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Austria24417 Posts
I also think that Luffy's "limits" don't make any sense anymore since his fruit was revealed to be a Zoan. It made sense when the explanation was that Luffy was taking his rubber body to the limit through "rubber hacks" like pumping blood faster due to his rubber heart and veins or inflating his rubber body. But with his fruit now being a Zoan, it makes no sense anymore. No other Zoan user has similar drawbacks to their ability. Luffy's Nika transformation is supposedly just the awakened form of his Zoan fruit - Kaido's dragon form is the same for his. Why didn't Kaido have these limits?
Are Luffy's "gears" just stages of Zoan transformation? If so, why are there drawbacks to any of them, unlike what we've seen from any other Zoan fruits? Lucci or someone like that could just transform back and forth willingly without any drawbacks, as did mythical Zoan user Kaido.
Or, if his Gears aren't Zoan transformations but really just "rubber hacks", then Luffy is completely misutilizing his fruit - he should be able to transform into forms we haven't even seen without any drawbacks (including a basic, hybrid and awakened form, just like any other Zoan).
Unless mythical Zoans function completely differently to all other Zoans (and there's not really evidence of that), this whole Luffy being a mythical Zoan thing just doesn't make any sense.
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Narratively, zoans are the most boring fruit type. Compare Dresrossa fights vs Wano fights - way more variety, way more cool/fun moments. Seems like the Gorosei would be all zoans or close to it.
Someone on the OP reddit posted this as Saturn's fruit and it's probably correct - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushi-oni.
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On October 06 2023 19:04 Olli wrote:
I also think that Luffy's "limits" don't make any sense anymore since his fruit was revealed to be a Zoan. It made sense when the explanation was that Luffy was taking his rubber body to the limit through "rubber hacks" like pumping blood faster due to his rubber heart and veins or inflating his rubber body. But with his fruit now being a Zoan, it makes no sense anymore. No other Zoan user has similar drawbacks to their ability. Luffy's Nika transformation is supposedly just the awakened form of his Zoan fruit - Kaido's dragon form is the same for his. Why didn't Kaido have these limits?
Are Luffy's "gears" just stages of Zoan transformation? If so, why are there drawbacks to any of them, unlike what we've seen from any other Zoan fruits? Lucci or someone like that could just transform back and forth willingly without any drawbacks, as did mythical Zoan user Kaido.
Or, if his Gears aren't Zoan transformations but really just "rubber hacks", then Luffy is completely misutilizing his fruit - he should be able to transform into forms we haven't even seen without any drawbacks (including a basic, hybrid and awakened form, just like any other Zoan).
Unless mythical Zoans function completely differently to all other Zoans (and there's not really evidence of that), this whole Luffy being a mythical Zoan thing just doesn't make any sense.
Zoans do seem to be a bit like Paramecia's in that they have some diff ways they manifest.
I am guessing that Luffy's has drawbacks because he is becoming something beyond an animal (mythical or otherwise). Channeling the power of a "god" has to take its toll on a mortal body.
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I think Luffy gets tired from Gear 5 because it's a new form and he's literally bending the laws of nature on his whim. He's not just turning into a Dragon or some other physical being. As for why he got tired using his other forms, I think it's because Luffy isn't properly using his powers and is like brute forcing it, hence why it's taking a toll on his body.
Or... it's cause plot. You can't just have Luffy in Gear 5 doing whatever he wants at all times without it just completely making every single conflict pointless.
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I think it is very possible that there was an old battle between factions, and the one that came out on top had magical powers bestowed by the god vegetables. That's why they appear from an incanted pentagram. Others who got powerups illegally from fruits were named devil fruit to make sure it is looked down upon.
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On October 07 2023 18:50 PVJ wrote:
I think it is very possible that there was an old battle between factions, and the one that came out on top had magical powers bestowed by the god vegetables. That's why they appear from an incanted pentagram. Others who got powerups illegally from fruits were named devil fruit to make sure it is looked down upon.
Are you telling me One Piece is a Veggietales knockoff?! That means Imu is a Tomato man - having both the powers of a fruit and a vegetable.
Most likely though the teleportation circle is a fruit ability of Saturn's mythical zoan. Notice how the marines announced that Saturn was "about to make landfall" as it was forming on the ground? We might have to wait for the official translation to confirm, but this is what I'm leaning towards.
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New Chapter is out!
Finally, we get to see what happened at God Valley. Rocks, Roger, Garp, Shanks, Dragon, and Luffy's mom?!
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was that Crocodile with his hands in his pockets?
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On October 13 2023 06:27 Hyperbola wrote:
New Chapter is out!
Finally, we get to see what happened at God Valley. Rocks, Roger, Garp, Shanks, Dragon, and Luffy's mom?!
i dont think we will see that battle. well just see kumas past before the setting returns to present day.
im thinking kuma will show up at egghead and once again slap everyone away to safety
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Given what we've seen, IM and the 5 elders all have been Op-Op fruited to eternal longevity. It is still most fun to speculate who of the 5 is oldest, and I go for Venus because I still think he has the Shodai Kitetsu, which I think is void century old.
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I hate all these backstories... They almost all make me cry because oda draws the young ones so innocent and happy 
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Austria24417 Posts
I liked it better when the WG wasn't written as so blatantly evil - you know, the "hunting humans for sport" kind of evil.
It made the moral code of Marines like Garp or Sengoku much more believable - protecting the common people. The more comically evil the WG is portrayed though, the less sense it makes for these morally pretty upright characters to not only tolerate but actively defend the WG. And you can't even argue that they're just unaware of the terrible details - Garp was there at God Valley.
Generally very unenthused by the direction Oda is taking with the WG. I think the whole existence of Imu is a big mistake. It's so cliché and boring, as is the change in direction towards the five elders being apparently incredible military forces. The whole story is moving towards the same boring Shounen cliché of main character saving the world from evil, and it didn't have to be this way. In fact, it always felt like Oda had done a lot of groundwork for it to not be that way, making this even more jarring.
Have to say there's been a few trends like that recently that I really haven't liked - pace felt slow during Wano, now it feels way too fast (even despite the constant breaks). Also really dislike the choice to make One Piece a post-apocalyptic world so far, I'm afraid we're in for a lot of bullshit technicalities that will attempt to somehow tie everything together even though the groundwork for this was never laid during the story. The technologically super-sophisticated peoples of the Void Century... carved their messages in big square rocks? Yeah, alright.
Really hurts to admit, but it's all gone off the rails a little recently.
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On October 13 2023 19:02 Olli wrote:
I liked it better when the WG wasn't written as so blatantly evil - you know, the "hunting humans for sport" kind of evil.
It made the moral code of Marines like Garp or Sengoku much more believable - protecting the common people. The more comically evil the WG is portrayed though, the less sense it makes for these morally pretty upright characters to not only tolerate but actively defend the WG. And you can't even argue that they're just unaware of the terrible details - Garp was there at God Valley.
Generally very unenthused by the direction Oda is taking with the WG. I think the whole existence of Imu is a big mistake. It's so cliché and boring, as is the change in direction towards the five elders being apparently incredible military forces. The whole story is moving towards the same boring Shounen cliché of main character saving the world from evil, and it didn't have to be this way. In fact, it always felt like Oda had done a lot of groundwork for it to not be that way, making this even more jarring.
Have to say there's been a few trends like that recently that I really haven't liked - pace felt slow during Wano, now it feels way too fast (even despite the constant breaks). Also really dislike the choice to make One Piece a post-apocalyptic world so far, I'm afraid we're in for a lot of bullshit technicalities that will attempt to somehow tie everything together even though the groundwork for this was never laid during the story. The technologically super-sophisticated peoples of the Void Century... carved their messages in big square rocks? Yeah, alright.
Really hurts to admit, but it's all gone off the rails a little recently.
i think i felt a lot of this during sabonday when the celestial dragons were first depicted at the slave market
what keeps me from being so cynical about it though is how that arc also introduced raleigh, and the implication when he offered to reveal the void history, that they simply stood by and ultimately did not try to confront the world government after learning the truth.
this is not SnK fortunately enough, and the core audience is not intended to be us (who are probably in our late 20’s early to mid 30’s) but I do think there’s still enough room for the story’s themes to remain meaningful and coherent by the end
imo it’s less about “fighting evil” in the narrative, and more about “being free” (kind of like SnK!) and not being satisfied with the status quo; that just happens to correlate with a lot of typical tropes in good vs evil
Also: we were never really introduced to the World Government formally until after Crocodile was defeated and the World Elders decided to blackball Smoker and censure what our protagonists did. the first time they directly confronted the straw hats was when they kidnapped Robin, wanted to enslave her, after it was revealed that they committed genocide on Robin’s hometown
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On October 14 2023 02:39 CHEONSOYUN wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2023 19:02 Olli wrote:
I liked it better when the WG wasn't written as so blatantly evil - you know, the "hunting humans for sport" kind of evil.
It made the moral code of Marines like Garp or Sengoku much more believable - protecting the common people. The more comically evil the WG is portrayed though, the less sense it makes for these morally pretty upright characters to not only tolerate but actively defend the WG. And you can't even argue that they're just unaware of the terrible details - Garp was there at God Valley.
Generally very unenthused by the direction Oda is taking with the WG. I think the whole existence of Imu is a big mistake. It's so cliché and boring, as is the change in direction towards the five elders being apparently incredible military forces. The whole story is moving towards the same boring Shounen cliché of main character saving the world from evil, and it didn't have to be this way. In fact, it always felt like Oda had done a lot of groundwork for it to not be that way, making this even more jarring.
Have to say there's been a few trends like that recently that I really haven't liked - pace felt slow during Wano, now it feels way too fast (even despite the constant breaks). Also really dislike the choice to make One Piece a post-apocalyptic world so far, I'm afraid we're in for a lot of bullshit technicalities that will attempt to somehow tie everything together even though the groundwork for this was never laid during the story. The technologically super-sophisticated peoples of the Void Century... carved their messages in big square rocks? Yeah, alright.
Really hurts to admit, but it's all gone off the rails a little recently. i think i felt a lot of this during sabonday when the celestial dragons were first depicted at the slave market what keeps me from being so cynical about it though is how that arc also introduced raleigh, and the implication when he offered to reveal the void history, that they simply stood by and ultimately did not try to confront the world government after learning the truth. this is not SnK fortunately enough, and the core audience is not intended to be us (who are probably in our late 20’s early to mid 30’s) but I do think there’s still enough room for the story’s themes to remain meaningful and coherent by the end imo it’s less about “fighting evil” in the narrative, and more about “being free” (kind of like SnK!) and not being satisfied with the status quo; that just happens to correlate with a lot of typical tropes in good vs evil Also: we were never really introduced to the World Government formally until after Crocodile was defeated and the World Elders decided to blackball Smoker and censure what our protagonists did. the first time they directly confronted the straw hats was when they kidnapped Robin, wanted to enslave her, after it was revealed that they committed genocide on Robin’s hometown
Yeah but it was shown that the elders felt saddened about feeling the need to destroy Robin's home. Now the Gorosei have fruits modeled after Japanese demons that are plain evil and fighters to boot. Not a fan of that either.
@general direction:
The celestial dragons were always comically evil and were the backdrop to justify why Arlong was as evil as he was. This arguably goes way back. There are subtle differences, mainly that they went from being decadent untouchable rulers at the top that are indirectly causing that harm f.e. through buying slaves and mistreatment to being untouchable and actively committing said evil in other people's countries.
There's also the difference that now celestial dragons are only untouchable as long as they are comically evil, with arguments with each other getting solved by punishing the guy who stood up for good guys. This generally shows that the whole system is supporting the rotten apples instead of ignoring them for religious reasons.
All in all I agree that the conflict marines vs pirates leaves more room for grey morale than the conflict holy knights vs pirates, mainly because holy knights don't have any redeeming qualities in actually trying to protect civilians.
I think Imu got introduced to give the WG a face that represents their conflict with joyboy in the void century. An antagonist that ties Luffy's conflict with the WG back into his fruit's predecessor's conflict.
While sure Akainu to some extend fit the role of the antagonist, he wasn't involved in the original conflict and doesn't really have any stake in that.
That being said it changes the goal of the narrative from finding the OP to overthrowing the WG and while sure, there's been hints that the OP is related to the void century back in Skypea and setup arguably when Dragon was revealed, I can't help but feel like that shifts the focus from exploration and adventure to conflict. Which yes is a typical shift in towards the finale and was already happening with big cake island and Wano, but still feels like it's missing what OP is about.
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the thing is, (almost?) every major story arc has involved liberating an oppressed party.
it's subtle in some cases (like the little garden arc freeing Dory and Brogy from their pointless conflict), but I think you could make an argument that almost every place where the Straw Hats make bonds and befriends the locals, they're a lot more free, less oppressed and willing to be idealistic about the future again.
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Austria24417 Posts
The thing I dislike so much about Imu is that he wasn't needed whatsoever and shifts the story in the direction you're talking about. The WG had a face already - the five elders. They were always depicted as the ones making decisions, and in fact for most of the story there was a certain feeling that they were doing what they were doing not out of pure evil, but because they had some misguided idea of how best to enforce stability and peace throughout the world. Pirate activity and void century research, to them, threatened that stability, so they took oppressive action against them. And like you said, it was depicted as them not being happy about "having to do" this (Ohana).
So we were told all along that these are the highest authority in the WG, and as with other aspects of the story, we were gradually learning more about them. But before we even got enough information about the five elders, Oda jumped the gun to introduce a new character as the actual authority in the WG, making the five elders basically irrelevant. That's why Saturn is suddenly out here doing the job of an admiral, which would have made absolutely no sense at any prior point in the story when they were considered the highest authority themselves. But now they're just servants and servants get sent out to fight.
Imu also shifts the WG even more towards an authoritarian entity which, despite all its flaws we were shown throughout the story, makes it unjustifiably evil as opposed to the system we were previously told was unjust in many ways but ultimately perhaps reformable (i.e. through votes at WG summits) if you got enough member nations on board. Now Imu exists and assassinates political opponents.
None of this feels natural at all. Luffy's fruit being the key to unlock whatever Joyboy secret is hidden alongside the One Piece now is already a mistake in itself imo (remember when the Pirate King was just the person with the most freedom?), but it also doesn't need an ancient evil that Joyboy fought previously. The five elders as non-military, non-immortal forces were perfectly fine antagonists, carrying over secrets of previous generations to keep the rest of the world in check. But now all you need to is 1v1 the ultimate WG bad guy and then everything will be fine.
All of this of course begs the question - if the WG is such an incredible military force through Imu, five elders and holy knights, how are there still opposing nations? Why do they need Marines to fight for them? Not only does this go pretty heavily against what we were always told about the Marines (them being the military arm of the WG, which is apparently a full military apparatus by itself now), it also makes you wonder why they ever needed something like the Shichibukai system. Saturn can apparently just go somewhere, explode everybody's heads, be invincible while doing it and that's that. You'd think they would have found the time to send even just one of the five elders around the world to obliterate any country positioned against the WG, especially considering they're apparently immortal and have been alive for a really long time. They certainly don't seem to care too much about the cost to human life, considering they organize fun events for the celestial dragons to wipe entire nations off the map every year.
The WG was so, so, so much more interesting as a political entity whose position of power was based on the sense of legitimacy granted by a somewhat democratic system (nations council) and the promise of guaranteeing stability across the world, and upheld by the military force of the Marines, who in turn were controlled by the five elders. The WG didn't have to include any fighters whatsoever for this to work perfectly fine, nor did it need a central authoritarian figure - in fact, it worked much better without it.
Imu's existence and the five elders being what they are now introduce so many issues that would make the story less interesting even if they made sense, which unfortunately most of them really don't.
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Wow, you guys completely articulated my issues with the direction of One Piece in a better way than I ever could. The fact that:
- The world government has shifted over time from being a brutal but fair bureaucracy that was willing to do whatever it takes to maintain world stability to a typical evil Sith empire that literally genocides entire islands for fun.
- The Gorisei went from being dignified Members of Parliament to being an evil Justice League who debase themselves before some random Sith Emperor that is so stupidly evil that he decides to use his death star on a random tax-paying island and cause a worldwide catastrophe by raising the sea level.
- That Luffy went from being a kid with a big dream and a lot of guts to being the messiah chosen one with everything already laid out for him by his destiny.
- That the One Piece world changed from being a somewhat believable Pirates of the Caribbean, Age of Exploration type setting to a futuristic sci-fi "we have robots, lasers, machine guns, cloning technology, and space ships" setting and that it makes no sense for anyone to use swords or flintlocks or sailing ships.
...have all been incredibly disappointing to witness.
That said, I do still like One Piece and am willing to see it through. It's no longer the gold standard of manga for me but it's still a fun adventure and very entertaining to read if you don't think about it too much.
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I would argue that the idea that the World Government is a brutal but fair bureaucracy is more of a fanon thing than what was actually been depicted before the timeskip (which to be fair was quite little).
They covered up the atrocities committed by Crocodile and Baroque Works, committed genocide (they were regretful that a useful population of academics were annihilated; perhaps not necessarily because they had to commit war crimes), and openly allowed slavery.
I actually don’t see any indications that the larger World Government as a whole was ever as “fair” or “benevolent” as fans think it was.
Rob Lucci when he was the central antagonist of Water Seven made a good impression of what a man loyal to the government was about. Cipher pol 9 were explicitly trying to kidnap Robin so they could unleash a WMD.
but as for why the Five Stars don’t just BTFO all their enemies, the story has depicted numerous times how much the World Government cares about appearances and how much it does not wish to openly reveal its true nature to the ordinary public. we also just don’t know how powerful they actually are; antagonists are almost always invincible in the narrative when they first appear
As for the marines: a lot of the named characters there’s a spectrum of how much they actually follow the world government’s doctrines/philosophy from Garp/Aokiji/Fujitora to Kizaru and Akainu are either ambivalent or dogmatic about following their directives
I’m in agreement about the execution of a lot of the things post-timeskip as there could have been a lot more finesse in how Imu and the Five Stars were depicted (my thing is that the Celestial Dragons are just way too over the top ‘for the evulz lol’). but imo one piece has always had in every arc a narrative of Luffy and friends fighting oppressive antagonists; it’s never exactly framed as good vs evil (it’s very close though)
“the pirate king is the most free”
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If day the biggest issue i see with the 5 elders and imy being powerful combatants is the ending seem to be multiplying, and I already find that there were too many in wano.
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On October 15 2023 03:14 CHEONSOYUN wrote:
I would argue that the idea that the World Government is a brutal but fair bureaucracy is more of a fanon thing than what was actually been depicted before the timeskip (which to be fair was quite little).
They covered up the atrocities committed by Crocodile and Baroque Works, committed genocide (they were regretful that a useful population of academics were annihilated; perhaps not necessarily because they had to commit war crimes), and openly allowed slavery.
I actually don’t see any indications that the larger World Government as a whole was ever as “fair” or “benevolent” as fans think it was.
Because they wanted to maintain their reputation and the Shichibukai system which was designed to pin pirates against other pirates and maintain the balance of the world. They also definitely got their money's worth at Marineford. It was an efficient system. Definitely not the moral thing to do, but it's the most logical thing to do. Imagine you're a government that has to deal with non-stop terrorism across an entire planet. You're constantly short on manpower so what do you do? You deputize some of these terrorists and give them privileges in return for their allegiance. Brutal, but fair. Once they got the upgraded Pacifistas and the Seraphim, however, the Shichibukai were no longer needed and the government allowed the system to be dissolved. It makes sense when you think about it from a realpolitik standpoint.
As for Ohara, the government killed them off to hide the ancient weapons that could threaten the world. Even if that was a lie to hide the truth about the void century, it still makes sense since whatever secret the void century holds can threaten the legitimacy of their regime, so the most logical thing to do is to exterminate those who threaten you. Evil? No. Literally every country throughout our history has acted this way.
In a world like One Piece, being "benevolent" is a very low bar since, as stated before, there is a constant global threat of terrorists at every corner of the planet. Just being the guys who maintain order and take out these terrorists is already enough to be considered "good". There are bad actors in the marines like Axe Hand Morgan, but there are also good actors like Garp and Sengoku. In fact, even characters like Akainu who many consider to be "evil" are actually quite good. He might be ruthless, but think about the world he lives in. He's a product of an environment where literally every square inch of the planet is a potentially active war zone. He's harsh and is willing to kill disloyal marines because he's at war 24/7 and any mutiny needs to be met with capital punishment.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/Lup1oeT.jpg)
