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If Shanks is the final villain, I'm 100% onboard with Sanji vs Beckman, Zoro vs Mihawk.

Do you think Shanks will be a villain, or just an antagonist?
Antagonist. I don't think One Piece will end with the typical "Luffy beats evil bad guy" trope. It's going to alot heavier than that. Blackbeard, Akainu, and even Im (with what little we know about), seem to be absolutely pure villains who need to get their faces kicked in. They will be epic. They will happen towards the climax, but imo they are not the endgame antagonist.


A big reason imo for this is the following:

- Shanks has been around since Chapter 1. None of the others have.
- Oda has planned the ending since before he began. This can suggest he knew who Luffy's final obstacle would be. There's actually nothing indicating Blackbeard was conceived as a character before the series began. But we have Shanks.
- Shanks provides a huge emotional closure that the other villains cannot provide. If he's an antagonist, he 100% can't be all bad. He ended the war at Marineford. He saved Luffy. He clearly is a "good" person in a sense.
- However, there's so much we don't know about the character, and it's seemingly on purpose. Chapter 907 is extremely key in Oda letting us know to truly start question Shanks as a character. It is totally a narrative technique to let you, the reader, know something is clearly off or wrong about his character.
- Luffy plans on fighting him anyway, as long as he wasn't "first"
- Oda did say the ending will be bitter sweet.


Tldr: Shanks provides a far bigger emotional closure to the series than any other known enemy can. He brings the series full circle. Not Blackbeard. Not Akainu. Not Im. Not anyone else.
 
Luffy using haki and defending with all he had
The deal is that for 80% of the fight, Luffy didn't used haki to protect himself, he just ate everything.

Cracker could barely scratch Luffy and do significant damage, and Luffy was fine after that fight, to the point where he instantly got up on his feet and ran (and he ate a lot of Cracker's biscuits, so it may have helped him even more).

Sanji did what he did in seconds

Katakuri needed hours and only achieved it with "Zangiri Mochi", most of the time was all about Katakuri completely free hitting Luffy like a punchbag.
 
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