Imo he's not trolling by the empty hype silhouette, he's just running out of ways to hype the characters lol, since he's so tired drawing and planning everything.
If it's me i'd do it like dis:
- I will take a rest like 1-3 months rest to collect myself. Morning and afternoon for family, daytime to work on story revisions. Focus only on the important things happening on each arcs. For example Beast Pirates, Oden and Scabbards story, Haki exploration esp CoC and CoA, which important characters to sacrifice, which scenes to emphasize as slow-mo dramatic or urgent or explosive or lightning-fast or poetic etc (i'd discuss with a group of trusted story-writers or screenplayer staffs or cinematographers), also the general atmosphere of each arc. What should each arc feel like? Artifact Hunt? Helplessness and despair against the super powerful enemy? Mystery? All-ut war? Guerilla war? Espionage? Strategics and ambushes?
- i will leave the background setting to assistants, but after making 2-3 examples of the buildings in each island, and also the main HQs of friend and enemy.
- i will only draw Strawhats and the enemy's core crew members. The others like Beast Pirates for example (Gifters or Numbers or Batman or Gazelleman or Holdem yeesh) can be made purely by assistants after taking the concepts from Kaidou, King, Queen, Yamato, and implement the lesser-able henchmen. So yeah obviously i'd only draw the important scenes between important characters, or important fights.
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Tldr the worst stuff Oda does right now is diverting his focus from emphasizing on important stuff like the core storylines-consequences-lores-fights-power structure at each arcs, just because he wanna draw nosebleeds and gags and fodder fights at each important moments. Or maybe its due to his market of young people that he cant draw consequences anymore? I mean imagine if BM ate Jimbei whole to the bones in Whole Cake, while Luffy and Sanji must witness that during their escape, imagine the emotional impact to both the crews and the readers. No one will consider BM a Meme. The consequences of standing up to an Emperor just by itself alone can already be powerful if Oda execute it right. And OP is not just the fights, there are so many gems of consequences and payoff waiting to be applied properly.
Yeah it is deliberate setting up anticipation/hype by him with the silhouettes. Meant to tease us, get us wondering and excited but with how he handled Oden and especially Kawamatsu, it left a really bad taste for me too. Kawamatsu was implied to be this really mysterious badass who could be anyone and such wild theories came out with those constantly menacing eyes we saw for MANY weeks and it turns out to ba random fucking goofy looking kappa who is an underling of Oden lmfao. Sigh.
That makes a lot of sense tbh, he needs to stop and take a breather for real. Collect himself and his thought together, refresh his mind, spirit and body. He must be experiencing so much burnout and exhaustion tbh, I cant even begin to imagine it!
That's really well thought out man, I really like that. Very wise, focused, decisive, clear and such. That pre-planning as much as I hate doing it ironically, would be such a life saver in the long run and benefit the story so much more.
Yeah thats a really good idea with the assistants too. Oh, I love that about focusing on the core characters too and letting the others draw the minor characters. We could have even really done without the gifters or Oda could have asked some other people to draw potential Zoans for him and try to challenge their creativity, talent and skill too.
That's exactly it, well said. Thats probably why Big Mom supposedly eating Carmel and the other kids was also implied and done more symbolically but we're also seeing people losing limbs, Yasuie and Law getting shot to death, Doflamingos backstory, Inu and Neko being mutiliated by Jack at Zou and so on.
I genuinely expected some horror of Big Mom eating someone tbh in the present. Whether it was out of a rampage, revenge or power demonstration or something. She ate her homies but I thought she might end up eating someone somehow sooner or later. Oda gave her acidic saliva and such a menacing, mysterious intro at FMI and really seemed like a menacing, all powerful, mighty, terrifying witch who you don't fuck with, like Baba Yaga or that one from Spirited Away or something. Also typical witches with cauldrons and such ofc
I actually believed Jinbei was going to die tbh, that he would have had his lifespan stolen or dying in a final stand to let the SHs escape or killed offscreen at worst. I'm so glad he wasn't but the fact he escaped BM with no apparent consequences is insane. Although we still don't know what happened to the Sun PIrates and Jinbei was quiet about what happened when the SHs asked him about how he escaped when they reunited at Wano.
BM eating Jinbei would be absolutely horrifying but it would so turn into dark humour with all the sushi and grilled fishes jokes about Jinbei out there lmao.
Big Mom hasn't even killed anyone herself deliberately on-screen except her own family! Unless you count Zepo in the flashback I think?
I completely agree too, that would have been the most horrifying and tragic way to end the arc that we needed.
Sure Germa has lost Yonji and Niji to a book apparently, but it seems like Pudding is going to free them, probably using her DF on Oven and maybe using the wide area v ersion she used to trick the forest homies to get everyone there too? I think it was called Flashback funnily enough?
Pedro only died by suicide even too and he failed to kill Perospero too which just makes it worse. Assuming he is dead too and Will of P didn't save his ass like it did to Pound, that was absolute BS with him.
I've been saying that its not really felt like they've taken on 2 emperors here. WCI still set a horrifying tone with consequences but in Wano, who has really paid the price except Yasuie? WCI still managed to give us a tragic and horrifying tone but not as much as it could and should have too even. Wano has been worse for tat especially Onigashima imo.
Odas handling of Big Mom at Wano and Onigashima except for her flashy and awesome attacks has genuinely been frustrating and upsetting. I thought WCI was bad but at least she truly felt dangerous once she caught up to the SHs and was on the Sunny although she still got trolled by them but also she had that amazing bad song concerto finale and blew up their ship, only for it to be a fakeout and still be fine. We also had another fakeout moment of the ship being blown up at Wano too ofc.
How the Wano half of the SHs are not distraught about Big Mom coming to Wano especially Zoro is beyond me too. Also Franky should be furious about her wrecking the Sunny so badly but nope, nothing!
"The consequences of standing up to an Emperor just by itself alone can already be powerful if Oda execute it right. And OP is not just the fights, there are so many gems of consequences and payoff waiting to be applied properly."
Completely agree. I couldn't have said it better myself. Oda is really fucking up consequences and payoff so badly. He truly has wonderful ideas but far too many and too ambitious and broad and he's struggling on the execution and closure of them. I could probably never produce anything as amazing as he does ofc but its frustrating to see such a truly talented, brutally hard working and dedicated and wise individual sabotage himself and his work so much now.