So overall, I’m not upset at the fights with the All Stars. But I do think Oda could’ve made them better with a little more groundwork.
Since the mystery surrounding King’s race was a large part of this fight, Oda really should’ve had King replace Denjiro in Act 2 against Zoro. Just a chapter of Zoro hitting a brick wall and establishing King’s unique properties and giving Zoro proper time to dwell on it and come up with counters. It also establishes a tangible goal for Zoro going into the raid with gives us readers a bit of an expectation / hype to look forward to.
You could even do a bit of foot work with Queen vs Sanji. Have Page1 name drop Queen as sentencing the residents of the Flower Capital to death — as he was technically sent by Queen. Reinforce this by having Page1 repeat that O’Soba Sanji has been targeted by an All Star. Add in Queen’s later Germa connections and you could get some real animosity here for Sanji.
No large changes to the story but something to give the Straw Hat Wings and All Stars fight a little more depth. A simple set up goes a long way.
Completely agree. This goes for most of the fights, Killer's on top of my mind:
- Remove Hawkins from the bath house scene (Soba Mask) and make him appear a few chapters later right after the battle with Zorojuro. Just 2 pages of Hawkins looking at senseless Kamazo on the ground and dropping an arrogant comment about the man's misfortune, then ordering his subordinates to contact one of the Calamity and send him in Udon. Then drop the bomb a few chapters later that the man Hawkins was despising and Kidd was currently crying for was Killer!
- During Killer's 1 panel flashback in Onigashima, when he remembers Orochi handing him the SMILE, could've been given one page of Hawkins coming to see Killer in his jail and bringing Orochi's offer.. handing the SMILE to Killer with his own hands this way.
Now I liked how Killer vs Hawkins went and I'm generally satisfied with most of the fights (Zoro vs King, Sanji vs Queen etc...) but still some little changes/details like the two I mentioned would've increased the hype and the bloodlust of the reader in seeing the Alliance member winning while barely changing the story if not changing it at all. This is true for most of the fights in Onigashima and the root of the problem is always the same: Oda wasting to many panels on the National Prodigees (Tama, Scabbards etc...)