#wano overall is a great arc and has a lot of my favorite moments in the whole series

[sanjipussyindulgence]

pondering kaido's character

got to thinking about this by accident but i think the biggest problem with kaido's character is that he was introduced after big mom, aka one of the best villains in the whole series and the first yonko we really get to interact with. she sets the bar sooooo fucking high with being a mix of terrifying and legitimately sympathetic, and then kaido just fumbles it afterwards.

which is extremely disappointing because he has one of the best introduction's ever with jumping all the way down from a sky island in a suicide attempt but coming out of it unphased, which sets up his personality in an interesting way and also immediately showcases how insanely durable he is. meanwhile once we get to wano i feel like we sort of… dont get a real explanation for why kaido has suicidal tendencies. which is what caught my attention with his intro.

i think the closest explanation we get is that hes so strong that hes just... bored nowadays. no one can compete with him in the same way oden once did, which kaido seems to consider the highlight of his entire career as a pirate, so everything has become kind of dull as a result. he basically just tries killing himself for a semblance of fun. thats interesting but i wish oda expanded on it more!

his thing with joyboy also didnt make a lot of sense to me other than 'joyboy was the most powerful so kaido being the most powerful much mean hes the next joyboy'. that feels like a missed opportunity.

the part of him being PISSED about someone taking out oden for him and that being repeated with his fight with luffy was super good. i wish we got more of that dynamic where kaido is a dickhead who only cares about strength, but also genuinely respects and kind of personally likes the people that can go against him because of how much he solely values strength in people. thats definitely his best character trait and i enjoyed his character the most during those parts.

#im like genuinely tweaking rn on this cold brew monster drink so idk if this makes sense but i wanted to jot it down #one piece #kaido #kaido king of beasts #one piece analysis #one piece wano #wano arc #oden #kozuki oden #big mom #charlotte linlin #luffy #monkey d. luffy #wano overall is a great arc and has a lot of my favorite moments in the whole series #but i really just wanna take some scissors and cut some shit down or out entirely because it really feels like oda got distracted at parts

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Paramount War (Part One)

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

the introduction of the celestial dragons really is just so brutally effective. this is the first time we see them, and before they even show up on page they immediately establish themselves as both absolutely powerful and absolutely despicable. everyone is watching them commit atrocities in broad daylight, and nobody dares say a word. 

i mentioned it back in the enies lobby post, i think, with spandam, but oda is very, very good at creating villains who it just feels so good and so deeply satisfying to see them get annihilated, and the celestial dragons are maybe the crowning example of it. 

i really like how none of the strawhats are really intimidated or impressed at all by the celestial dragons, in sharp contrast to how everyone else responds to them. some of that is ignorance, but you can’t tell me zoro would have acted any differently in this scene had he known charloss was a member of the world’s ruling class. all the power the celestial dragons have comes from fear; of course their greatest weakness is someone who just doesn’t care. 

obviously this moment is just excellent, no qualifiers needed, but one thing i really love about it is how all the bad shit that results from this does not detract from the sheer satisfaction of what happens at the auction house at all. like, even though this leads directly to the strawhats getting crushed by the pacifista and kizaru and scattered by kuma, i’ve never once caught myself thinking luffy shouldn’t have done this. 

i’m a huge fan of how rayleigh introduces himself. he knocks out the whole action house with conqueror’s haki, but luffy is completely unaffected, and the two of them just watch each other down the aisle for a moment as everyone else collapses around them. 

i don’t know that i’ll ever get over the fact that oda created and designed the supernovas as he was writing sabaody. they’re all such distinct and memorable characters, and almost all of them have fit neatly into the post-timeskip story one way or another. they really feel like a part of the world that was always meant to be there. 

i think the way roger as a character is handled is very, very cool, because we don’t really meet him as a person- when we first learn of him, on the very first page, he’s a myth, a story, a framing device. which is fitting, because that’s all the characters know him as. the rest of the world doesn’t know what roger was like as a person or why he did what he did, and so neither do our main characters and neither do we. 

and then we learn, slowly, by following in roger’s steps and meeting the characters who did know him, like rayleigh and whitebeard and garp. and through their testimony and memories, over the course of the story, roger goes from being a faceless myth to being a proper character.

i think this panel, where luffy says he just wants to be the freest person on the seas, might be my favorite luffy panel. if nothing else, it’s definitely one of the ones i think about the most in terms of his characterization. luffy’s been defining himself by his dream since the very start of the story- he’s the man who’s going to be king of the pirates! but it’s only here that we learn what that goal actually means to him, and what he actually really wants. he just wants to be free. 

the tone shift of sabaody really is impeccable. because up until a certain point, everything seems pretty par for the course. the strawhats make some new friends, get into trouble for their sakes, get into a hard fight where they all have to work together but eventually scrape out a win. 

but then kizaru shows up, and another pacifista, and kuma himself, and for the first time in the story luffy says this is a fight they can’t win- 

and then zoro disappears, and all of the audience’s expectations for how this is going to play out get thrown completely out the window. 

it’s not that we haven’t seen luffy upset before this- his fight with usopp in water 7 and merry’s funeral are the two obvious examples that come to mind- but we’ve never, to this point, seen him as crushed as he is at the end of sabaody. it really drives the abrupt tone shift of sabaody home, because we’re used to seeing luffy be generally cheerful, and if not that, at stubbornly determined to power through. but here, he’s just wrecked- and the paramount war saga is just getting started. 

every time i see hancock i’m reminded what a lesbian i am.

i’m talking a lot about character introductions this post, but a lot of really good characters get introduced in the first half of this saga, from the supernovas to rayleigh to jinbe. on that note, i really like hancock’s introduction, for reasons similar to what i said about roger earlier. she’s introduced as a cartoonishly evil one-dimensional bitch, and she leans hard into that characterization for the first half or so of amazon lily.

and then luffy narrowly keeps her and her sisters’ worst fear from being realized, and her facade starts to slip, and we get to know her as- still kind of a bitch, but also a deeply traumatized person who has very valid reasons for being the way she is, and someone who is overall a lot more complicated than she appears at first glance. 

one of my favorite things about luffy is his ability to always, always defy expectations. hancock is dead certain he’ll take her offer of a ship and abandon marguerite and the others, but he doesn’t even hesitate before doing the exact opposite. luffy is always turning people’s worlds upside down.

i have a friend who coined the term “conflict of interest arc” to refer to the arcs where a crewmate is forced to choose between the crew and some obligation or baggage from their past- arlong park for nami, whole cake island for sanji, etc. 

marineford is luffy’s conflict of interest arc- he has to make the choice, here, to prioritize saving ace over reuniting with his crew. where it differs from all other such arcs, then, is that nobody else can come to back him up. he’s well and truly on his own. 

i love how thoroughly expectations get turned on their head with jinbe. for the longest time, all we know about him is that he’s a shichibukai and arlong’s former captain, so given what arlong was like and what the shichibukai encountered thus far have been like, it’s a fair guess to assume he’s pretty awful.

and then we meet him, and he’s ace’s friend, sitting bloody and beaten in the deepest dungeons of impel down for refusing to fight in an unjust war.

bon-chan is really one of the greatest examples of one piece’s stubborn refusal to treat any character as disposable, and oda’s endless ability to find new and interesting ways to fit them into the story. in pretty much any other manga, it would be all but guaranteed that we wouldn’t see a character like bon-chan again after the conclusion of the alabasta saga. here, luffy straight up would not have made it to marineford without him. this is true for mr. 3 too- who would’ve thought his ability to duplicate keys out of wax, established and promptly forgotten some three hundred chapters ago, would be the thing that let luffy free ace on the scaffold?

magellan is a good antagonist. i’m not saying i like him- i don’t particularly- but he’s a great antagonist for a couple reasons, and one of them is that his powers are terrifying. magellan is essentially what might be called in video game terminology an advancing wall of doom- the only viable strategy for dealing with him is to run.

i had more i wanted to say here but it literally kept turning into a rant about one piece’s take on morality no matter how many times i tried to keep it short, so i’ll settle for just saying that magellan is an antagonist but not a villain and i think that’s interesting. 

the absolutely ridiculous, eclectic mix of people that luffy winds up gathering to escape impel down is possibly my favorite part of the whole arc. i just think it’s so fun and so characteristic of him that even when separated from his crew, he winds up attracting the weirdest, most powerful bunch of people around to break out of prison with. 

the relationship between luffy and blackbeard is a really interesting one. it’s been plenty clear for some time that blackbeard is almost certainly going to be luffy’s final opponent to become pirate king, and yet they’ve been mostly running on parallel paths through the world, only occasionally coinciding (such as here and in jaya) and generally seeming pretty unconcerned with each other. it’s a really cool way to handle the built to an eventual showdown, and i really like it. 

this is one of my favorite spreads just for sheer smile factor. i love it so much. i think we should get to see jinbe’s whale shark buddies more often, it’s a crime we haven’t seen them since this. 

#the voyage so far #one piece #long post #arc: sabaody #arc: amazon lily #arc: impel down #not japanese

[one-piece-dumpster-fire]

Pudding's case is fascinating - because this is an example of a WELL written subplot, but Pudding's design doesn't match the given backstory AT ALL. Would it make sense for a young girl from abusive family who spent her whole life mocked by mother and siblings for her appearance and developing a complex because of it to turn sides because someone finally treated her like a human being and said something nice to her? Of course! (part 1)

Oh boy this is gonna be a bit long I'm sorry xD

I feel like I should preface this by saying that Pudding is one of my absolute least favorite characters in OP for many reasons, but since most of them don't have anything to do with the topic at hand I'll try to keep myself from straying too much :'D

But before I get to the issue with her design, I have to say this: although the premise of Pudding's subplot makes sense and fits in with the overall theme of domestic abuse present throughout WCI, the execution of her character is,,,, not really something I'd call very well-written, to be honest😅?

Her insecurities or inner hurt is not explored beyond the flashback/compliment, which was also not build up at all, there isn't another significant moment where she reflects more on how Sanji's treatment of her contrasts with what she previously faced, or even the many parallels between them and how they both stem from abusive households yet choose to deal with their inner pain in different ways is never explored.

I always thought it was kind of a waste that you have an arc supposedly centered around Sanji being the 'kindest', yet his kindness didn't really seem to inspire her to change her view on herself. Which, if I'll be honest, was what I was expecting after Pudding broke down- that she would get to have a genuine talk with Sanji, demonstrate her initial conflicted feelings at his comment because she was never complimented before, and go through some self-reflection and exploration by really looking at their stories of abuse and how that molded her into who she is now. But... naga. She is turned into somewhat of a joke and everything her character did before is pushed aside and not adressed again.

With the premise Oda set up there could have been done so much more with her, but in my eyes, Pudding is one of the most disappointing characters he has written post-TS and a good example of unused potential.

She had great potential as a villain too, and I won't lie, I was incredibly disappointed when she was revealed to be just another 'tragic' female character, but even then her 'redemption' or whatever it was that happened with her could have been handled so much better and just feels like a repetition of what we've already seen in this, and even previous arcs: aka, woman has man call out her problems/take care of her problems, she has a realization, her character development is done.

As far as princesses go her character breaks out of the mold a little, admittably, yet her struggles are barely explored, and given how much excitement there was for her to be an actually unexpected female villain after her betrayal of Luffy and Sanji, her suddenly breaking down crying and having that flashback felt incredibly flat and honestly,,,, kinda forced, after everything that happened? Also why did Oda first set up a vague connection between her and Lola, their shared desire of being free, but then,,,, completely switched to making her character all about being insecure about her physical appearance instead? Especially when we get Katakuri later and his position/struggles within the family are, imo, explored a lot more than Pudding's, even though she's had far more screentime and is arguably more important to BM's overall cause.

Eeeeeeeeehhh but I'm ranting again lol there is much to be said about her character, but on how that ties in with her design:

I completely agree on that, Pudding looking the way she does and being referred to as a 'monster' honestly felt like a fucking slap in the face xD I mean even some of her weird '100% human' siblings (Perospero, Opera, whatever the hell Kato is-) look more like monsters than she does. Also in her flashback Pudding was only shown to be bullied by her mother and citizens- (none of her siblings were shown to be involved, they generally seem to turn more of a blind eye when it comes to the abuse from their mother? Which is just as bad tho) but I kept wondering, "which citizen in their right mind would bully the daughter of a fucking Yonko, especially when there are so many other freaky things walking around in Tottoland xD?"

It's blowing my mind and honestly made her backstory even less believable.

The other examples you mentioned are all things I wholeheartedly agree with as well- hhhh Hancock's overplayed 'crush' on Luffy is still something that haunts me whenever it's brought up, the same goes for the unfortunate treatment of Tashigi rip

I absolutely think that Oda is partly influenced by editors, and of course when it comes to female characters, fanservice for future merch must play a big role as well- yet at the same time I can't help but wonder, when every women looks almost identical to the next one, are fans really gonna be that excited about new merch anymore...?

I mean look at this and tell me Robin and Hancock don't look the exact damn same-

My worst issue with how Oda writes women lately is that you can sometimes see what he's going for, what he could be doing, but he hardly carries through anymore and instead reverts to over-used tropes. I was really expecting Komurasaki to be this hardboiled samurai daughter who doesn't take shit from anyone and proudly stands her ground, but then he turned her around and gave us Hiyori, whose interactions with Zoro I can barely watch,,,, and let's not even talk about Toki,,,,

Kiku is like the only female character I care for in Wano so far.

Man I just wish we could have something like Otohime, Bellemere, or pre-TS Robin again :( Who were allowed to be actual characters-

Or a case like Connis, who was first introduced as a maiden-like character but then began questioning what was happening on Skypeia and ultimately had this badass bazooka moment while denouncing Enel hhhh---

#michelle answers things<3 #more one piece criticism #i'm sorry if i came across a bit too strong about pudding but I have lots of negative feelings about her #it's more than ok if you disagree tho! #i don't wanna badmouth anyone's favorite her but hhhh I just personally don't think she was that well-written #more like there were some interesting points behind her character and it was up to the reader to piece the nuances together- #:'D #also #LONG POST

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE SERIES: My Favorite One Piece Arc with RogersBase

  I love One Piece and I love talking to people who love One Piece. And with the series going on 23 years now, there is a whole lot to talk about. As the series is about to publish its 1000th chapter, a true feat in and of itself, we thought we should reflect upon the high-seas adventure and sit down with some notable names in the One Piece fan community and chat about the arcs they found to be especially important, or just ones they really, really liked.

  Welcome to the inaugural article in the series "My Favorite One Piece Arc!"

  My first guest in this series is RogersBase, a Nintendo Brand Ambassador. For my chat with him, he chose the Zou arc, in which Luffy and his crew head to an ancient civilization that sits upon the back of a giant elephant.

  A note on spoilers: If you haven't seen the Zou arc yet, this interview does contain major plot points. Watch the Zou arc starting RIGHT HERE if you'd like to catch up or rewatch!

    Dan Dockery: In one sentence, could you sell me on Zou?

  RogersBase: Okay, here we go — Mystery, romance, and a little bit of the Mammoth Boyz. I think that’s the perfect way to describe the best story arc in the post time skip era of One Piece.

  The best? Really?

  Yeah, by far. For me, at least. 

  Yeah, I feel like post time skip has been a certainly interesting array of storylines. I think my personal favorite is Whole Cake. So much of the back half of it as soon as the wedding goes awry is great, and the entire Katakuri fight is a masterpiece. 

  I think Whole Cake is a totally reasonable answer, and I think you probably like it for the same reasons that I like Zou: the characterization and the drama that isn’t centered around the characters saving a kingdom. The kingdom of Zou has already been destroyed. There’s no saving it at this point. The only thing they want to save is Raizo. So you don’t have to deal with the villain hierarchies and families of say Dressrosa or Wano. And the nice thing about it is that since it’s a shorter, condensed story arc, it really hammers home the motivations of the characters and gives us this terrifying villain that’s not even present for most of the arc.

    I really like Jack. He only appears in a flashback for the most part and he’s a scourge of the kingdom. And then he comes back, only to be hit by that elephant. And that’s one of those things at the beginning of the arc, when I saw this massive thing, I thought “Aw, man. I wanna see what that elephant can do. I hope it hits something” and then IT DOES. I flipped out. It was so satisfying. Did you know that Zou would be your favorite when you finished it?

  Yeah, I think I did. All the arcs up to that point had really high highs, but some of it just didn’t land with me. So to have Oda move away from these long story arcs that end in big one on one fights and go to this shorter, mystery-focused arc: What’s going on with these minks? What’s atop this elephant? Is Raizo still alive? What is The Voice of All Things? What connection does Luffy have to these giant creatures? And with so many great designs and characters, too, with the Minks. It’s really fascinating, and you have bits and pieces that lead up to it, but there’s so much here. 

  I feel like the Minks might be Oda’s purest expression of side characters because he’s playing with all of these animal figures that are both interesting to look at and emotionally evocative. It’s him flexing his muscles as a character artist. And the landscape of Zou as well - It’s beautiful to behold. 

    Especially when you think about the amount of content that’s there in a short amount of chapters or episodes. There’s so much that’s told about the overall world, the Road Poneglyphs, the relationship between the Minks and the Kozuki Family, the Beast Pirates, so much gets touched upon that will expand in later story arcs. There’s beautiful, immediate payoff there and later. 

  It has such a comparatively goofy start, too. They’re climbing this giant elephant on the back of a cartoon dragon that Robin thinks is adorable. And I’m glad she gets a little bit of focus here because, with the Poneglyphs, Zou is a really big set-up arc for Robin. So her role in One Piece’s endgame has exponentially increased. 

  Also, the focus on characterization. In earlier, post timeskip arcs, you have these epic clashes that take down kingdoms, but here you get a cute moment with Robin. It’s so refreshing to see her in a natural element where she’s comfortable.

    What did you think of the Mink tribe’s living situation? The giant white whale tree and the treehouses and all. Do you have any favorite parts of Oda’s worldbuilding here? Not just as a story designer, but as someone who crafts actual places where races and species can live.

  It’s cool to see the animals he chooses for the Minks, and how he constructs the power structure and who controls the land at what time, with the dog during the day and the cat at night. The big pineapple trees and the ruins that you see in the Jack flashback, he created a full-blown, believable civilization. It’s always a pleasure to see Oda working in jungle vegetation-type areas. He really excels in this in Skypiea and in his color spreads. So it seems like Zou is something that he’s wanted to do for a while. And how much effort he puts into it is why you feel so attached to the Minks at the end.

  That’s really cool. There are a ton of anime side character animals, like Kakashi’s pet dogs and the little animals that hang out with Goku and pals, but Oda really lets loose here with a whole species. And as you said, we should’ve kinda seen it coming with all the work he’s done with anthropomorphic animals. But then, you have the big Jack flashback. And the stereotype of the One Piece flashback is “Oh boy, it’s ‘bout to get sad.” But Zou’s feels like an epic piece of mythology, and Jack is just this being of pure cruelty without any kind of sad backstory. How did you feel about it? Did it surpass your expectations?

    Oh, absolutely! To see a character as violent and ruthless as Jack was something needed, I think. He’s an overall threat, not goofy. And his Devil Fruit is fascinating, as you finally see the return of the Prehistoric Zoan type fruit after you last saw it with Drake turning into an Allosaurus. So it’s cool to not only see that Jack can turn into a Woolly Mammoth, but it’s a Woolly Mammoth fighting on top of a giant elephant. And with the way he gets teased leading up to his appearance in the flashback, I remember thinking “How cool would it be if there was a Woolly Mammoth fruit!” and sure enough, there it is! Jack feels like a fulfillment of the promise of the New World — It’s not going to be a cakewalk. Your opponents will be devastating and Jack is so determined, coming because he knows Raizo’s there and then coming back because he STILL KNOWS Raizo is there. He’s like “You can tell me all you want that he’s not here, but I know, and I will crucify you and cut off your limbs. I don’t know why you’re trying to defend this one ninja, but I know he’s here.”

  Zou is kind of a double feature. We have Raizo and the Minks and the lore, but we also have the stuff that leads to Whole Cake with Sanj and Capone. Now, I see Sanji’s whole arc here sometimes referred to as Robin 2.0, because it’s a lot like Enies Lobby on the surface. Guy gets taken by the bad guys and is like “Don’t follow me because they’ll kill you, etc.” That’s always felt a little hollow to me because Sanji is not Robin and they don’t have the same motivation.

  No, absolutely. And I’m glad you mentioned it because it’s phenomenal how well Zou has aged. They manage to give these characterization moments to Robin and Sanji and the crew while introducing all this stuff and managing to make us care about all of it. There are people that are like “I can’t wait for Carrot to officially join the crew,” and it all stems from this story arc. 

    In terms of characters that get done so well that even though their time with you is brief, they still stick with you for a long time, I think a good example is Pedro. He joins everyone and he’s this stoic, mentor figure, a character type that usually doesn't fare so well when it comes to surviving anime series intact. And obviously, RIP Pedro. But it’s a testament to what you’re talking about because he just joins the crew and you’re like “Yeah, sure. Gimme fifty more chapters of him.”

  He’s got this cool eye patch, he has a beef with Big Mom, he knows about the world. And he’s the one who’s sort of the most hesitant to trust the Straw Hats at first after the disaster with Jack and all. But by the ending, he knows that the Straw Hats are the guys that he’s been waiting for. This is the crew that will bring upon that new dawn. And we haven’t even talked about Pekoms yet! He has those ties to Big Mom and to Bepo and to Zou and to Pedro and to Capone, who shoots him. 

  What do you think of the Poneglyph system? It’s both indicative of the Straw Hat endgame, but it isn’t like this magic map. What do you think of it as kind of a quest marker?

  It’s great because you learn that there are a definite few that mean something and that they’re all being held at various places that are run by Emperors. So trying to find them gives you an actual reason to fight these Emperors of the Sea and heading into their territories. They don’t really need to be fighting Kaido in the grand scheme of things, but the Poneglyphs add to the direction of the series. 

  ONE PIECE LIGHTNING ROUND!

  Favorite character?

  Trafalgar D. Water Law.

  Favorite Straw Hat?

  I go back and forth between three, but Sanji.

  Favorite villain?

  Doflamingo.

  If you could live on any One Piece island, where would you call home?

  Dressrosa without Doflamingo would actually be pretty nice.

  Favorite One Piece fight?

  Luffy vs Lucci.

  One Piece moment that made you sob the most?

  “Raizo is safe!” I was so overwhelmed with emotion, seeing the resolve of the Minks.

  One Piece moment that made you cheer the loudest?

  Sabo getting the Flare-Flare Fruit in Dressrosa.

      Stay tuned for the next installment of "My Favorite One Piece Arc" as we speak with Official One Piece Columnist for Shueisha and Toei Greg Warner about his favorite One Piece arc: Arlong Park!!

      Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

By: Daniel Dockery

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!