, Drake and Hawkins were getting involved into all kinds of subplots that promptly went nowhere, while Kidd just befriended Luffy in Udon, regrouped with Killer and the rest of his crew and then went to war against Kaido. I guess there's not a lot of substance to the character aside from being rude and headstrong and his bond with Killer, but that's enough. I see him and Killer as kind of a pair, and Killer is the one who expresses their philosophy a little more explicitely. Which leads me to...
Killer - what a surpirse this character was. No lie, I think his fight with Hawkins might be one of the best ones in Onigashima. Sure, other fights were more spectacular, but this one felt so personal, and it felt like not only a clash between characters but a clash between lifestyles. We were told at the beginning of the post-skip that there's only two ways to survive in the New World - serve the emperors or fight them, and here we have two characters representing those two opposite choices. And it was executed so well, Killer being the one who suffered the most (he's basically disfigured because of the Smile he ate) and yet standing his ground proudly against the man who chose the easy way out was very cool. When he tells Hawkins to F off with his luck predictions, we rely on our own strenght, aah, so cool. Just classic One Piece. And the tower card at the end... That fight was just perfect in my opinion. Killer's fighting style is a bit whatever though, but he got to participate in the rooftop battle and every character involved was spectacular there.
Kidd and Killer as a pair added a lot to the story in my opinion.

Law in my opinion has gotten a bit old, we've seen his tricks over and over and the bulk of his development as a character was in Dressrosa. He felt a little just along for the ride sometimes. But his new goal of finding the meaning behind the D is a very natural development for him, and I liked that. And like Kidd, yeah he might have lacked in substance a little but he sure provided some spectacle. Although he was handled in a very messy way during the Wano portion of the arc, like, what was the deal with him getting captured? But whatever...
Also Law and Kidd's final blow against Big Mom felt more satisfying than Luffy's one against Kaido, for some reason.

Another thing I liked about the Supernovas is that they provided some break from all the samurai and dinosaurs fighting styles. Magnets and mechas! Voodoo! Music! They all still feel like very fresh characters even when they're underused. I guess this is another field where Drake gets the short end of the stick...
Anyways, I hope they manage to stay in the story somehow.

The Celestial Dragons having their own intelligence agency that does all sorts of shady stuff was a pretty fun and plausibile idea, imo. Same for the WG having a secret branch that does deals with people the WG is not supposed to do deals with. And I suppose having the two be the same agency makes sense for the sake of simplicity.
Tying the concept to CP9 made everything a lot messier, though. My biggest perplexity about CP0 is that they seem to be teleporting around the OP world, first they're in Dressrosa, then at WCI while also supervising the Reverie and also fighting the Revos at Baltigo, and a few days later they all show up in Wano and now they're in Egghead, and every single time they show up for a different reason!
Also it's not clear if their identities and professiona are secret or public, Lucci being the most notable member of the agency is kinda lame, and the mask thing makes no sense.

Overall I'd say CP0 is a perfectly valid idea that got executed very messily.
But eh, at the very least it gave us the Legend! And the scenes with them dealing with Orochi and when they get found out by Drake were also very cool imo

She was cool up until Kyoshiro "killed" her. Then she turned into a generic princess character and never recovered

Kin'emon was fantastic. He got a ton of great scenes, from his hilarious misunderstanding of Yasuie's message, to declaring Luffy will be PK, and finally taking down Kanjuro and his last stand against Kaido. Him having a wife and his personal bond with Momo made him more three-dimensional as a character. And his closeness to the Straw Hats felt natural since they spent so much time together.
He had been a bit whatever in PH and Dressrosa but here he really shined.

The others got a bit fumbled, I liked them overall though. Oda crammed so many interesting ideas into these characters: the lost brothers, the ex-criminal who turned cynical during those endless 20 years, the man who got so enraged his face changed, a graverobber and his fox, the traitor who would have been ready to die for the cause anyways. They're not really Straw Hat level since they're a bit too similar in terms of characterization, but you don't usually get these many backstories for a group of supporting characters and overall it was a neat idea.
Unfortunately not much of that stuff paid off in the plot. The dramatic Kanjuro fight being offscreened only for him to get up N times, Izo and Ashura dying randomly (Ashura's scene was good though), Kawamatsu doing pretty much nothing in the whole raid, Dog and Cat's fights being awful, and perhaps what stings most, Denjiro disappearing in the background forever after all the hype he got and randomly showing up just to cut Orochi's head.
Feels like Oda wanted to juggle too many things.

I'd say they worked very well up until Kaido defeated them, and that fight was awesome, but then they should have stayed down. Maybe keep Kin'emon around but that's it.
First of all they made Kaido look very ineffective, for all the brutal hits he gave them he couldn't fully KO a single Scabbard. And then they didn't really get to do much even after they got up, so...
Also Kanjuro was a bit wasted, his betrayal was very dramatic and he worked very well as a villain but it all felt underdeveloped afterwards.

A mixed bag overall. I think this is the biggest flaw that post-TS Oda can't escape from, if he made the various storylines develop in a more natural way instead of cramming the Scabbards' revenge tale, the Straw Hats Pirates VS Beast Pirates fight, the Worst Generation burying the old guard, the Yamato fiasco and the payoffs to the Zou stuff (+ a ton of other smaller things like undercover Drake and CP0) all into a big royal rumble. Something had to give.

It's just my two cents but the Five Elders were also "regretful" about the order they were about to give when they decided to blow Ohata to smithereens. Then 20 something years later you see them casually talk about great cleansings and erasing lights from history. They even destroy an entire island very casually.
They're just hypocrites, just like most of the Navy's upper echelons. Maybe something will come out of Saturn and Vegapunk having met each other but in general I wouldn't read too much into the stuff they tell themselves.
Love to hate them, though.

I started to be pretty sure Yamato wouldn't join when he got sent on sidequest duty instead of being the centerpiece of the showdown against Kaido.
Overall father and son were pretty similar, characters with tons of intrigue and potential that kinda just weren't explored; Kaido was more entertaining though imo.
But still, yeah, no idea what Oda wanted to do with this character tbh

@andre said in Chapter 1073: Miss Buckingham Stussy:

@Zanze said in Chapter 1073: Miss Buckingham Stussy:

but the only comment the Elders made was that they were happy Sabo also happened to be there.

I legitimately don't understand how you can read that into it. They don't say they're happy or act happy. As they're listening in and realize he's in Lulusia, they seem taken aback that he's there in the first place. One of them says he's unlucky and another says it's just fate. What are you reading that makes you think they're happy? It's chapter 1060 for reference.

Again, "happy" is a bit of a strong word, but... Sorry if this is going to get long.
I think destroying Lulusia was a very disproportionate reaction. It was just an island where a coup happened. They didn't even potentially hold earth-shattering secrets like the Ohara archeologists.
The WG could just have sent the military to put the members of the new government into jail and restaurate the old one, instead of literally erasing the island from history and killing everyone who was in it (even people who might still have been pro-WG). Can't even use it as en example against rebellious nations because I think they'd like to keep Uranus or whatever that weapon is a secret.

To keep it short, the Elders' only comment about such senseless bloodshed pretty much amounting to "Hey Sabo was also there, we're getting two birds with one stone!" didn't paint them as characters who particularly care about this kind of stuff, at least to me.
Maybe they really were unhappy about what happened and Oda wants to keep eventual conflicts between the Elders and Imu as a surprise, but as of now their wills look pretty much 1:1 in my opinion.

@andre said in Chapter 1073: Miss Buckingham Stussy:

That's still not casual. They regret that they have to kill these people. One can regret what needs to be done and still understand the necessity to do it. They seem to see the greater good that they're protecting as more important than whatever any of us think should replace it, probably because of the knowledge they have of what replaced it before they were in place. Their use of slavery is abhorrent and unjustifiable, but they aren't without a desire for progress. Indeed, they lament Jinbe's betrayal so much because they saw him as a force of good towards their relationship with fishmen.

I see your point, but I just think there's too big of a disproportion between the regret they express and the mass killings / genocides / witch hunts that they regularly commission.
Like sure, the idea of blowing up Lulusia did probably come from Imu, but the only comment the Elders made was that they were happy Sabo also happened to be there. Plus there was Ohara, and the whole mass killing of children in the womb just in case one of those was Roger's son... I mean they're not exactly "casual" but these are all extreme, exaggerated reactions compared to the threats they were supposedly preventing.
They might do all of that stuff for the greater good, but the fact that the greater good is also supposed to be their own power system where they have all those absurd priviliges is a bit suspicious.
Even the balance of the world is just something they keep in place mostly to prevent another Joy Boy / Roger from showing up to destroy their government.

As for Imu, yeah we don't know much and mostly have to assume so it's up to personal interpretation.
I assume that he's immortal, actually comes from the Void Century and, in spite of his existence being hidden, he's actually the rightful king. I also assume that, unless he completely breaks any and all power levels in One Piece, sending Akainu and the three admirals to dispose of him should be more than enough unless he uses his weapon to blow up Marijoa with himself in it... So, in my reading, the Elders want to keep him in there. He might even be an asset, like he seems to have some divinatory powers or something like that. He knows Luffy, Blackbeard and Vivi somehow are the biggest threats to the WG.
This is 100% a personal reading, though. Things could actually be very different. It's just, I really haven't gotten the vibe that Imu and the Elders don't play in the exact same team.

@andre said in Chapter 1073: Miss Buckingham Stussy:

And I don't think their discussion about extinguishing lights was casual. Their faces are darkened and in supplication. They always discuss things like this in terms of keeping the balance, never flippantly.

That's the thing, though. I'm sure that, unlike the average Celestial Dragon, they fully understand the weight of certain decisions and that's why they always express regret for what they're about to do.
But ultimately they don't take those decisions for any greater good. Keeping the balance just means keeping in place the power structure that has them on top and protects them (and that originates lots and lots of pain, via slavery and the heavenly tributes among other things). Vegapunk and the Ohara archeologists didn't even enter their kill list because of something they did, just because of something they maybe could know... And they keep doing this kind of stuff. If they regretted it that much, you'd think they would stop.

As for Imu, yeah. It could be that he takes some decisions in spite of what the Elders think. But in the great cleansing scene, for example, it's the Elders that go to him to basically get told who they need to kill, not the other way around - and that happens right after they said between the lines that they kinda want to kill Cobra. And after all, unless Imu has some kind of enormous bargaining chip, they are the ones who keep him in power.
I don't know... I don't really see them as conflicted characters.

It's just my two cents but the Five Elders were also "regretful" about the order they were about to give when they decided to blow Ohata to smithereens. Then 20 something years later you see them casually talk about great cleansings and erasing lights from history. They even destroy an entire island very casually.
They're just hypocrites, just like most of the Navy's upper echelons. Maybe something will come out of Saturn and Vegapunk having met each other but in general I wouldn't read too much into the stuff they tell themselves.
Love to hate them, though.

Best moment of the year
Has to be the sequence from Kaido taking down Luffy to the end of the first full chapter of Gear 5 fighting.

Worst moment of the year
Wano's last chapter felt very flaccid. The crew leaving without saying goodbye to Momo and Kin felt forced, the 2487th intermission with Hiyori and Orochi (this time in a flashback) where neither of them says anything new didn't land for me, and I was never a big fan of Yamato and I didn't think he'd join but that goodbye was also handled in a very meh way still.

Best character of the year
He has a lot of missed potential, but if I have to decide who the most memorable non-SH, non-Vegapunk character was in the last year's chapters... It's got to be Kaido.

Worst character of the year
Sentomaru. I didn't think he'd turn out to be a super memorable character, but after his cool introduction all those years ago he deserved a better treatment.

Best new character of the year
Goes without saying... Vegapunk. He's a pretty complex character, even contradictory, in a very realistic way. Works for the WG but is friends with the Revos, because he's clearly good-natured but he doesn't really care that much. Scientific research comes above anything else. His multiple bodies are also a nice twist and they all have fun designs, Shaka and Pytaghoras especially. On top of everything he has a lot of potential for turning out to be even more interesting than he already is.

Worst new character of the year
Ryokugyu. I like his powers and I don't think he'll turn out to be as one-dimensional as he seems now in terms of characterization. However, his tree form just looks goofy and, even if the main characters are now in that league, him literally pissing his pants because Shanks stared at him menacingly is really not the way to introduce an Admiral.

Best fight of the year
Luffy VS Kaido of course.

Worst fight of the year
I'm loving Egghead, but Luffy, Jinbe, Chopper, Sentomaru and the Seraphims VS basically just Lucci shouldn't have went they it did. Just made no sense for Luffy to leave.

Best surprise of the year
Probably Law VS Blackbeard. It's a very unexpected turn of events that speeds up the ending, and Law actually feels in danger here.

Worst surprise of the year
Carrot being appointed as the next ruler of Zou by virtue of literally just having left the island for two weeks. I get that Oda wanted to give her some kind of uplifting closure but that's not the way to go about it. Would have preferred at least a goodbye with the crew...

Quote of the year
Tie between "I can hear the drums of liberation...", "I REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE STRAW HAT AS AN EMPEROR" and "Everything in this world is born from desire".

Funniest moment of the year
That panel in Chapter 1046 where Kaido shoots a gust at Luffy and he dodges by pulling up his legs

Best panel/spread of the year
The double page with the mecha shark appearing under the Sunny. Fantastic spread

The SMILE users were portrayed decently in terms of strenght. They were mostly fodder, sure, but Oda managed to sell the idea that they were still very strong. They managed to slow the heroes down, to fatally wound Izo, some characters were entirely devoted to keeping them in check (Kawamatsu, Drake, grandpa Hyo), and without Tama the battle probably wouldn't have ended with the SH alliance victorious.

The problem is, when you see them in action they all look so weak and feeble and like the animal part is more of a hindrance than anything (in what way would having your body grow out of a chicken's ass be a power up?) so for me It was impossible to not notice a disconnect between what was happening in the story and the way it was portrayed. Big Mom's crew is also goofy but it felt way more fearful.
On the other hand I love how goofy Oda gets with his designs, so overall I'm mixed

My list:

1. Whole Cake Island
   Up there with Alabasta, Enies Lobby and the likes for me. One Piece at its best.
2. Dressrosa
   Dressrosa was a slog week to week but I've enjoyed rereading it. The gladiators were fun and well-used and the beef between Law and Doffy was awesome. Plus it had Bartolomeo.
3. Wano
   High highs and low lows, much like Dressrosa but doesn't come together as good as the Doffy arc. Still, it has been entertaining mostly the whole through.
4. Zou
   It was short but memorable. Awesome location and Capone was a highlight.
5. Fishman Island
   The action in this arc was sub-par. The adventure secrion was pretty bad. I enjoyed the flashback though, and framing the villain as just a product of his environment was a very realistic choice for a shonen that I enjoyed seeing explored.
6. Punk Hazard
   Some enjoyable moments mostly from Law and Smoker, Caesar was very fun. But overall it dragged a lot and was not that fun.

Egghead has the potential to become second or even first, really enjoying it so far.

Oooh, I get it now.
The Warlords aren't actually right next to each other, Hancock and Mihawk are way closer to the camera than Doffy and the others.

What if CP0/the Marines force Bonney to age the Seraphims up?