I see. Thanks for giving your opinion. Do you think of him lower than you think of Kaido and Meme though or are those your least favourite yonkos?
On the F-S scale,
I would give Marineford Whitebeard an S,
post Oden flashback Whitebeard a D,
Big Mom like a C+?
Blackbeard an A
And Kaido like an FFF-, there is absolutely nothing about Kaido that was done correctly and I’m still in awe of how horribly Oda fucked him up.
And on that scale, Saint Shanks is like a B? Maybe lower? There are certain things I like about him, I like how all the other Yonko are 30 foot tall monsters and Saint Shanks is just like a normal dude but he still rivals them, I think it’s cool that he’s now related to a Gorosei (I just hope Oda does something actually interesting with it)
Saint Shanks isn’t a terrible character in concept, in execution he is just completely boring, and Oda definitely thinks Saint Shanks is a lot cooler than he actually is.
Ironically my all time favorite manga Kingdom has a character who is basically the Saint Shanks of that manga in the form of Ouki, who is one of my favorite characters in fiction. However Hara had the good sense to kill Ouki before he became completely boring and pointless, and he never tried to shove this weird ass “relationship” between Shin and Ouki down the reader’s throat like Oda does with Luffy.
Hara also never wrote Ouki as a complete Mary Sue like Saint Shanks is. Ouki doesn’t have women collapsing in his presence, in fact it’s implied that Ouki is bisexual and there are several moments where Shin feels weird around this giant heavily muscled “queer” (the manga’s word) with thick lips and a lust for warfare. Idk Saint Shanks just doesn’t feel right to me, like ever.
Anyway I could go on but Saint Shanks isn’t completely awful, just boring and pointless as of now.