Ready for the accusations of sour grapes, but this chapter really just confirmed all the issues I have with Gaban coming back as a wise mentor character. Just been done before.
We got the generic “oh, this guy is just like Roger” flashback that we’ve already seen a billion times. And Oda’s saying Gaban is old gen Sanji with all the subtlety of a brick, and with the worst part of Sanji’s personality. We didn’t need Ray introduced getting lost and someone saying “LOOK IT’S OLD ZORO”.
And then we have the dumb test. We are long past the stage of anyone thinking that Luffy needs “tested”. Ray didn’t feel he even needed to test Luffy and that was years ago when luffy was a comparative weakling. The resemblemce to Roger was enough, not his strength. Now Gaban already knows that Luffy defeated Kaido and he’s still doing it? How strong does he think Loki is lol?
And in general, if you have characters called Gold, Silver and Copper (Bronze), I really don’t think it makes much sense to spend like fifteen years going into Gold and Silver in detail, then finally go ”but the number three guy, I’ve spent next to no time on, he’s cool as well.” There’s a reason why the OP fights always go Sanji first, then Zoro, then finally Luffy. It makes more dramatic sense.
Gaban has a cool design, though, Oda does usually do well with his cool old men. The scar is a bit marked with flame looking, but no real link to the black ship and the whirlpool so far. And I did find the trolling of him liking when other people get into trouble funny.
We got the generic “oh, this guy is just like Roger” flashback that we’ve already seen a billion times. And Oda’s saying Gaban is old gen Sanji with all the subtlety of a brick, and with the worst part of Sanji’s personality. We didn’t need Ray introduced getting lost and someone saying “LOOK IT’S OLD ZORO”.
And then we have the dumb test. We are long past the stage of anyone thinking that Luffy needs “tested”. Ray didn’t feel he even needed to test Luffy and that was years ago when luffy was a comparative weakling. The resemblemce to Roger was enough, not his strength. Now Gaban already knows that Luffy defeated Kaido and he’s still doing it? How strong does he think Loki is lol?
And in general, if you have characters called Gold, Silver and Copper (Bronze), I really don’t think it makes much sense to spend like fifteen years going into Gold and Silver in detail, then finally go ”but the number three guy, I’ve spent next to no time on, he’s cool as well.” There’s a reason why the OP fights always go Sanji first, then Zoro, then finally Luffy. It makes more dramatic sense.
Gaban has a cool design, though, Oda does usually do well with his cool old men. The scar is a bit marked with flame looking, but no real link to the black ship and the whirlpool so far. And I did find the trolling of him liking when other people get into trouble funny.
He testing him because luffy probally also thinks he can beat him up, proving a point