tbp posted:

One thing I do wish is that the payoff for the series big secrets like will of d, void century, joyboy, etc was a bit more paced throughout. I get it's mostly end game stuff but it'd be really cool to definitively learn things in the build up!

Relin posted:

Who's the guy in the left side of the revolutionaries panel?

Gyges posted:

I'm missing something, what is the super secret unseen thing in this?

Bad Seafood posted:

Took a bit of a break after polishing off East Blue. Now I'm into the Baroque Works.

This is several pages late, but to whoever countered my "Zoro's fights are boring" comment with "He has some cool moments, like Whisky Peak," I actually agree. But I also think Whisky Peak illustrates why most Zoro fights don't do it for me (though it's possible that's also my memory playing tricks on me since I also recalled Zoro being a lot more boring than he's been so far).

Basically, there are a couple times in East Blue (and at least one instance I remember very distinctly during Baroque Works) where Zoro simply wins by executing a signature move or technique of some kind. I'm not a huge fan of these since often times he just cuts through an opponent he was previously struggling with because I guess Oda decided the fight should be over. I don't get the same energy reading (or remembering) his fights that I do with the other characters, where there's a struggle but ultimately a clear transfer of dominance from one party to the other. By contrast, Usopp's fights are consistently great because he's always matched against super powerful dudes he needs to out-think and out-maneuver. I can't remember any Usopp fights from my initial read where I ever felt like he won arbitrarily due to being a main character.

Regardless, Whisky Peak was great and I completely forgot about Luffy and Zoro just completely chumping Mr. 5 and Ms. Valentine like they were an afterthought. I'm glad I decided to revisit this series before moving ahead because there's so many great little moments and jokes and things I completely forgot about between this reading and the last one.

Bisse posted:

Like, recent guys with powers like "has a spike for a head" or "has only one leg but still kicks rear end" or "is old enough to die at any second but still kicks rear end" or "is such a hard-boiled hunk" or "is a seriously mean tactician" or "marries his opponent mid-battle to stop her from killing herself" or "KING PUNCH" or Jesus Burgess or Kaidou are several times more interesting than ' he ate a bite of <thing> <thing>'.

Like I agree with the guy's sentiment but for another reason, people that show up with weird and unique powers, or push themselves through hardship to come out on top, have mysterious and flabbergasting backstories (e.g. is the girliest fanboy ever/must split ice with head for great ancestral treasures) or make life-changing decisions in the heat of battle, are just much more interesting than watching some stone guy move stone around or TON TON or watching some string guy never die and make word puns for attacks that don't even make any sense (somebody tell me how Athlete Thread works please).

Guy A. Person posted:

This is why the entire argument is dumb. Oda makes interesting characters because he is good at that. It literally doesn't matter if they ate a fruit or not, Oda will usually find a way to make them interesting. They are still written and drawn by the same dude. He doesn't have a history of using their DF as a crutch for characterization or phoning it in when they don't have a DF power. At some point this is all just arguing for the sake of it.

Like you just edited but "the girliest fanboy ever" is Barto and he is not any more or less interesting because he ate a devil fruit.

Gyges posted:

Can you even get a bounty without also getting some sort of nickname in One Piece?

I do still kind of chuckle that Kidd only got "Captain". What a boring nickname for a Captain.

Law Cheetah posted:

i still dont know what a mink is

"d[-.- posted:

b" post="451141256"]
The ninja is going to end up being some Naruto clone in an orange jumpsuit, isn't he.

Space-Bird posted:

I definitely agree it got better, but even East Blue era one piece had some pretty dynamic art, perspective and pacing. The characters are rounder and more comic, for sure, but compared to Oda's Wanted stuff, I think it's still pretty dang good.

I never read much naruto, because it never really grabbed me, but I did check out the last few chapters when it was ending, and I was pretty stunned how empty and dashed off it seemed to a one piece chapter. Maybe kishimoto has no assistants? I don't know.

ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:

Is that a Quincy mark on the roller coaster cart?

Advice posted:

Was this the first arc where we had an honest-to-goodness, "Waiting for Goku" moment? I mean the team usually leaves the big bad for Luffy and many times they will stall for him, but an integral part of WfG is the hero showing up right at the last possible second, when we've already had a, "Well I guess he's too late and X is going to die" moment, and the hero often steps in to physically block the final blow and start the fight.

And I feel like often times Zoro is in a position to stop the big bad and is clearly able to but Luffy has to be the one to do it, due to positioning or setbacks. This time Zoro had no intention of doing anything but stalling for Luffy.

DizzyBum posted:

My opinion is that Law is a good and cool character. Also,

"d[-.- posted:

b" post="451592883"]
I still don't get how Oda gave Doflamingo the Thread Thread fruit and Leo the Sew Sew fruit but had them never interact with each other the entire time. Why introduce such similar fruits in the first place?

Doctor_Fruitbat posted:

I hope we get a proper flashback for the rest of the crew; Wanda described the Straw Hats as their 'great benefactors', so apparently the b-team got some serious poo poo done during Dressrosa.

e: They're on Zou, something big went down recently involving a guy called Jack that's wiped out the populace or forced them to flee into the forests (which are guarded by electrically powered animal people) and somewhere during all of this the rest of the crew helped out and got in the Mink tribe's good books.

There's been four chapters on Zou so far, Christ.

Literally Kermit posted:

He's dead, dead people can't-

uh.

Well, I guess that really isn't a barrier to Straw Hat membership

Kingtheninja posted:

Are we on break this week or are the chapters coming out a little later now?

RC Cola posted:

I stopped watching bleach when itchigo was fired from a cannon to fight after finding out he's a Quincy shinagami hallow
Has it gotten better or worse?

Advice posted:

Yeah holy poo poo I just got that huge image spoiled. Please guys, we all love this manga, can we not do this? Some of us really don't want to see huge reveal pages out of context before we even have a chance to read the chapter.

To be honest, even this: "So, we're going to see Jack's full body revealed in this next chapter:" should be spoilered. Why do I need to know that before I read the chapter? Was this super pertinent information you just couldn't put in spoilers? Or did you just want to be the first person to tell the thread?

Sorry if I come off a little aggressive, I really love this thread and discussing One Piece with you guys and I have a major hot button for spoilers.

Thunderbro posted:

Sub Harrison posted:

I never felt the need to extend every Strawhat backstory. Sanji was a cook apprentice and trained by an S-tier Grand Line pirate. That's all we need to know.

What's next? Franky was Vegapunk's son before losing his memory and washing ashore water 7?

Kyte posted:

So how many more chapters until her waist becomes nonexistent.

(Also how many more until she achieves the legendary 1:3 body/leg ratio)

socialsecurity posted:

I am starting to get annoyed by how every single island has to introduce 1000x new characters. Hell most of the cast hasn't gotten to do much of anything since the timeskip, even before the timeskip they weren't around for 2 years then everyone got a quick token fight in fishman island a few got to do something in Punk Hazard then half the crew got dismissed so the colliseum dudes could steal the limelight. It feels like almost a decade since most of the crew were even characters.

Crazyeyes posted:

Wanna see that world noble with the sword throw down.

tsob posted:

I think Shanks is more important to the reader, but not as important to Luffy since he knew Shanks for only a few weeks or months while he's known his brothers and grandfather for a lot longer. I don't think Blackbeard is gunning for Shanks, at least for the moment though so if he's in trouble and going to die, it's more likely to be at the hands of Kidd than Blackbeard. The only thing to suggest otherwise is that Blackbeard did once scar Shanks, but I don't think that's meant to be more than something to suggest Blackbeard is a badass, not foreshadowing for him eventually killing Shanks.


Blackbeard appears to be stuck in the same rut now that Kaidou, Big Mam and possibly even Shanks (though that's unlikely) are stuck in. They've become Emperors, and they've plateaud. He isn't good enough to reach Raftel and that's basically been confirmed already within the story since we know he's not a true D and not worthy of getting there so all he can do is keep gathering material power and sitting on it. He can definitely enjoy that and it seems to have kept at least Whitebeard and Shanks content for a good while but he explicitly wants to be the Pirate King and even as a member of Whitebeard's crew he's not going to have any real idea how to get to Raftel or be able to formulate a plan in advance that will allow him to get there since he doesn't know anything about it (remember Whitebeard didn't even know where Raftel was or how to get there in his flashback). So he may certainly have some kind of plan (he tells Ace he's planned out exactly how to make himself Pirate King before their duel even) but the final step has to be at least somewhat speculative, and he's definitely not going to succeed in reaching Raftel because the story has all along been suggesting he's simply not worthy of reaching there.

So yea, I think he's done. And that the story is supporting the idea he's done since while in Paradise we used to see him between arcs on a regular basis once he was introduced, now he's nowhere to be seen and we just see his crew going around gathering stuff for him while instead. Futhermore, if you look at his wording (assuming the translation is right) in the pages where he takes the quake quake fruit, he seems to suggest that his plans are complete. He says that he's "finally done it", that "no-one can stop me now" and that "it's now his age". Taken in combination it suggests he think he's done enough that he's unstoppable already and that his plans are basically complete given that he think it is already his age. He's not going to grow any further in my opinion because at the end of the day he's reliant on gathering stuff to help elevate him and there's really not much other stuff he can get. In thinking about it, I would say that Blackbeard is basically Grand Line Don Krieg. He's gathered a huge fleet, and he's gathered a strong crew, and he's gathered a lot of weapons and a lot of fruits and a lot of tricks - but the man at the core of all that stuff simply isn't good enough and he's just using all those people and all those things to disguise it or cover up for his own weakness. A weakness that has been clearly demonstrated. He's cowardly, hypocritical and a fake.

I'd also just like to point out something about Blackbeard relative to Sakazuki: just about every notable achievement of Blackbeard's has been pipped in some way by Sakazuki. Blackbeard beat and captured Ace. Sakazuki killed Ace. Blackbeard fought a dying Whitebeard and lost, needing his crews help to finish someone who was already dying. Sakazuki gave Whitebeard the two major wounds that killed him (hole in the chest, melting off part of his head), even if he couldn't outright beat him and certainly stood up to Whitebeard far better than Blackbeard did. Blackbeard has lost most of the major fights he's gotten in to on screen, where Sakazuki has yet to outright lose (though he was almost certainly not as good as even a dying Whitebeard) and even several months after Blackbeard had gotten two devil fruits and had time to get used to them when he saw Akainu's ship approaching he ran away, despite having his entire crew, including all the the Impel Down recruits, with him at the time. Even Blackbeard sees Sakazuki as a threat.

Expanding on the above, Blackbeard has fought (or at least been in conflict) a good few times on screen. He's faced several people who've been either total scrubs (Sarquis, Hannyabal) or strong but not hugely so (the Bonney Pirates). The only person he's faced off against and won that we know is impressive is Ace. Aside from him he's been in conflict with Magellan, Whitebeard, Sengoku, Shanks and Sakazuki and lost on each occasion. Lost badly even in most cases. He had his original small crew with him when he faced Magellan and all of them were immediately beaten in one hit, needing Shilliew's help to survive. He faced an already dying Whitebeard and was beaten in seconds, needing his crew to help him finish the job. Even after getting Whitebeard's fruit Sengoku was having no trouble beating him and he outright refused to face Shanks. And then, several months after getting two fruits he also ran just knowing that Sakazuki was coming for him.

I think the first part of the grand line was about setting up Blackbeard as a major threat, but that the second part is about setting up Sakazuki as one and that they'll be beaten in that order too because one of them is more of a threat, both on a personal and on a global scale than the other. We don't even really see Sakazuki properly until the war at Marineford, and now we get some face time with him between most arcs (possibly all so far, I haven't checked), building him up and giving him the growth Blackbeard is really no longer getting.


Wait, are you honestly suggesting that someone else is going to be the one to take out Sakazuki, the guy who killed the main characters brother in the first real time death of the series at the climax of the first half of the story and not the main character himself? Oda took a lot of care in setting that death up to have impact by making it the first one to occur with the story itself instead of a flashback and to show that it really affected Luffy by making him realize he simply wasn't strong enough to be doing what he was doing and needed to step away from things for two whole years to train if he was going to hang with the big boys and you think someone other than Luffy is going to be the one to punch him out?

The Celestial Dragons might be a horrific cancer on the society of One Piece but they are not a military force or rife with strong fighters from what we've seen. They're just really lovely people who the World Government allows to do whatever they want. If you take out the World Government they become a non-issue because it's the World Government that's enabling them in the first place. They appear to hold some kind of secret that means the World Government and Marines won't move on them regardless of how awful they act, but other than that the lovely things they do they have no further ambitions to change the world or anything. Nor do the Marines. They're both concerned with enforcing the status quo, not changing the world. The same is roughly speaking true of the three ancient superweapons. They're not a horrific thing waiting in the wings to destroy or conquer the world in and of themselves - they're just another lovely thing the Marines could use to enforce the status quo and their brand of justice upon the society they already control.

Which is why Sakazuki works as the head of the Marines and doesn't need someone to replace him, because he is obsessed with that brand of absolute justice and enforcing it by any means necessary to ensure that the society views the Marines and the World Government as righteous and strong and that they can ensure the status quo is kept because of it, regardless of what that status quo actually is or how hosed up it is. He doesn't need to want to take over the world to be a threat, nor does someone need to take him out as a step to taking over the world because the World Government already controls the majority of the world. They're not looking to change things (beyond taking out the pirates), they're looking to keep things exactly as they are because that's what everyone is used to and it works. It doesn't matter that there's hosed up stuff, it still works and the Celestial Dragons can do whatever they want and the Marines keep most people feeling safe and that's what they want to preserve regardless of whether it could be better or not. And Sakazuki thinks you can do that most effectively by using absolute justice and basically scaring people in to submission by taking out everyone who dissents in even the smallest way and taking them in out a way that is public and horrible so that no-one else will do it again afterwards.


Do I think it's likely that when the Strawhats confront the Marines that most, if not all of the crew will face off against various strong Marines in a fighting manga? Why yes, yes I do. And I also think Sanji is quite likely to solo Kizaru and that there's nothing crazy with Zoro keeping up with Fujitora. Zoro has spent two years training with Mihawk and while he should have a bit of growth left to become the strongest, he still needs to be one of the strongest around already because in the New World they'll be facing off against the strongest people in the world. He needs to be ready to take on the kind of guys that hang with Emperors and almost certainly will within short order, at least chronologically speaking. And so will Sanji, who Oda has always said is just a tiny bit below Zoro in terms of power and the third leg of the monster trio. He might have had a bad run between Vergo and Doflamingo, but there's no real reason to suppose that's changed the fact that he's supposed to be one of the strongest members of the Strawhats and that he'll have to be able to take on people of Kizaru's level at some point within the story because of it, even if not Kizaru himself.


Roger very definitely meant to do exactly that, because we know that he was dying of an incurable disease and once he had reached Raftel and seen what was there (and had a few last days with friends like Whitebeard) he disbanded his crew and turned himself in to the Marines. It implies that he had a plan that he was following through on, and if someone hadn't asked him about his treasure he probably would have given some last words regardless. And if we go by the words of Whitebeard, that Blackbeard isn't the man that Roger foresaw to follow him, then it can be taken that he was trying to set things up so that someone would follow him, reach Raftel and act upon the information he had discovered there and do something that would change the world, something it's implied Roger wanted to himself but was simply to sick to do. It was presumably something upon the Rio Poneglyph that he was referring to, but there may be something else there that we don't know of yet. Again, it all implies that Roger was basically setting someone up to take down the World Government because he himself simply didn't have the time to do so and that the real threat to the world and the real big challenge in the end is something to do with the World Government and that it can only be known about and acted upon after Raftel, not before it.


You're right, I simplified that to the point that it lost all meaning. To expand on it I would say that if you're a bad enough dude that you can take out one of the Emperor's you're pretty much guaranteed to be bad enough that you can subdue and take control of most of their territory by default. You might not get it all, some of the other Emperor's might take a few islands when they learn their peer is dead, but you're basically guaranteed to be able to contend for and take a large chunk of their territory (assuming you want it at all) and become an Emperor yourself, since being a strong enough individual who controls enough territory that even the Marines have a hard time dealing with them is basically what makes someone an Emperor as far as we can tell. Blackbeard took out Whitebeard, then went around taking control of his territory. If Kidd takes out Shanks then his alliance will almost certainly go around grabbing up his territory and make him their fleet admiral and declare him Emperor once he controls enough of it.

That does mean that there could be more or less of them, if one of them takes out the other for instance, or if someone comes along and takes a whole load of new territory like Drum, Alabasta and some other nearby islands for instance too. Blackbeard could become sole Emperor by beating Big Mam, Kaidou and Shanks and still maintain that balance of power that the Gorosei refer too, but he wouldn't have really changed his status that much since he would still be as much of a threat as he was before for all intents. The reason that Roger became so infamous in the World Governments eyes is because they know he learned something they don't want people to know on Raftel. The public saw him as more than even an Emperor, even one who was sole Emperor and controlled much more territory than someone like Whitebeard because he had conquered the entire Grand Line, not just most of it. He could go anywhere, do anything and yea, was richer than sin as well on top of it. Blackbeard can't advance that position in the eyes of either the Marines or the public, because he'll never conquer the Grand Line, so he'll never reach that level of mythos in the public eye and never become as much of a threat to the Marines since he'll only ever be a martial threat, not a social one.

The exception here will probably be Luffy. Once Luffy beats Big Mam or Kaidou (whichever he defeats first) he'll almost definitely display no interest in taking control of any territory, at least for it's own purposes and so a couple of things could happen. It could be like Fishman Island, where whatever island he's on at the time is in a bit of a bind without protection so he declares it his protectorate and not his formal territory before continuing. Or possibly his fleet "sons" might go around asking if the island want to become his territory voluntarily and then just tell him about it later regardless of whether he likes it or not an arc later or something. Or something else could happen that I'm just not thinking of. Zou is setting him up to face either Big Mam or Kaidou next though, so he's on his way to becoming Emperor already. Which again, is why I don't think Zoro or Sanji being strong enough to at least for a time, take on admirals is all that out there.

sharktamer posted:

The only boring character is Trafalgar pointless D Law.

Shoren posted:

Chapter 800 was the formation of the Strawhat Armada and I think Oda specifically wanted that to sync up that way. In that regard there was a lot he could have done with the pacing to get there, like shown more of the other fights (Franky v Senor Pink?) or did more with the Diamante fight rather than the Gear Fourth countdown so there'd be ~tension~ with Rebecca and the Parasite String. I need to read the arc again start to finish because I'm probably being a bit too harsh on the pacing from a weekly point of view.

Foul Ole Ron posted:

Read my entire post, One piece is always amazing is what I initially said, but that does not mean it isnt being dragged out is im getting at.

Parrotine posted:

What I wanna know is what caused Capone to join up with Big Mom in the first place.

I don't think it was as simple as 'getting-rear end-handed-to-him-by-Emperor' via Ace style; he might have just wanted to just continue being a pirate with more protection (he is a mafia theme after all)

LupusAter posted:

I doubt it. To me, Sanji's face in the final panel reads more as "gently caress I've been found out" than disbelief. Sanji's surname was never revealed, right?