Controversial Is One Piece better with simple villains or asspull didn't see that coming villains?

[HerreraIsBack]

What we are saying a lot lately in One Piece is how Oda is focusing more on being unpredictable than giving us a good, consistency story.

Back in the days, Early Piece, we had those simple straight evil villains. Alvida, Morgan, Buggy, Kuro, Krieg, Arlong, Corrupted Navy... All evil villains. Of course we also had something in between like Gin who isn't evil but still a villain and Smoker that is similar. But still the plot wasn't anything hard to follow. It was bad guys doing bad things and then getting defeated or good guys forced to do bad things but the audience could tell that easy even with Mihawk, not a villain, not evil, not a friend or good either.

But when did that changed? I'd say with Kanjuro. It was brilliant what Oda did with that character. Early introduced. Kinda of a gag character. But all that being part of his acting because he was always a traitor. I'm positive fans loved that plot so much that Oda was pretty much forcing himself to repeat it over and over again. Next time we see that was with Stussy, weaker plot but still good delivery of her betrayal but not from a villain to a friend. We can't tell anymore if someone is a villain or not based on their actions because anytime in the near future they can change sides.

But what was done with Xebec plot was ridiculous weak and inconsistent! We had all that expectation of he being Roger's greatest rival. Roger and Garp teaming up to bring him down. And what was the reality? Garp never gave 0 fucks about Rocks, he was in love with Roger similar to Naruto in love with Sasuke. Roger and Xebec never had a true rivalry. We are clueless of any clash between them. Roger was just simping about Shakky and Xebec didn't gave 0 fucks because he had his own family already and a bigger meaning to his life then just mess around like Roger was doing so far.

It feels so anticlimatic to find one the whole plot of God Valley is just, everyone teaming up on Imu and doing nothing and then Xebec getting controlled and losing his mind just to ask Roger and Garp to kill him to save him.

What you people think? One Piece and Oda should go back to have simple straigh evil villains or keep doing this mental gymnastics just so audience never knows what will happen next?

 

[moreha9685]

I think both types are needed and equally-important, it's just how you blend them around that alters the narrative.

Arcs built around well-known names, be them Shichibukai or Yonko or even a future Mariejois arc itself, cannot have a twist villain as its main antagonist because we already know the opposing force before even going into the arc. We knew Dressrossa would be about Dofla, we knew WCI was about BM, we knew Wano was about Kaido, etc. So you can't implement a twist villain in the main chair of that sort of arcs, but you can use minor twist villains along the way (like your aforementioned Kanjuro, or like Katakuri, who came out of nowhere and usurped his mom's role).

I think OP's own island-to-island formulaic structures lends better to having straight-up clear villains, with a couple mysterious masterminds working in the shadows sprinkled here and there. An omnipresence like Enel's, known to the reader from the very entrance of the SHs in Skypeia, works better than having a dumb York pop out of a gun outta nowhere and do a mustache twirl, but that might just be my personal preference.

IMO, it's not Kanjuro that altered Oda's writing of antagonists, though that was the straw that broke the camel's back (leading then to Egghead's 10,000 traitors secondary plotline: York, Stussy, Sentomaru), but CP-9. Oda building the mystery around the Galley-La in W7 and himself not knowing who would end up being the bad guys changed how he approached designing potential twist villains. Back then it worked; in Wano and Egghead less so. We'll see if he pulls something in Elbaf, too, with Jarul or the weird giant librarian chick.

 

[GalaxyLevelShanks]

You answered the question yourself

The story was much better when Oda was going the simple route

Especially pre-TS. Nothing too great compared to other writers but still a pretty decent story

Oda is too retarded to write any deep and complex

That's why onepiss characters are so shallow