The end of Wano made it almost impossible for readers to heavily invest in new Nakama candidates.
Yamato and Carrot fans both had legitimate reasons to believe their character was joining, to the point where people who didn't like the characters were surprised at how they got treated.
Carrot sailed with the Straw Hats to two different islands, was in the Tea Party and Raid on Onigashima, lost a mentor figure while fighting with the Straw Hats, saved the crew and Sunny by going Sulong, and has close relationships with Chopper, Nami, Brook, Sanji, and Luffy.
Yamato was the strongest ally in the most hyped arc in OP history, had a tragic Ace flashback, was directly responsible for Momo being able to stop Onigashima from falling, had her entire charcter based around wanting to sail the world like Oden, and was directly complimented by Luffy for holding off the arc's big bad, Kaido.
What the hell has anyone on Egghead done that's even close to those resumes? Like, at all? Bonney, Vegapunk (and possibly Stussy) have a chance to join later, yeah, but, no one's going to get excited over their chances when Carrot and Yamato had 100 more reasons to join and still didn't. Oda teased new Nakama to the point where it's just not fun anymore and impossible to take new candidates seriously.
Yamato and Carrot fans both had legitimate reasons to believe their character was joining, to the point where people who didn't like the characters were surprised at how they got treated.
Carrot sailed with the Straw Hats to two different islands, was in the Tea Party and Raid on Onigashima, lost a mentor figure while fighting with the Straw Hats, saved the crew and Sunny by going Sulong, and has close relationships with Chopper, Nami, Brook, Sanji, and Luffy.
Yamato was the strongest ally in the most hyped arc in OP history, had a tragic Ace flashback, was directly responsible for Momo being able to stop Onigashima from falling, had her entire charcter based around wanting to sail the world like Oden, and was directly complimented by Luffy for holding off the arc's big bad, Kaido.
What the hell has anyone on Egghead done that's even close to those resumes? Like, at all? Bonney, Vegapunk (and possibly Stussy) have a chance to join later, yeah, but, no one's going to get excited over their chances when Carrot and Yamato had 100 more reasons to join and still didn't. Oda teased new Nakama to the point where it's just not fun anymore and impossible to take new candidates seriously.
That makes new nakama potential absolutely impossible to predict. Sailing with the SH for 3 arcs for no story purposes? Doesn't mean they'll join, Carrot did that. New ally to the SH saying that they want to join the SH, doesn't mean they'll join, Yamato did that.
I genuily don't know what Oda was thinking, there's baiting, there's red herrings and then there's just being retarded and having sht writting, which is what he did with the 2 characters.