Dude, you keep arguing over semantics. It is 100% a semantics argument because you keep using the technical definition of plagiarism when I already gave you my definition of what I meant.
Yeah, I use the "technical definition of plagiarism" because, unlike you who are afraid of "arguing over semantics", semantics are fundamental to distinguish what is or isn't plagiarism. Which, again, is why homage, reference, adaptation, archetype, satire... and plagiarism are very different things.
"Without copying intention" it doesn't matter what his intentions are, it is still copying. He can have all the good intentions he wants that doesn't mean he didn't copy those ideas. You can use all the pretty words you want to describe Oda's copying i.e. "inspiration", "creative process", etc but it is still copying. Dude has no creativity and reuses the same formula every arc and then copies other original works and puts it into his story. If you don't consider that copying then by all means believe what you want, but for me, that is copying.
Intentions do matter because one thing is to steal the work from another author (commonly less known) for your whole benefit with the intention of passing it as your own and gain credit from it while adding nothing of your creative personality; and other things are making obvious references just for the sake of it, commonly to popularly known models that will never pass as yours and the whole value of putting them into your work is the reference by itself (since you seem to like movies for children, is
Encanto plagiarizing Gabo by using yellow butterflies?); or reformulating such popular models by using them as conceptual domains to structure your own creative process (which is what Oda mainly does; he isn't plagiarizing Hercule Poirot but taking it as a concept he can connect with other references in order to produce something new like Baron Tamago); or sharing your artistic interpretation of something conceived by another author because this way you can show it form a different perspective, add new layers to it, etc. (did Tolkien plagiarize Stevenson? Did Molière plagiarize Plautus?); or using folklore, shared myths, archetypes... in order to build your work... (is every blind sage a copy? Every dark evil a copy? Every small genius a copy?).
You seem to be missing the fact that Oda obviously puts such references into his work because he consciously, publicly wants to. The only reason why you find references to
Alice in Whole Cake is because Oda explicitly wants to make a reference to
Alice that the reader will catch (and most of the times with a creative twist of his own); and that's not plagiarism under any actual, useful definition we may use.
Yes the old argument, "you are not an author therefore you have no right to discuss this topic".
Don't confus my argument with an special pleading. In this case, being an author plus having cultural references beyond Disney does give you profound perspective on how the creative process truly works. Good look finding something that doesn't fit your concept of plagiarism.
