Questions & Mysteries Who has a better design? King the Wildfire or The Vincible Charlotte Katakuri
- Thread starter Light D Lamperouge
- Start date
An inspiration is such when it inspires you to actively transform the original source into something new.
Oda does nothing with King that can be called inspiration instead of copycat. What he adds to his aesthetics isn't even original for his own work since King's attire is a blend between Shiryu's and Katakuri's, hence why so many people theorized he was a former employee of Impel Down. What he did with King was take the Angel of Retribution (his head, his colour, his wings, his light on the back) and dress him like previous characters, and then discarded what he had seemingly prepared for him (torture lover fitting the sources I cited; yours would just be another one for the mix); this turned King into an empty aesthetic and a failure at what Katakuri perfectly achieved since his themes were fulfilled during Whole Cake Arc.
Again, take any other character by Oda who was inspired by whatever source but wasn't just an empty copycat and the difference is abysmal. Perospero is clearly inspired by the Child Catcher but Oda works on it by adding visual metaphors and a second source of thematic inspiration (Shakespeare's Prospero) that he blends very naturally (for example, taking the Catcher's net into a candy staff that also works as a magician staff through which Perospero launches his attacks); also Tamago makes an obvious reference to Hercule Poirot but Oda doesn't simply copy David Suchet's portrayal of the character and adds several layers of themes and rhetorics into him (Jubjub bird, Humpty Dumpty, etc.).
Perospero, Tamago and many others are inspired by. With King it comes to a point that his character is so bland (if not mishandled) and his aesthetics so blatantly taken from somewhere else that where you see inspiration I only see copycat; and copycat is, by definition, unoriginal.
Oda does nothing with King that can be called inspiration instead of copycat. What he adds to his aesthetics isn't even original for his own work since King's attire is a blend between Shiryu's and Katakuri's, hence why so many people theorized he was a former employee of Impel Down. What he did with King was take the Angel of Retribution (his head, his colour, his wings, his light on the back) and dress him like previous characters, and then discarded what he had seemingly prepared for him (torture lover fitting the sources I cited; yours would just be another one for the mix); this turned King into an empty aesthetic and a failure at what Katakuri perfectly achieved since his themes were fulfilled during Whole Cake Arc.
Again, take any other character by Oda who was inspired by whatever source but wasn't just an empty copycat and the difference is abysmal. Perospero is clearly inspired by the Child Catcher but Oda works on it by adding visual metaphors and a second source of thematic inspiration (Shakespeare's Prospero) that he blends very naturally (for example, taking the Catcher's net into a candy staff that also works as a magician staff through which Perospero launches his attacks); also Tamago makes an obvious reference to Hercule Poirot but Oda doesn't simply copy David Suchet's portrayal of the character and adds several layers of themes and rhetorics into him (Jubjub bird, Humpty Dumpty, etc.).
Perospero, Tamago and many others are inspired by. With King it comes to a point that his character is so bland (if not mishandled) and his aesthetics so blatantly taken from somewhere else that where you see inspiration I only see copycat; and copycat is, by definition, unoriginal.