Current Events Do Unearned Powerups Destroy Tension In Storytelling?
- Thread starter Elder Lee Hung
- Start date
copium,sandai and wado were given to zoro and shusui itself wants to belong to zoro, you're coping cause oda ruined sanji
Zoro chose the sword himself and tamed it on the spot, by challenging its curse.
The vendor was impressed and didn't charge for the sword, then presented him the YUBASHIRI.
Shussui was also "conquered" by defeating Zombie Ryuma and being "acknowledged" by it.
Wado was the only one actually "given" for free. Saying that the other 2 were "given" like Wado or Yubashiri were is plain disrespectful.
Sandai>>>>>>>>all.
Best scene.
It's pretty surprising to me how many people read One Piece for the fights, when it's easily the weakest part of the story. And that's because it's not about the fights.
They are often just a vehicle to progress the plot, a battle of wills more than anything else. There's a reason why even characters who aren't combat oriented (like Usopp, Robin, Nami) end up in fights and get their asses kicked. Then suddenly they shout that they believe in their friends/Luffy will become the pirate king, and somehow come out on top by the end.
It's to show that they have a greater conviction in their dream, and a more righteous goal than their (typically) sleezebag opponent. It's not about who can punch harder or who put in more time training in the hyperbolic time chamber or conjured the perfect nen beast after maintaining Ryou for 16 hours.
Sanji is one of the few combat oriented Strawhats and - what a shocker - even he's just the ship's cook! After we just got an entire arc centered around Sanji's personal conflict and growth, it absolutely blows my mind that people are still expecting some sort of training arc to show how his Diable Jambe got 5 degrees hotter.
Maybe, follow me for a second, this arc isn't just about some war. It's also about the burden of inherited will. Momo being forced to live up to his father's image, when he is a coward and a weakling - having to sacrifice decades of his life just to be useful. Yamato being the daughter of Kaido, wanting to be like Oden but simultaneously not wanting to be the Shogun because that's what her father, Oden's murderer, wants for her. No wonder she got along with Ace, a guy who was executed for being Roger's son - executed for the crime of existing. And Luffy inherited that from him, having to shoulder the burden of an entire country simply because Ace could never return to fulfill his promise. Robin, the Ohara demon, having to come to terms with her past and embrace the image of a demon that people place on her. Was this some asspull, too, just because we didn't watch her train Demonio with the Revs for 10 chapters?
And now Sanji. A guy who hates his family lineage, who doesn't want to be associated with Judge. But in order to save others he is forced to use his raid suit - his father's creation. At every possible turn people refer to him as Stealth Black, one of the Germa, son of Judge. It happened in this exact chapter, where he's even fighting a former colleague of his father's. No matter how much he runs away from it, he benefits from being a Vinsmoke. And now he's truly becoming a monster like his siblings, all because of something completely out of his control.
The whole point of this is that you can't run away from who you are. You can't escape your fate. You have to embrace it and turn it into something positive, make it your own. It's not about some highly intricate kung fu powerup that Sanji spent 2 years learning with the Okama to master. It's about destiny. This was already laid out in plain English right at the beginning of the story, remember?
They are often just a vehicle to progress the plot, a battle of wills more than anything else. There's a reason why even characters who aren't combat oriented (like Usopp, Robin, Nami) end up in fights and get their asses kicked. Then suddenly they shout that they believe in their friends/Luffy will become the pirate king, and somehow come out on top by the end.
It's to show that they have a greater conviction in their dream, and a more righteous goal than their (typically) sleezebag opponent. It's not about who can punch harder or who put in more time training in the hyperbolic time chamber or conjured the perfect nen beast after maintaining Ryou for 16 hours.
Sanji is one of the few combat oriented Strawhats and - what a shocker - even he's just the ship's cook! After we just got an entire arc centered around Sanji's personal conflict and growth, it absolutely blows my mind that people are still expecting some sort of training arc to show how his Diable Jambe got 5 degrees hotter.
Maybe, follow me for a second, this arc isn't just about some war. It's also about the burden of inherited will. Momo being forced to live up to his father's image, when he is a coward and a weakling - having to sacrifice decades of his life just to be useful. Yamato being the daughter of Kaido, wanting to be like Oden but simultaneously not wanting to be the Shogun because that's what her father, Oden's murderer, wants for her. No wonder she got along with Ace, a guy who was executed for being Roger's son - executed for the crime of existing. And Luffy inherited that from him, having to shoulder the burden of an entire country simply because Ace could never return to fulfill his promise. Robin, the Ohara demon, having to come to terms with her past and embrace the image of a demon that people place on her. Was this some asspull, too, just because we didn't watch her train Demonio with the Revs for 10 chapters?
And now Sanji. A guy who hates his family lineage, who doesn't want to be associated with Judge. But in order to save others he is forced to use his raid suit - his father's creation. At every possible turn people refer to him as Stealth Black, one of the Germa, son of Judge. It happened in this exact chapter, where he's even fighting a former colleague of his father's. No matter how much he runs away from it, he benefits from being a Vinsmoke. And now he's truly becoming a monster like his siblings, all because of something completely out of his control.
I think OP concerns are directly related to some of narrative choices of the author. These imo further adds up to what make PU asspulls or bad.
For Zoro he seems to just manage everything when he tries to. Be it Advance CoA haki, Ryou, Advance CoC, or fire cutting he can do all like just snapping the finger. Infact he goes on perma scar Kaidou that's like a feat previously only managed by Oden in the Manga. Since he didn't struggle much it feels like Oda's crediting much of his growth to Timeskip training, which do make sense since Mihawk himself trained him. But put it side by side to Luffy it bring out the previous differences more. If one character can manage it well without any big PUs and second despite many PUs manages nothing solid it look bad. Probably why fans don't find Luffy interesting anymore.
And it's just not Zoro. Law also managed it well on the roof despite no visible growth, bt i guess his df make sense. Kid n Killer did too. Even Red Scabbards like Kinnemon were hurting Kaidou and not get one shot like Luffy. That overall look bad honestly.
For Sanji it seems like Oda just manage to take the right bad decisions with his PUs despite taking an arc and family backstory. RS should have never been handed to him, had him awaken Exoskeleton on his own terms that would have been the Best step for the character.
- First mistake would be Luffy struggles Post Ts. Oda had him go all out against much weaker characters (almost fodders in comparison to what he's up against now)... to fighting WSC in few weeks time. It would have been consistent if it felt like Luffy came out of ts quite strong and some training n Pu make up the difference he needed to fight the Top tiers. Since Rayleigh trained him it made sense, like it does with Zoro.
- But Luffy had to go to extreme limits, needed blood transfusion, rest for nights after these fights. Alright maybe Oda had to hype all arcs. But what narrative choices legit make Luffy struggle against fodders like Holdem, Monet and Batman??
- You see even after all that Ryou training and stuff in Udon,.. Oda had Luffy need G4 for Ulti, a F6 group member who in the end were trashed by mid trio SHs in one chapter in questionable anticlimactic manner. How at this rate Oda planned on selling this man can 1vs 1 WSC to his audience? He can't, he was just pushing himself in the corner.
- Another example... Luffy struggles for dozen hours against SCs.. Fight heated battles for 11 hours against both Cracker n Katakuri preparing himself for Yonkou.... but then you have him get one shot first thing in Wano despite all the growth and development in WCI arc making it all irrelevant.
- Alright m... Maybe Kaidou was just so strong. But then you have everyone and their mother/son perform well against Kaidou on the Rooftop. I mean wtf Oda's smoking. He's discrediting his own MC so much.
- Luffy has been piling up PUs on PUs and still managing nothing solid. That gives the impression Luffy was no match for Kaidou without countless PUs against Kaidou.
- It help hype Kaidou up but destroys the writing. I mean why have him fight the WSC at all before Top Tiers if he wasn't ready at all? This is utter shit writing and make power up look like asspulls to make the MC do the impossible.
For Zoro he seems to just manage everything when he tries to. Be it Advance CoA haki, Ryou, Advance CoC, or fire cutting he can do all like just snapping the finger. Infact he goes on perma scar Kaidou that's like a feat previously only managed by Oden in the Manga. Since he didn't struggle much it feels like Oda's crediting much of his growth to Timeskip training, which do make sense since Mihawk himself trained him. But put it side by side to Luffy it bring out the previous differences more. If one character can manage it well without any big PUs and second despite many PUs manages nothing solid it look bad. Probably why fans don't find Luffy interesting anymore.
And it's just not Zoro. Law also managed it well on the roof despite no visible growth, bt i guess his df make sense. Kid n Killer did too. Even Red Scabbards like Kinnemon were hurting Kaidou and not get one shot like Luffy. That overall look bad honestly.
For Sanji it seems like Oda just manage to take the right bad decisions with his PUs despite taking an arc and family backstory. RS should have never been handed to him, had him awaken Exoskeleton on his own terms that would have been the Best step for the character.
For some reason, I had a feeling that Kingdom was going to be apart of your response, Lol. Not for nothing though, but you can't really compare a hyper realistic Shonen series like Kingdom, to a Fantasy Shonen like One Piece. The tropes differ dramatically between the two.
Point 1: Luffy has always been that muscular. For some dumb reason, Oda only highlights it under certain circumstances. That's not something that happened from lifting heavy objects during Udon, Lol.
Point 2: That's not Luffy's character to just constantly train to get stronger. If Luffy had been written that way from the beginning, then I'd agree that it would be pretty nonsensical for him to waste time doing other things, and only train to get stronger when he knows he needs to.
Luffy's character however, is all about figuring out how to best defeat his opponents. That is how he was written from the beginning. So when he fought Kaido for the first time, he realized that in order to defeat him, he has to do damage to him internally, because external damage from a fighter of his nature won't cut it. Even then, it was a coin flip as to whether or not it would even work. So in the one instance Luffy did decide to train (Outside of the time skip) he did it as a gamble. Which is another character trait of his, of leaving things up to fate. Did he learn it pretty quickly? Sure, but that just comes with the territory of Fantasy Shonen.
Point 3: The main gripe I have with AdCoC is the fact that it is just an offshoot of the same principle of AdCoA. Oda could have definitely handled that aspect differently. As far as Luffy's level in CoC goes, it is consistent with him being a CoC specialist. He has always had an abnormally high level of willpower. That's not something that just came out of nowhere. Even preskip, his willpower shit all over Veteran Pirates who'd been around for decades. It's not something that can be trained. You either have it, or you don't, and Luffy's always had it. Even in Impel Down, when Ivankov said Luffy recovering is dependent on his willpower, and even then it would take no less than three days to recover, Luffy did it in less than a day. It just goes to show how massive his willpower has always been.
Point 1: Luffy has always been that muscular. For some dumb reason, Oda only highlights it under certain circumstances. That's not something that happened from lifting heavy objects during Udon, Lol.
Point 2: That's not Luffy's character to just constantly train to get stronger. If Luffy had been written that way from the beginning, then I'd agree that it would be pretty nonsensical for him to waste time doing other things, and only train to get stronger when he knows he needs to.
Luffy's character however, is all about figuring out how to best defeat his opponents. That is how he was written from the beginning. So when he fought Kaido for the first time, he realized that in order to defeat him, he has to do damage to him internally, because external damage from a fighter of his nature won't cut it. Even then, it was a coin flip as to whether or not it would even work. So in the one instance Luffy did decide to train (Outside of the time skip) he did it as a gamble. Which is another character trait of his, of leaving things up to fate. Did he learn it pretty quickly? Sure, but that just comes with the territory of Fantasy Shonen.
Point 3: The main gripe I have with AdCoC is the fact that it is just an offshoot of the same principle of AdCoA. Oda could have definitely handled that aspect differently. As far as Luffy's level in CoC goes, it is consistent with him being a CoC specialist. He has always had an abnormally high level of willpower. That's not something that just came out of nowhere. Even preskip, his willpower shit all over Veteran Pirates who'd been around for decades. It's not something that can be trained. You either have it, or you don't, and Luffy's always had it. Even in Impel Down, when Ivankov said Luffy recovering is dependent on his willpower, and even then it would take no less than three days to recover, Luffy did it in less than a day. It just goes to show how massive his willpower has always been.
Funny how he is talking about Zoro's "asspull" yet he doesn't mention Luffy's gears, his FS, ACoC mid fight thru a flashback or Sanji with his DJ, hard skin, Raid suit and him being basically born with tech in mind to be a warrior. Combining a OP slander and a Zoro slander thread in one. Good job ngl.
It's pretty surprising to me how many people read One Piece for the fights, when it's easily the weakest part of the story. And that's because it's not about the fights.
They are often just a vehicle to progress the plot, a battle of wills more than anything else. There's a reason why even characters who aren't combat oriented (like Usopp, Robin, Nami) end up in fights and get their asses kicked. Then suddenly they shout that they believe in their friends/Luffy will become the pirate king, and somehow come out on top by the end.
It's to show that they have a greater conviction in their dream, and a more righteous goal than their (typically) sleezebag opponent. It's not about who can punch harder or who put in more time training in the hyperbolic time chamber or conjured the perfect nen beast after maintaining Ryou for 16 hours.
Sanji is one of the few combat oriented Strawhats and - what a shocker - even he's just the ship's cook! After we just got an entire arc centered around Sanji's personal conflict and growth, it absolutely blows my mind that people are still expecting some sort of training arc to show how his Diable Jambe got 5 degrees hotter.
Maybe, follow me for a second, this arc isn't just about some war. It's also about the burden of inherited will. Momo being forced to live up to his father's image, when he is a coward and a weakling - having to sacrifice decades of his life just to be useful. Yamato being the daughter of Kaido, wanting to be like Oden but simultaneously not wanting to be the Shogun because that's what her father, Oden's murderer, wants for her. No wonder she got along with Ace, a guy who was executed for being Roger's son - executed for the crime of existing. And Luffy inherited that from him, having to shoulder the burden of an entire country simply because Ace could never return to fulfill his promise. Robin, the Ohara demon, having to come to terms with her past and embrace the image of a demon that people place on her. Was this some asspull, too, just because we didn't watch her train Demonio with the Revs for 10 chapters?
And now Sanji. A guy who hates his family lineage, who doesn't want to be associated with Judge. But in order to save others he is forced to use his raid suit - his father's creation. At every possible turn people refer to him as Stealth Black, one of the Germa, son of Judge. It happened in this exact chapter, where he's even fighting a former colleague of his father's. No matter how much he runs away from it, he benefits from being a Vinsmoke. And now he's truly becoming a monster like his siblings, all because of something completely out of his control.
The whole point of this is that you can't run away from who you are. You can't escape your fate. You have to embrace it and turn it into something positive, make it your own. It's not about some highly intricate kung fu powerup that Sanji spent 2 years learning with the Okama to master. It's about destiny. This was already laid out in plain English right at the beginning of the story, remember?
They are often just a vehicle to progress the plot, a battle of wills more than anything else. There's a reason why even characters who aren't combat oriented (like Usopp, Robin, Nami) end up in fights and get their asses kicked. Then suddenly they shout that they believe in their friends/Luffy will become the pirate king, and somehow come out on top by the end.
It's to show that they have a greater conviction in their dream, and a more righteous goal than their (typically) sleezebag opponent. It's not about who can punch harder or who put in more time training in the hyperbolic time chamber or conjured the perfect nen beast after maintaining Ryou for 16 hours.
Sanji is one of the few combat oriented Strawhats and - what a shocker - even he's just the ship's cook! After we just got an entire arc centered around Sanji's personal conflict and growth, it absolutely blows my mind that people are still expecting some sort of training arc to show how his Diable Jambe got 5 degrees hotter.
Maybe, follow me for a second, this arc isn't just about some war. It's also about the burden of inherited will. Momo being forced to live up to his father's image, when he is a coward and a weakling - having to sacrifice decades of his life just to be useful. Yamato being the daughter of Kaido, wanting to be like Oden but simultaneously not wanting to be the Shogun because that's what her father, Oden's murderer, wants for her. No wonder she got along with Ace, a guy who was executed for being Roger's son - executed for the crime of existing. And Luffy inherited that from him, having to shoulder the burden of an entire country simply because Ace could never return to fulfill his promise. Robin, the Ohara demon, having to come to terms with her past and embrace the image of a demon that people place on her. Was this some asspull, too, just because we didn't watch her train Demonio with the Revs for 10 chapters?
And now Sanji. A guy who hates his family lineage, who doesn't want to be associated with Judge. But in order to save others he is forced to use his raid suit - his father's creation. At every possible turn people refer to him as Stealth Black, one of the Germa, son of Judge. It happened in this exact chapter, where he's even fighting a former colleague of his father's. No matter how much he runs away from it, he benefits from being a Vinsmoke. And now he's truly becoming a monster like his siblings, all because of something completely out of his control.
I mean I am not surprised wg hated this as orojackson back then also hated wci because sanji get 0 powerup there. This seems to be the ceiling of their brain.
You can compare them to show the difference between an author who has meticulously planned his characters’ power escalation hundreds of chapters in advance (Hara), and an author who is quite literally making this shit up as he goes along and openly admits in interviews that he creates characters that Luffy will defeat while also having no idea how Luffy is going to beat them (Oda). Oda literally said that he had no idea how Luffy was going to beat Kaido when he introduced Kaido.
A series being fantasy or not has nothing to do with your ability to plan a characters’ development and power escalation in detail from the start. I get that OP was originally supposed to only be a 5 year manga and was artificially extended due to its popularity, but looking at a series like Kingdom, it’s clear from literal chapter 1 that Hara planned for the series to be a thousand chapter behemoth and knew exactly how the series was going to end and how he was going to get there. He literally drew Great General Shin in Chapter 1 of Kingdom so that we could see the massively epic character Shin would eventually become.
Meanwhile, I guarantee you Oda knew nothing about the power of his top tiers in early or even mid One Piece. Oda always holding back the full power of his characters might give him the appearance of someone simply saving the biggest feats for the end of the series, but the truth is that Oda has no idea what the power escalation in One Piece would look like even as far in as Marineford, where no characters showed colored Haki or Haki on the level we’re seeing now in spite of the fact that we saw top tier characters fighting at Marineford. Oda even confirmed in interviews before that he did not know how Shanks would actually fight. How do you make someone an Emperor without knowing what actually makes them strong? “Shanks is popular, I’ll make it up later!” Oda is starting to sound a lot like Toriyama who was making DBZ up week by week and had no idea what he was doing with the story.
Again, transition over to Kingdom, and we literally see the incredible full strength of a Great General in the very first war arc that we participate in. Hara knew, with exact precision, how strong his top tiers would be and how strong Shin would become, and planned this shit years in advance.
If Oda actually planned his Powerups out ahead instead of just making them up in the exact arc that he introduces them, OP would appear less of an ass pull fest being made up on the spot, and more like Oda is actually the foreshadowing genius that idiots think he is.
I have mentioned all of this about Luffy before. Luffy is the King of ass pull Powerups and Oda hands him victories he doesn’t deserve all the time. I didn’t want to repeat myself in this OP, anybody who’s followed my threads knows how hard I’ve been on Luffy the Pirate Christ lol.
A series being fantasy or not has nothing to do with your ability to plan a characters’ development and power escalation in detail from the start. I get that OP was originally supposed to only be a 5 year manga and was artificially extended due to its popularity, but looking at a series like Kingdom, it’s clear from literal chapter 1 that Hara planned for the series to be a thousand chapter behemoth and knew exactly how the series was going to end and how he was going to get there. He literally drew Great General Shin in Chapter 1 of Kingdom so that we could see the massively epic character Shin would eventually become.
Meanwhile, I guarantee you Oda knew nothing about the power of his top tiers in early or even mid One Piece. Oda always holding back the full power of his characters might give him the appearance of someone simply saving the biggest feats for the end of the series, but the truth is that Oda has no idea what the power escalation in One Piece would look like even as far in as Marineford, where no characters showed colored Haki or Haki on the level we’re seeing now in spite of the fact that we saw top tier characters fighting at Marineford. Oda even confirmed in interviews before that he did not know how Shanks would actually fight. How do you make someone an Emperor without knowing what actually makes them strong? “Shanks is popular, I’ll make it up later!” Oda is starting to sound a lot like Toriyama who was making DBZ up week by week and had no idea what he was doing with the story.
Again, transition over to Kingdom, and we literally see the incredible full strength of a Great General in the very first war arc that we participate in. Hara knew, with exact precision, how strong his top tiers would be and how strong Shin would become, and planned this shit years in advance.
If Oda actually planned his Powerups out ahead instead of just making them up in the exact arc that he introduces them, OP would appear less of an ass pull fest being made up on the spot, and more like Oda is actually the foreshadowing genius that idiots think he is.
I have mentioned all of this about Luffy before. Luffy is the King of ass pull Powerups and Oda hands him victories he doesn’t deserve all the time. I didn’t want to repeat myself in this OP, anybody who’s followed my threads knows how hard I’ve been on Luffy the Pirate Christ lol.
Sun Tzu’s name had never even appeared within Kingdom until the late chapter 600s where one of his relatives was being discussed lol. This comment was written by someone who has not read Kingdom.
No Shonen ever written has better art than Kingdom, especially not One Piece lol.
Mid-level Kingdom Art:
Modern One Piece art:
No Shonen ever written has better art than Kingdom, especially not One Piece lol.
Mid-level Kingdom Art:
Modern One Piece art: