There seems to be a rising concensus about the anime in Wano doing pretty good with Zoro's portrayal and what not and given that Zoro is a fighter, the anime had to step up Zoro's fights to do justice to the man's portrayal.
What this thread is about though is whether this is a problem in and of itself. The two points I will be addressing are:
1. How much does this scene change the canon events of the manga and meaning of the situation?
2. Is this scene better than manga and why is that?
We'll start with this:
Here's a filler scene of Zoro escaping the magistrate court. This scene is great to look at of course but as I watched a couple of reactions to this scene, I realised that a few people were surprised at how seemingly viscous Zoro was being beating up all these fodder. This is where the problem comes in.
The good animation vs the cartoon aesthetic of One piece.
This scene looks like an utter massacre to anime only watchers and here's why. We've seen Zoro face hundreds of guys before with whiskey peak and we've seen him blitz a bunch of fodder a number of times like at the start of drum island. But what makes those sitautions different is the cartoonishness of them. Zoro blitzed ALL of Baroque works and then went on a quirky and mild rampage taking them down. And with Drum island Zoro does his signature Blitz and everyone is down already. This wano scene though has very deliberate shots of Zoro cutting people one by one as they fall down yet once again he could've just speed blitzed them all and ended this in an instant.
In the end, people who don't know this is filler start saying that Zoro is uncharacteristically brutal here yet he's probably taken out more guys than this before but it wasn't depicted so viscerally and the cartoon logic prevents you from registering that you are watching a massacre like in whiskey peak.
On the flip side of this, Zoro's tatsumaki in this scene is better than anything Oda has ever done it. Notice that Zoro jumps into the air, then creates the whirlwind around himself in mid air and then drops forcing the whirlwind DOWNWARDS to obliterate the castle. This is the MOST PHYSICS I have ever seen in anything Zoro has done, manga or anime.
This sort of goes back to Oda and his concept of cartoon reality where Oda doesn't care that much about things having weight in motion as long as they can look cool on a splash page. Of course this is good for comics but looks lazy when put into motion and it doesn't help that Oda doesn't actually care one way or another so people adapting end up not caring either. This new director for the anime though certainly does care particularly with Zoro since he completely blew away Oda even on a creative stand point by changing the very mechanics of this tatsumaki to make it something that would even be better in a splash page than what Oda drew.
On this note we have this little fight where something small happens that I was so surprised had barely ever happened in the manga or anime ever before. The samurai dash was actually animated.
The samurai dash is that very ubiquitous scene where the swordsman dashes past an opponent having dodged their attack and attacked them back almost instaneously. Oda has used this DOZENS of times of course with Zoro and the anime has followed Oda's lead here by never actually showing the dodge and cut part of the samurai dash and only just the start and end of it.
I raked my brain trying to find out whether a scene like this had actually ever been animated in one piece until this random filler fight and I don't think it ever has (correct me if wrong). The closest this came to happening is Zoro ALMOST cutting Charlos at Sabaody but Bonnie stopped him so it was incomplete.
This is such a small detail that it is intentionally ignored by Oda because of reasons I've given above with the splash page stuff that you would almost forget that something actually is supposed to happen right there. I remember seeing this scene and it looked so foreign to me that we actually see what happens here and then I realised that no one ever bothered to show what happens until now. And here once again I give props to the new director for actually Adapting things and not just copying Manga panels and forgetting this is an Anime.
With that I've demonstrated the premise of this argument. We can make arguments over what the anime is doing to change certain canon events and yet it also at times outshines Oda is making things work better as animations than Oda can do in manga. Here's the rest of fights I can find
There's Zoro fighting Sumo wrestlers
There's Zoro vs Hawkins (which has this overlooked application of that GOOD PHYSICS I mentioned before by having the dog being crushed by the weight of Hawkin's attacks)
There's Zoro getting lost because of Random samurai tiger(which plays into the Baboon having a sword at the start of Wano which is a thing that Oda never brings back that animals fight with weapons sometimes in Wano)
And most recently we have Zoro vs mafia in the gambling place
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hIKnW79A1NQ
Finally what's interesting to me in all these is that Zoro actually uses the old moves he hasn't used in hundreds of chapters, some even since pre time skip, in these fights and this is by far the best thing to me about how they are potraying Zoro in Wano. Not only does Zoro using old moves make it seem like he's actually trying more like when he used the Gorilla flex to make it seem like he was trying more against Hawkins but these old moves remind the viewers that Zoro's fighting style can be very interesting if you go through it in a fight.
This application of Zoro's old moves is what has led me to this conclusion. I think the anime might use Ashura before Oda does in the manga AND THAT'S FINE. Honestly, I really would want to see what this director's take on how Ashura works in motion than even Oda right now. Like even if Oda does use Ashura again before the anime, I'd still prefer waiting for how the anime does it because they've proven with this arc that they clearly have their own vision and can do whatever makes things good in animation and what looks good in animation often makes more sense in reality as opposed to manga.
The other less serious abilities I want the Wano anime to do are:
Three sword style Hyou kin dama
Three sword style Enbima yonezu
Two sword style rashomon
Three sword style Toro Nagashi
And of course one sword style Hiryu Kaen
Which of Zoro's old attacks do you want see the Wano animators animate?
What this thread is about though is whether this is a problem in and of itself. The two points I will be addressing are:
1. How much does this scene change the canon events of the manga and meaning of the situation?
2. Is this scene better than manga and why is that?
We'll start with this:
The good animation vs the cartoon aesthetic of One piece.
This scene looks like an utter massacre to anime only watchers and here's why. We've seen Zoro face hundreds of guys before with whiskey peak and we've seen him blitz a bunch of fodder a number of times like at the start of drum island. But what makes those sitautions different is the cartoonishness of them. Zoro blitzed ALL of Baroque works and then went on a quirky and mild rampage taking them down. And with Drum island Zoro does his signature Blitz and everyone is down already. This wano scene though has very deliberate shots of Zoro cutting people one by one as they fall down yet once again he could've just speed blitzed them all and ended this in an instant.
In the end, people who don't know this is filler start saying that Zoro is uncharacteristically brutal here yet he's probably taken out more guys than this before but it wasn't depicted so viscerally and the cartoon logic prevents you from registering that you are watching a massacre like in whiskey peak.
On the flip side of this, Zoro's tatsumaki in this scene is better than anything Oda has ever done it. Notice that Zoro jumps into the air, then creates the whirlwind around himself in mid air and then drops forcing the whirlwind DOWNWARDS to obliterate the castle. This is the MOST PHYSICS I have ever seen in anything Zoro has done, manga or anime.
This sort of goes back to Oda and his concept of cartoon reality where Oda doesn't care that much about things having weight in motion as long as they can look cool on a splash page. Of course this is good for comics but looks lazy when put into motion and it doesn't help that Oda doesn't actually care one way or another so people adapting end up not caring either. This new director for the anime though certainly does care particularly with Zoro since he completely blew away Oda even on a creative stand point by changing the very mechanics of this tatsumaki to make it something that would even be better in a splash page than what Oda drew.
The samurai dash is that very ubiquitous scene where the swordsman dashes past an opponent having dodged their attack and attacked them back almost instaneously. Oda has used this DOZENS of times of course with Zoro and the anime has followed Oda's lead here by never actually showing the dodge and cut part of the samurai dash and only just the start and end of it.
I raked my brain trying to find out whether a scene like this had actually ever been animated in one piece until this random filler fight and I don't think it ever has (correct me if wrong). The closest this came to happening is Zoro ALMOST cutting Charlos at Sabaody but Bonnie stopped him so it was incomplete.
This is such a small detail that it is intentionally ignored by Oda because of reasons I've given above with the splash page stuff that you would almost forget that something actually is supposed to happen right there. I remember seeing this scene and it looked so foreign to me that we actually see what happens here and then I realised that no one ever bothered to show what happens until now. And here once again I give props to the new director for actually Adapting things and not just copying Manga panels and forgetting this is an Anime.
With that I've demonstrated the premise of this argument. We can make arguments over what the anime is doing to change certain canon events and yet it also at times outshines Oda is making things work better as animations than Oda can do in manga. Here's the rest of fights I can find
There's Zoro fighting Sumo wrestlers
There's Zoro vs Hawkins (which has this overlooked application of that GOOD PHYSICS I mentioned before by having the dog being crushed by the weight of Hawkin's attacks)
There's Zoro getting lost because of Random samurai tiger(which plays into the Baboon having a sword at the start of Wano which is a thing that Oda never brings back that animals fight with weapons sometimes in Wano)
And most recently we have Zoro vs mafia in the gambling place
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hIKnW79A1NQ
Finally what's interesting to me in all these is that Zoro actually uses the old moves he hasn't used in hundreds of chapters, some even since pre time skip, in these fights and this is by far the best thing to me about how they are potraying Zoro in Wano. Not only does Zoro using old moves make it seem like he's actually trying more like when he used the Gorilla flex to make it seem like he was trying more against Hawkins but these old moves remind the viewers that Zoro's fighting style can be very interesting if you go through it in a fight.
This application of Zoro's old moves is what has led me to this conclusion. I think the anime might use Ashura before Oda does in the manga AND THAT'S FINE. Honestly, I really would want to see what this director's take on how Ashura works in motion than even Oda right now. Like even if Oda does use Ashura again before the anime, I'd still prefer waiting for how the anime does it because they've proven with this arc that they clearly have their own vision and can do whatever makes things good in animation and what looks good in animation often makes more sense in reality as opposed to manga.
The other less serious abilities I want the Wano anime to do are:
Three sword style Hyou kin dama
Three sword style Enbima yonezu
Two sword style rashomon
Three sword style Toro Nagashi
And of course one sword style Hiryu Kaen
Which of Zoro's old attacks do you want see the Wano animators animate?
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