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@Luffy is the mc ☺️✨
And let's not forget that Ace was a YC2 of the Whitebeard Pirates when he was just 20 years old and clashed equally with Aokiji in Marineford. His bounty seem very low but Ace still one of the strongest character in OP.
@Zoro D Goat @Luffy is the mc @Bogard
What the 3 of you were talking about, although I love Ace I don't think he would have been the most powerful during the post-time skip, although if now perhaps he would be in the top 20 of the most powerful in OP universe, obviously with a progressive increase in power.
A lot of people underestimate him because he supposedly didn't show enough and I think it's a mistake. To me Marineford Arc is still somewhat ambiguous in terms of characters power. There're characters that did show off their haki and DF and others less. There are people who complain that secondaries like Marco and Vista showed haki and that Ace should have ... But the fact is that I think Oda didn't want Ace to use haki there not only because Ace wasn't 100% in his capacity (physical, mental and emotional), but for reasons of the pre timeskip plot. So it cannot be said that in MF Ace he didn't use haki. Maybe Oda believed that, if perhaps Ace had displayed a "visible haki" against Akainu, that would have been confusing for fans... Perhaps Oda also wanted to emphasize Luffy's Emperor Haki and couldn't be showing Ace using haki because if not many would say "why did he die if he had Haki"...
I still think that Oda didn't show a visible haki in Ace in MF so as not to complicate the pre-time-skip plot...
But it's still confusing. Perhaps Oda will clarify that point later...
About power potential, Ace was probably the character with the most potential for progress after Luffy. Although he lacked maturity and more experience in battles, I think he would have been a good rival. I think it's true that Shirohige wanted to make Ace the next Pirate King and that it wasn't just Sengoku's lie. I understand that Oda killed Ace as a sacrifice for the new era, but I'll never agree to that.
I hope that in a some Wano flashback Oda show us some Ace battle in the past, I don't know, maybe against some Tobiroppo.