No, simple narrative logic. This is a narrative fact that is not even that complicated to understand lol
Its funny how you guys are laughing, but what I say is not even remotely controversial haha
Actually, if you remove blackbeard, you get:
- No intended and early rivality for Luffy
- No pretimeskip side stories (All side stories pretimeskip are linked to Blackbeard)
- No Marineford Saga (amazon lily, Impel Down, Marineford, post marineford) because blackbeard does not capture Ace
- No death of Ace, which creates absolutely no development for the main character
- Which means no mid point in the story as there is no big defeat of Luffy
- This also means no development of the four Yonko
- No antagonist to rush against for the One Piece
- Probably no end
Blackbeard is the antagonist (unless, Imu takes somehow this place), without the Antagonist, the protagonist can't be challenged. And in One Piece, Luffy is challenged narratively two times :
- Before the timeskip with the death of Ace
- At the end of the story, with an event we don't know anything about yet.
Blackbeard is central to One Piece. Without him, no main story or a very different and less interesting one.
Imagine thinking that you can tell a guys who learned all his life about narration that he is somehow wrong to place the antagonist of the story as the second most important character....