Stealing and reusing devil fruit power is BB's theme but damn I wish Oda would just come up with something new for his titanic crew lol.
Maybe taking advantage of that Liquor ore or whatever that Dragon mentioned? Maybe Vasco could be involved with it? Would be cool if they had their own equivalent of Vegapunk with their own advanced, crazy tech. I'd love to see BB combine his fruits with his guns too, quake bullets, shooting bullets through black hole portals and such too.
I would say they could be weaponry experts in general but we might get that with Shanks crew ofc? I doubt BB crew are gonna be haki experts either ofc, that seems more of the Red Hair Pirates kind of thing I hope.
But aside from the DF stuff, I'm not sure what Oda could do with the BB pirates but I'd love for him to come up with something new for them as you said and even exclusive for them too potentially.
I really don't like the idea of Yamato dying and Blackbeard taking her fruit for his crew too. I think Kaido will die but what will happen to his fruit then? Will it get fed to one of Zoro's swords as Oda said he would like to happen? Shiryu might get it for his own sword? Or maybe to CP0 or Big Mom takes it as her "debt " from Kaido "being repaid"?
BB already has a sort of similar equivalent to Yamato's fruit in his crew too, a mythical dog fruit but based on the 9 tailed fox spirit ofc. So I think it would be also kinda redudant for his crew to get Yamato's fruit. I think BBs crew has an infilitration theme going with their fruits and own personal/unique abilities too, hence why Catarina chose a mythical zoan that can use illusions or and shapeshift or w/e too.
Given how sadistic Oda can be at times though and how much he likes to repeat/rhyme with his own story and the emphasis on Ace and parallels and all that, he could kill off Yamato though and the Blackbeard pirates being the one to do it, would also make things all the more personal and make them even more hated in-story and by Yamato fans IRL ofc.
I do fear Oda is deliberately trying to let our guards down as much as possible with all these fake deaths so he can give us a truly brutal and thus "permanent/canon" death when we least expect it. Yamato might just be the canditate for that unfortunately and it would also parallel Oden, the very man she wants to be so desperately too.
She might be the "Merry" of the arc and be the reason the SHs can even escape Wano in a desperate last stand to protect them as they flee and she gives her lfie in the process after being heavily wounded or so. Oda just may give her a brutal final stand like that and ironically the glorious death that Kaido yearns for and to be remembered and idolised by, but won't get himself instead but his own daughter does instead, who idolises his worst enemy too for the most extreme irony possible overall.
Personally, I feel like this is bait. Like whitebeard did to Oden, Luffy will initially refuse yamato's offer, probably because she emulates Oden too much, but will offer to let her join if she could follow them to elbaf or wherever. Yamato, like Oden, will follow but will be intercepted and subsequently killed by teach. This would make so much sense with the parallels Yamato has with Ace and could ultimately serve to reignite Luffy's hatred of blackbeard.
This could happen to be fair though, it does make a lot of sense imo. Would be the perfect setup to go into the Blackbeard arc too. PLus Yamato and Luffy bothb eing closely linked to Ace, it does add to that.
it just makes no sense to me that we would get a new straw hat right before the endgame.
I can agree with this especially too. I used to want more SHs and I waited over 10 years for Jinbei to officially join too as well as many others, but now he's joined, it's underwhelming because it took so long too ironically and had so much baiting and deliberate delaying.
The SHs are already getting woefully neglected post TS and adding another SH in Jinbei, almost another few in Carrot, Yamato and even Zeus is just overkill really. Law has been like a honorary SH too. As you said, its too close to endgame and a new SH would suffer even more from the lack of time to be developed and such. Brook has been part of the crew for something like 14 years IRL for us, a few days with the crew at most before the 2 years seperation timeskip and now only what a few months at most with them after reuniting with them? He's not even had a full/all out 1v1 fight yet! That he's actually won too as well especially!
I used to want another and final SH at Elbaf BUT that would be far too close to the endgame and a bad idea for the reasons both of have us mentioned now ofc. I rather the existing SHs get a lot more development, we have plenty of them already and some are serving more than 1 role on the crew now too.
She was introduced in the 3rd act of wano, Luffy doesn't even call her by her real name, and she's had no meaningful interaction with the other straw hats so far. It just doesn't make sense.
This is an important observation too to be fair. He saves those nicknames for people who don't join and if she did join, he runs the risk of being spoiled on the One Piece, the journey itself, Laugh Tale and so on because of her reading Oden's journal ofc. He went ballistic at Usopp at Sabaody for asking Rayleigh about the OP or and Laugh Tale after all.
Burgess will get Yamato's fruit and Sanji, being the gentleman he is, will avenge her in a fire vs ice battle against burgess.
This would be nice too to be fair but funnily enough, I thought of Sanji facing Kuzan as he's an ally of BB and may have to fight them too? To maintain his cover or something? Or just a clash of ideals and Kuzan becoming too embittered of the hypocrisy, corruption, injustice etc of the Marines and the WG?
