My point is how does Oda keep the power scaling intact with Luffy being the underdog every time. He has already got ACoO, ACoA, ACoC, Gear 5, the only things remaining is the after effects of G5 and getting better in haki usage (for example 10 sec FS like Shanks). If Luffy fights Akainu and then BB or BB and then Akainu how will Oda protect the power scale. So far Yonkos are rivaled/equaled by Admirals, you can't have a series of arcs where the villains are similar in strength.
I am not saying that Sabo will fight Akainu, for all the narrative reasons Akainu seems like Luffy's fight, I was just pointing something that is different from before and that might happen.
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How do you think the story progresses? Apart from awakening we have seen quite a few named attacks from Akainu and he had a full fight on screen against WB. BB on the other hand has only shown Black Hole/Vortex of his DDnM and no named attack of GGnM.
Again I am not saying that Luffy vs Akainu will not happen, I am saying that this is different from before. As for the progression of the story the likeliest outcome of Luffy fight either BB or Akainu first is that the other will turn out to look weaker. Luffy beats BB first before reaching Laugh Tale and then fights Akainu at the Final War and to keep the tension or to keep Luffy the underdog Akainu will look superior to BB.
Look at it this way, Kaido's status as WSC was pretty much secured by Oda commenting in the SBS about who is stronger between Akainu and the mother of the asker. Then he had Kaido defeated after running a gauntlet and Luffy getting multiple rounds against Kaido in the same night. Seeing that Luffy had to have so many rounds to defeat Kaido, we can even say that Luffy is not at that level yet even though he defeated Kaido in the final clash which leaves for his next opponent BB or Akainu to still be a challenge. At least BB has the DDnM so he can nullify Luffy's DF and this can be a challenge but for Akainu Oda already showed that Luffy has an answer to deal with magma without even touching due to ACoA/Ryou.
Again, we see an equal amount of named attacks from Akainu and Blackbeard at that point, so what is the problem?
Blackbeard’s fight with Ace was longer than both of Akainu’s fights with WB combined.
At this point, we’ve also had more of Blackbeard fighting as well.
Who would look better or worse is subjective…but I find most of the time it’s just people ignoring context and match ups for these “agendas.” A fight with Blackbeard is going to look different than one with Akainu because they have different ways of fighting, regardless of which order the fights occur.
Both can still look good in their respective fights because of what they bring to the table.
Akainu killed Luffy’s brother, so you already have Luffy’s emotions affecting his abilities right off the bat. We don’t know how logia awakenings work, but even if it is similar to paramecia, you’d have Luffy having to fight his environment and Akainu at the same time.
Mere fire was still hurting Luffy, and Akainu’s base element is already superior to that let alone what they could possibly do at their peak.
It seems one of the most basic issues here is assuming for whatever reason that the 3 attacks that Akainu showed are all he could possibly do.
That reasoning applies even more so to Blackbeard since we see WB using the Gura so much. You must also believe that there’s simply nothing left to show in that case, so Luffy won’t BB.
