I suppose that’s true, for years we did have “Ray is actually Sanji“ “Ray is a mixture of Zoro and Sanji”, which we can happily put to bed.
But I really don’t see the need for going full on Naruto style parallels. I can’t wait now to see Joy Boy’s collected right hand samurai from Wano and his woman Vinsmoke left hand.
And while Oda has planned this, I think he could have done a better job. Ray (and Crocus) worked quite well because when they were introduced the Roger Pirates still had a huge degree of mystique about them.
But since Ray’s introduction that’s been pretty much stripped to zilch, and we‘ve seen more and more of them, and while the hardocre fans always knew there was this copper character floating around, I think Oda could have tried to set him up a bit better.
Arguably the anime did a better job by at least having him fight with Oden for a bit lol.
I just can’t shake the feeling that it would be more effective, if Oda wants to use Gaban, to actually swap around when Ray and Gaban are introduced. If Gaban had Ray’s role, we’d then be thinking “oh, we’ve seen the number 3, can’t wait to see when the number 2 shows up and what he’s like.”
When you’ve already seen a great deal of the number 2 (and in Oden, the number, what, 2.5, 3.5?), there’s considerably less impact when 3 shows up. Especially when the author doesn‘t really bother to set up the number 3 much until right at when he appears.