Please explain with examples from the rooftop (if possible) what you mean by scaling with portrayal vs scaling with feats.
Portrayal is gauging how strong a character should be based on narrative indications (a super basic example is - will the villain face the SHs now or later - later antagonists in shonen tend to be stronger).
For instance, Dragon is more or less totally featless but we ALL know that he’s most likely very powerful based on 1) being saved for later 2) being the Mc’s dad 3) etc.
An example of using portrayal
over feats is Crocodile. We know that he technically lost to pre-gear Luffy, but most assume he’s likely much stronger than that (comparable to a Tobiroppo perhaps) despite his feats because him being a warlord wouldn’t really make sense otherwise.
Folks like myself who have been saying for
over a decade that admirals were likely significantly more powerful than commanders and comparable to Yonko based it on the fact that they were clearly being saved for later in the story. Thus we are totally unsurprised by this chapter while lots of people who scale primarily based on feats alone are caught off guard.
Basically, fights serve the story, not the other way around.
Edit:
Sorry I didn’t mention the rooftop I got carried away.
