Shanks, Kaidou, BM, all are Yonkous that made deals with the WG, they seem to enjoy a tepid relationship with it, the only time they actively wanted to defeat a Yonkou, it was the strongest one (miss me with that Sickbeard shit) and it was a wash, like really bad, I was just re-reading MF and basically WB had to carry his subordinates everytime they were facing an Admiral (still, I would rate Marco, Jozu and even Vista above clowns like Queen and Princess, who only have the fact that they were Lanji and Zoro’s opponent as fuel for their hype), and the three Admirals played a defensive games, minimising damage received and slowly witting at WB, with the exception of the sneak attack against Akainu, and even then, he was still able to reiterate, quite violently might I add for One Piece levels. Any other Yonkous cannot make a play equal, let alone superior to Whitebeard, and the Marines can afford to be more on the offense on a territory not related to them, like we saw with Greenbull right now, hell, someone like Akainu can spam meteorites on islands until they sink.
This isn’t even about the rules of shonen, which will force Oda to make Kaidou, the post ts strongest yonkou a failure as the story will go on (admitedly he already planted the seeds with Kaidou having a bad opinion of himself when drunk, and we still don’t have details of the 7 losses, so he can shoehorn a new threat and make it credible by saying they whooped Kaidou’s ass easily, unlike Guffy who struggled, and the strongest thing was just that, a “they say”). We’re talking about an alliance of 170 nations, an organisation that had the world under an iron fist for almost a millenia, whatever “dragonkind” is, and their strongest assets, the Admirals, could never hope to match some unruly pirates? Like, how many countries do these guys have, and why aren’t they stealing more Countries from the WG? It’s clear that the WG and Yonkous are on a type of truce, the Yonkous don’t want to anger them, and the WG does not want to just wipe them out, but wipe them out and block other people from claiming their territories, while also enjoying the added bonus of stopping new pirates from obtaining the One Piece (all three great powers, so dubbed by the WG, all have as their primary goal to stop others from getting the One Piece, funnily enough), the only exception was with Wb because they wanted to kill Ace, as he was Riger’s son, a Chinese Government level move, but in hindsight, with all this reincarnation bullshit, they could have thought Roger was Joyboy, and he reincarnated in Ace, or something, and Blackbeard reaped the benefits.
Like, Walmart Whitebeard can use two fruits, that’s cool I guess, but he’s a nobody in the grand scheme of things this Joyboy fucker has to do, Imu, Oda has a very bad track with female fighters, and I’m sure he finally learned that after all these years with BM, no way he’ll make a female final villain, not to mention, even if Imu was a male he’d be ripping off shamelessly his friend Kishimoto, Imu has no real buildup, and the Gorosei’s incompetence is the reason Guffy reached this level in the first place, not a good portrayal to start with, Admirals though, we still have whatever the SSG is, which could be anything, even a power up for the Admirals, with them we got the classic (modern) japanese trope of chaos vs order, which was always what One Piece was about, with Luffy apamming freedom as a word everytime he’s allowed by Oda (or Joyboy if you want to get technical) to open his dumb mouth, and would you look at that, Luffy and Akainu (the guy who killed that Ace dude) being the best representation of that archetype.
It’s Admiralcity all the way to the end.