New to the forum. Please welcome me to the club. I've been a lifelong fan of THE Captain since Sabaody so I should fit the bill. Since this is my first post here on the forum and since I frankly don't care about discussing the series with people that have a huge hate boner for the character (or in simpler terms 99.99% of the fandom), I will post my thoughts on the character here instead.
I have read a decent amount of the posts in this thread and noticed that some people here believe Kidd's hate is something new or that it was a reaction to him losing to Kaido or him "being carried" by Law or his "disappointing" devil fruit, or his lack of post t-s screentime, or... etc etc. All of this, for the lack of a better word, is BULLSHIT. I believe wholeheartedly that Kidd's hate is older than what you might think, older than the character itself.
Remember that scene where Shaky says Kidd's crew pillages and murders InONcent CiViliANs. Kidd haters can't have possibly spawned to earth before this point in the story right?
Actually no. Try going back a bit.
Remember that scene in the tavern where Apoo dared to look Kidd in the eye, and then Kidd smiled like an evil maniac then proceeded to destroy good ol' tavern's owner's tavern (how dare he) and was revealed to have a whopping bounty of 315,000,000 berries? Surely those people can't have hated the character before his LITERAL introduction.
Nope. Here's where these breed of Kidd haters emerged. This exact panel right here.
Kidd Haters hated Kidd before they even realized the name of the character, yep. I'm 100% confident that the first swarm of Kidd haters were condomboy self inserters. For these people, One Piece is an escapism medium where they can pretend to be the asexual-totally confident-totally pirate-but also not pirate-jesus figure. For these people there are 2 and only 2 categories of supporting characters: 1) Characters ready to be taught a lesson by pirate jesus luffy and get a spanking for being an evil pirate (evil pirates? are they mad?) 2) Cheerleaders, Luffy wankers, and literal Luffy worshippers. No. Third. Category.
So let's do a quick character check:
1. Blackbeard (allowed to be stronger than pirate jesus but only temporarily) --> category 1
2. Nami (Cheerleader) --> category 2
3. Bartolomeo (luffy wanker and cheerleader) --> category 2
4. Conis ("save us oh lord luffy and defeat the false god" LITERAL luffy worshipper) --> category 2
Now the supernovas are the perfect embodiment of this third banned category: "the rivals". The ones that are not gonna take a spanking but also not eager to ass lick prophet luffy. This is a sin for the average condomboy selfinserter. I don't even hate Luffy as a character but his fanbase (which pretty much are all of OP fans) are insufferable to the CORE. It's pretty much the reason I stopped caring that much about the series or the main characters altogether.
At the beginning, their reasoning for the hate was that Kid was killing all the innocent civilians, all the innocent grandmas and all the innocent pregnant women (that's their headcanon). This is what they took from "killing civilians" or "killed anyone who dared to laugh at my dreams" or "if you don't have the guts, don't come to the new world in the first place". When a 99% of a fanbase chooses to toss away all the underlying meanings and the characterization meant by these brilliant character moments and paint it as "morally wrong=bad character" or "lol he no deserve higher bounty than loofy=bad character" it leaves a sour taste and it becomes extremely difficult to discuss the series or to even enjoy reading it or follow the main characters story.
This Anti-Kidd brigade only grew larger after the timeskip and it's not because of any fancy reason they tell you. Zoro fans (after they saw Luffy, Zoro and Sanji showcasing haki) have now joined the fray and the hate bandwagon is only getting bigger.
Their reasoning for their hate is often simple, perhaps TOO simple.
Loafy has haki Zolo has haki --> Supernovas didn't train --> Luffy and Zolo top dogs of supernovas hooray -> BB only true rival (category 1) --> Kid bad lol only kills little girls.
Couple this with Oda's excessive fascination of following only the strawhats storyline and this quickly devolves into years and a decade of headcanons that simply cannot be changed.
Kid now has haki -> "Don't care. He doesn't have gear fousu, Midd one shotted by Kaido lol"
Luffy one shotted by Kaido -> "Don't care. He doesn't have future sight. Midd's opponent is apoo. Stay in your lane (i.e. category 2 model cheerleader)"
Kid is fighting Kaido on the rooftop -> "Don't care. lol his first mate did more damage."
Kid is fighting Big Mom -> "Don't care. Come to me when he 1v1 a yonko. Midd sucks. He's also... he-e's a-also a cheerleader (they really want this to happen lol)"
FAST FORWARD
Kid is now top 3 strongest characters by EoS -> "Don't care. Still cheerleader to my pirate jesus ultra king praises be to him Monkey Deez Nuts Luffy."
Kidd singlehandedly taught me that OP fans don't care about the story. Good characters are characters with feats not interesting characterization. And when I decide to confront them with this fact. Guess what's their reply. "You don't love the stroh hats!!! you're a hater. Why do you even read the series?"
I guess in a 100+ volume franchise only 10 characters should matter. These people are legit braindead. I don't even like Kidd because of his feats and I never cared to discuss them. He's just infinite times more interesting than Luffy with 1/10000000 of the screentime. But for them quality is irrelevant. It's how MANY chapters they appeared in, how MANY useless personality quirks they have, and have MANY haki punches and feats they show per arc.
