Character Discussion Wealth, Fame, Power. The Original Trio
- Thread starter ThunderSupernova
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I mean you can talk about Namis importance all you want, but no one can deny the fact that a single Sanji panel brings more hype to the fandom than five Nami chapters.....and you don't have to admit it, it's just the truth. Oda chose Sanji to Captain Nami, Oda chose Sanji to be the Wing, Oda chose Sanji to be the star along side Zoro, Oda chose Sanji to be the only strawhat with an arc post-skip and Oda chose Sanji and Zoro to be the first ones to meet Luffy after the 2 year skip; you can call all these insignificant if you want but remember that all of those are in story recent events, while you go along quoting and posting things from 20 plus years ago and a single post-skip cover page.
Analyze where you're deriving Namis importance and where you can derive Sanjis then you'll realize that Nami is just holding a honorary seat with no power to it because of a statement from a young Oda. You can take Nami out of Wano and nothing changes, but Sanji is essential; this isn't me hating on her either, I adore the original five, they are the soul of this series but I won't just pretend like Nami and Ussop have had any true importance (post-skip), they are held up by statements while Luffy, Zoro and Sanji are held up by action and one or two moments in a decade is not a strong point to argue.
Oda has underutilized Ussop and Nami to an unforgivable degree and it's fine to admit that; and yes maybe Oda will attempt to rectify that in the last two arcs but is that going to mean the irrelevance of Sanji?....no, all the strawhats will have more focus near the finale of the series and a bit more focus on Nami and Ussop wont just erase a decade of neglect. Oda has become incapable of keeping weak characters relevant in a story that's been increasingly about power and fights, look at the most important and relevant characters post-skip and you'll see that power follows them, this is a common trap mangakas fall into, Kishimoto fell into it aswell, look how he butchered anyone that wasn't a all powerful God incarnate, characters with tons of promise like Rock Lee, Shikamaru and Neji became nothing, relegated to cheerleaders and looking at the strawhats you'll find the same thing has happened with anyone that isn't a power house. Authors do this because its easy, why ring your brain dry trying to fit in quality moments for weak characters when you can get the same applause for just having powerful cool character A beat powerful cool character B, then that becomes the method the author relies on when he/she sees how easy and effective it is and since most Shonen authors also fall into the issue of drastic power escalation, that'll eliminate the significance of anyone that can't realistically keep up and characters like Ussop and Nami then need a thousand and one miracles to logically do anything of significance in a war involving dozens of characters capable of killing them with ease, this problem is inescapable unless you have a sophisticated grounded power system which Oda doesn't.
The story of One piece will continue to revolve more and more around power and fights and anything that isn't won't be connected majorly to the main cast and so the only hope the others have of being relevant is if Oda conjures up some side plot for them to be involved in, like Chopper with the ice oni virus, which was just something Oda had on a must do check list because he knew Chopper wasn't going to contribute in any other way in the war and even that plot was rushed and handled with little care. All this is to say that yes Nami and Ussop are just as important as Luffy, Zoro and Sanji, but they are tadpoles in a sea of beasts and no matter how important we SAY they are it doesn't mean anything until Oda takes the time to make them noticeable in a manner that feels authentic and not contrived/forced.
Analyze where you're deriving Namis importance and where you can derive Sanjis then you'll realize that Nami is just holding a honorary seat with no power to it because of a statement from a young Oda. You can take Nami out of Wano and nothing changes, but Sanji is essential; this isn't me hating on her either, I adore the original five, they are the soul of this series but I won't just pretend like Nami and Ussop have had any true importance (post-skip), they are held up by statements while Luffy, Zoro and Sanji are held up by action and one or two moments in a decade is not a strong point to argue.
Oda has underutilized Ussop and Nami to an unforgivable degree and it's fine to admit that; and yes maybe Oda will attempt to rectify that in the last two arcs but is that going to mean the irrelevance of Sanji?....no, all the strawhats will have more focus near the finale of the series and a bit more focus on Nami and Ussop wont just erase a decade of neglect. Oda has become incapable of keeping weak characters relevant in a story that's been increasingly about power and fights, look at the most important and relevant characters post-skip and you'll see that power follows them, this is a common trap mangakas fall into, Kishimoto fell into it aswell, look how he butchered anyone that wasn't a all powerful God incarnate, characters with tons of promise like Rock Lee, Shikamaru and Neji became nothing, relegated to cheerleaders and looking at the strawhats you'll find the same thing has happened with anyone that isn't a power house. Authors do this because its easy, why ring your brain dry trying to fit in quality moments for weak characters when you can get the same applause for just having powerful cool character A beat powerful cool character B, then that becomes the method the author relies on when he/she sees how easy and effective it is and since most Shonen authors also fall into the issue of drastic power escalation, that'll eliminate the significance of anyone that can't realistically keep up and characters like Ussop and Nami then need a thousand and one miracles to logically do anything of significance in a war involving dozens of characters capable of killing them with ease, this problem is inescapable unless you have a sophisticated grounded power system which Oda doesn't.
The story of One piece will continue to revolve more and more around power and fights and anything that isn't won't be connected majorly to the main cast and so the only hope the others have of being relevant is if Oda conjures up some side plot for them to be involved in, like Chopper with the ice oni virus, which was just something Oda had on a must do check list because he knew Chopper wasn't going to contribute in any other way in the war and even that plot was rushed and handled with little care. All this is to say that yes Nami and Ussop are just as important as Luffy, Zoro and Sanji, but they are tadpoles in a sea of beasts and no matter how important we SAY they are it doesn't mean anything until Oda takes the time to make them noticeable in a manner that feels authentic and not contrived/forced.
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I feel like you definitely could make the argument that Nami is one of the most important One Piece characters in a lot of ways, but the reason the argument here is bad is that it just boils down to "muh OG trio," without any reasoning beyond that. Yeah some Strawhats do get more focus than others, but the idea that there's a "main" trio is just something that you're taking for granted, especially since the focus each individual Strawhat gets varies a lot from arc to arc. For example, Zoro is the Strawhat with the most focus in Wano, but in Dressrosa he was arguably less relevant than Usopp and Franky.
Like, if you wanted to argue that Nami was one of the more important characters, there are legitimate points that could be made such as how she's the Strawhat who's the most different from Luffy or how her storyline exemplified the theme of freedom more obviously than anyone else in the East Blue crew minus Luffy or how she was the only Strawhat shown in the color spread for chapter 1. But nah "muh OG trio" because this is really just a thinly-veiled Zoro vs Sanji post
Like, if you wanted to argue that Nami was one of the more important characters, there are legitimate points that could be made such as how she's the Strawhat who's the most different from Luffy or how her storyline exemplified the theme of freedom more obviously than anyone else in the East Blue crew minus Luffy or how she was the only Strawhat shown in the color spread for chapter 1. But nah "muh OG trio" because this is really just a thinly-veiled Zoro vs Sanji post
