We could keep Gorosei and their military (marines) as enemy. Just without "holy-evil-aristocracy"-taste, but with "gray empty bureacracy"-design. Evil aristocracy trope is too centered around corrupted people, while gray-no-fun bureacracy theme centered around breaking out of chains (not only physical ones) and system as whole. Oda force us to hate CD and their atrocities, but not tell us about how and why this system works, how people tolerate this, how to broke out of it, etc. Its too shallow — "you just need to beat ugly-corrupted-tyranical asshole in direct fight and everything will be fine"; but what about tyranny that he creates, is it instantly disappeared once he defeated?
Plus i dont think story about pirates should be mainly about fighting dystopia directly — its about beliefs. As WB told us: finding OP will shake whole world; which means you dont need to fight every marine or agitize every civilian — revolution will happen in mind and dreams of people once they find true. The story is about OP and sworn family who support your beliefs (dreams). So, adding new strong guys to WG and make them super duper evil is kinda pointless and kinda lame. Like, i mean, we already have Blackbeard who is final villain material...
But Luffy has to punch someone. This is in the DNA of the manga itself. It stops being One piece if the problem isn’t solved by Luffy punching someone.
There has to be a head noble to for Luffy to punch. And So Oda had to create a philosophy around what this head noble is. And he just copied the real world. In the real world most Kings are given divine rights. The story of Alexander the Great being a descendant of Zues exists because this is what’s always done, they always say Kings are vaguely divine.
Hence why the CDs end up “holy” because Oda is exaggerating the real life shit where the King, and by extension his whole family, are godly which is a thing in almost every culture in the world.
everything else, how evil and maniacal the CDs are is just an extension of that. And it is also true in the real world. In fact the real world can be much worse than OP. For example did you know that Slave traders in the real world used to Eat Black people. Yes, the very same White civilized Europeans who called anyone they came across “cannibal barbarians” used to Eat their slaves, but not for “barbaric” reasons, but for “Civilized” reasons like “Science” and “enjoyment”
Somehow OP and Celestial dragons have NOT gotten this evil yet. And the shit they do which you call cartoonish can be seen on the News right now being done today, for example by the IDF in Gaza.
The most unrealistic and cartoonish thing about the Celestial dragons is that they havent imploded. You are correct in that it makes no sense how all this evil hasn’t collapsed the CD rule either from the outside through rebellion or from inside through their own barbarism. You are right, this is the most badly written aspect of the CDs, that they exist 800 years later.
but outside of that, their very existence at all isn’t that outlandish, and it’s probably not even as bad as certain real world parallels
