It doesn't only shut down that argument, it literally shuts down the whole retarded presumption that Oda cares about balancing powerlevels more than the symbolic and character dynamic. The characters are as strong as he want them be.
Those who disagree mostly catched with OP in post timeskip when the weaker strawhats' growth rate have been neglected.
Actually, it's like author fault, not readers. We now like watching WOW classic raid to UBRS with 20-30 lvls in raid, obviosly folks have problem with that. Another question why this is happening? Answer is lazy, bad writing of main SH chars. Why Oda used even panels on Bartolomeo and Kavendish, when he skipped 1x1 fight for most of SH, in a result people was thinking that we now don't need SH charsnow, case we got fleet commanders now. Well, now it is obviosly that even assumtion like that was stupid from the begining. One Piece is not Naruto or Dragon Ball, or Bleach. Like here crew play important role, case to travel on the sea you need navigation, medicine, shipwrighting skills, if you don't have that, then you can't travel the sea. While in Naruto and Dragon Ball you actually don't need crew to go threw story, even Sakura was useless in most time, and her healing skills didn't play important role for the story overall.
So now we have to deal consewuences of fact that in DressRosa arc most of crew didn't get any fight, and now are absolutely unprepared for Raid. But problem is that after this Raid guild leader plan to raiding Molten Core and Naxxramas. So we just need characters became much stronger right now, or farther plot and story will became absolute joke.
I absolutely hate previous chapter for how SH was dealing with BM. In WCI I hated how SH crew could threw back weakened BigMom. But at the very least there could be somewhat similar to logical explanation: Bm was weakened; SH used her weakness and her power against her; But in previous chapter SH wasn't even showed struggling against Younko, Robin was chilling... and that has no excuse, case she was useless against diamante, but now she dealed against character in 1000 times stronger like that, that plot convience and writing like that is absolute trash, if that is what Oda planned for last arc, I'm sure that I will drop that shit. That could be not justified. No way.
So yes, I feel like there's only two ways: making SH stronger, showing em struggling, but still became stronger, or just use that trash writing, when SH could became stronger in 100 times in sec, without reason. This is not gintama, and power lvl always was a thing here...so that would be absolute dogshit and trash writing.
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Theres a huge difference between wanting to use Gear fourth and needing to use Gear fourth. Right now any of the weaker SH’s beating members of the glying six would be more of an ass pull then Sanji beating king and Sanji beating King is a gigantic ass pull in itself.
Better that than ass pulling in last arc against enemies who are beyond flying six.