- Limiting Zoro to Luffy's underling, ignoring Koby being Drake + Grus + Kujaku's underling?? Literally, after the man changed the course Luffy was going to take on his journey. Of course, Zoro will be less important in making independent decisions as the VC, but Koby as Drake's direct underling will have all the free power to make decisions, while not even being top 3 in his squad.
Even then the importance has nothing to do with whether one has the power to make decisions or not. If Zoro does more in the race to be the PK, defeats more enemies and more powerful enemies... he is by default more IMPORTANT. You now added an arbitrary thing of "decision maker" to justify you holding this page in high significance.
- Trying to undermine it by saying Doflamingo was just blabbering about the seas, when he was specifically talking about the throne of the Pirate King... is just being disingenuous. And what is the Pirate King related to? Ah yes, the one piece. He mentions those groups, because Oda has him mention those groups lol. Oda purposely had him collectively mention the Worst Gen & Warlords, rather than singling out people, he then purposely drew the likes of Bonney and such with equal panel importance as Luffy. Oda had Doffy mention the RA, people who have 0 interest in the Throne of the Pirate King. The chapter is literally dubbed "Opening Speech", and you trying to make that inferior to Vegapunk is absolutely ridiculous. Egghead is a mere part of the Throne War that Doflamingo opened in 801. Karasu/Lindberg have been more important than Ivankov.
Absolutely nobody stated they were chosen randomly, I specifically stated Oda showed some of the key players of the arc, who aren't in Egghead outside of Luffy. That is not random.
- Garling, new character who crucified a fellow Celestial Dragon
- Kuzan, just had a fight with Garp
- Sabo, exposed the info of Imu & Gorosei to Iva + Dragon, and us seeing his whole raid and him going against King of the World
- Koby, the guy who got rescued by Garp, resulting in Garp's sacrifice
- Dragon, now revealed the important info of ancient weapons as head of the RA, and directly involved with VP + Kuma.
- Man with the burn marks, mysterious dude responsible for the 4th poneglyph, Oda using this oppertunity to tease him like he did with Morley & Aramaki in chapter 801.
- Akainu, the guy dealing with the whole marine fiasco right now actively in this arc
These characters being shown here does not signify them being more important than Fujitora/Aramaki/Mihawk/Zoro/Gorosei/Smoker/etc whoever else you wanna name em. Just that they'll play important roles, that's it.
I'm not insisting on anything other than trying to use this page for narrative importance of a character for something the entire series has been building towards.... the one piece... over 1121 chapters and 13 pages prior to it is completely arbitrary and leads to dumb arguments that have 0 merit other than w.e headcannon value you want to assign to panels.
Ah yes who gets the big boxes is irrelevant because it doesn't suit your agenda... that's the entire point. You find it silly because it won't serve your narrative. You don't find it silly believing that a singular page will determine the importance Oda will give characters in the race to be PK, and yet that's absolutely silly to me. This is going to back to the Marineford non-sense of Jozu being stronger than Vista because he appeared in the opening panels with newgate and marco, yet the entire war after says something else. This is similar to Cinera determining who the strongest warlord is by the panel order of their introduction...
Post Marineford, Oda literally draws this with the Supernovas and that the burden of the a new pirate era is on their shoulders. Since then we've gotten Capone fodder fest, with the likes of Jack being better. The likes of Catarina Devon who're younger than Capone & Urouge. Drake not even being a pirate. Hawkins & Appoo who go and bend the knee to old pirates then get fodderized. Smoothie who is 33/34 being better than half of the supernovas. Yamato who'll eventually be a pirate soon. Burgess, 28, who plays a more important role than somebody like Hawkins in the new era of piracy as Teach's 1st fleet captain. And this is where Oda actually states "These 7 will be the ones carrying the new era of piracy", giving them all nice panels after...yet he still introduces more younger pirates that have more significance in the new era of piracy than half of the supernovas.
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- Mihawk became his teacher and Zoro his student, rather than maintaining a pure rivalry.
- Mihawk along with Crossguild get fed to Blackbeard along with the RHP to hype up Blackbeard pirates as the greatest pirate threat in history for Luffy to overcome, and making them bigger than the Rocks Pirates.
- Mihawk just isn't the WSS (which is a possibility since Oda stopped including his title in his name tags), with either Fujitora growing stronger if he's gotten his DF recently, the other with Nusjuro just being the strongest mf alive for swordsmen.
All 3 of them are enough for Oda to not have Mihawk face Zoro. Beating Mihawk isn't the requirement for WSS, it's simply the most direct path in achieving it.
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Yes that's the direct path to becoming the WSS. Luffy would have to take on Roger if he was alive in order to be the PK. Doesn't mean he can't do it without Roger being alive. Zoro will simply need to surpass the achievement that made Dracule the WSS, in order to become the WSS.
Yes
