Media One Piece (spoilers!)

Boss Jinbe continuing to be a boss.


edit: Also just throwing this out there, but I wonder if they could shoe-horn an Aokiji appearance into this arc.

Reason: In that most famous of Japanese Children's stories, MomonosukeTarou goes to Onigashima to slay the Oni that lived there, bringing with him 3 comrades he had befriended with Kibi Dango from the kibi kibi berry from his friend Tama's cheeks: a "Saru" (Monkey D Luffy), an "Inu"arashi (Dog), and a Kiji (Pheasant). The Pheasant is the only character without a clear reference amongst the invaders-- I mean unless you make the big stretch that Fenghuang (Asian Phoenix) is very Pheasant-like and Marco is the Pheasant but that's REALLY stretching it imo where most of these references are so explicit.

When we think Pheasant, we think Aokiji but you could say that's just because the 3 original Admirals were a reference to the same MomoTarou story (KiZARU - Yellow Monkey, AkaINU - Red Dog, AoKIJI - Blue Pheasant), so that's just happenstance. But I mean with Marco, CP0, Zou, and everyone else in the world just showing up and looking in on this conflict, I think it wouldn't be particularly weird for Aokiji to show up in the aftermath-- making some comments about the World Government involvement, things he sensed about Luffy when they first met (and some cryptic comments about why his personal justice lead to him to allowing the guy who ate WG's 800 year target fruit to run away when he defeated them before), and setting up the story for the conflict with Blackbeard.
 
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Boss Jinbe continuing to be a boss.

I love Jinbe, glad oda is continuing to use him well in the story. Idk the pulse in general on flying six fights but jinbe v who's who was definitely my second fav as well.

also yeah, i've heard the momotaro theory for a while too. definitely seems like something oda would implement with his love for traditional mythology. i think it's also the more popular interpretation but yamato as the dog makes a lot more sense to me than inu especially with how momo+yama have been paired together since 1023 or so. (also just looked it up bc i forgot the name of her fruit but it's Inu-Inu Fruit, Model: Okuchi-no-Makami)

aokiji is definitely an interesting choice for someone to show up at the end of the arc. i know CP0 already came through but it definitely feels like a big player is gonna show up similar to thriller bark and he would fit the bill. would also make sense since we know BB sent a representative to Wano and he is probably the most capable other than maybe shiryuu.

Where tf is denjiro
forgot that man existed lmao
 
Man this reddit fanbase is so toxic (probably stands out for me because OP is one of like only 3 reddits I actually follow) everyone whinging about the latest chapter and saying Oda is worse than all these other mangaka now smh. I personally enjoyed it and thought it was a nice build up…
 
at least there wasn't any more of luffy shenanigans making me uneasy about his devil fruit and is he op now or not

but i did feel that some of the flashbacks are for things that we've had flashbacks to almost a dozen times. maybe we'll get more flashbacks to the burning castle from kanjuro's pov orochi's pov kiku's pov tengu's pov etc

feel like some of this could've been wrapped up in any of earlier flashbacks, at least one of which was already from momo's pov. that's only a small complaint when compared to how overall good it has been, and nowhere near the fourth shinobi flashback war of naruto (which im rereading rn :psycry: ).
i think when i'll reread this arc in one go it won't stand out as much as it is now with all the painful waiting for chapters

also expecting another denjiro flashback anyway where the fuck was he and him swooping in just now does not answer the question (unless he says he was indeed waiting for hours just outside the room watching orochi and waiting for a cool entry moment)
 
at least there wasn't any more of luffy shenanigans making me uneasy about his devil fruit and is he op now or not

but i did feel that some of the flashbacks are for things that we've had flashbacks to almost a dozen times. maybe we'll get more flashbacks to the burning castle from kanjuro's pov orochi's pov kiku's pov tengu's pov etc

feel like some of this could've been wrapped up in any of earlier flashbacks, at least one of which was already from momo's pov. that's only a small complaint when compared to how overall good it has been, and nowhere near the fourth shinobi flashback war of naruto (which im rereading rn :psycry: ).
i think when i'll reread this arc in one go it won't stand out as much as it is now with all the painful waiting for chapters

also expecting another denjiro flashback anyway where the fuck was he and him swooping in just now does not answer the question (unless he says he was indeed waiting for hours just outside the room watching orochi and waiting for a cool entry moment)

Oh thats definitely true especially with the extra long wait for this chapter, and it definitely wasn’t one of the best, would be a big contributor.
 
...I can't believe I watched the entire Alabasta arc in such a short period of time but I did lmao. I think this was my favorite part of the series so far, beating out the Arlong Park arc. Up to this point my favorite moment in the series was when the squad rolled up to Arlong Park to confront Arlong after Luffy gave Nami his hat, but I think that was topped by the moment where Zoro learned to cut steel and defeated Mr. 1. And I thought that would be my favorite moment from the arc but then Luffy beating Crocodile while one of my favorite pieces of classical music played was INCREDIBLE. So yeah, now I'm done with the 130 episodes on Netflix and am going to figure out where to continue watching the dub, since that's what I started with. I'm officially hooked though.

...I do have two criticisms though.

First is that Nico Robin joining the crew was spoiled like ten+ episodes in advance because of the opening lol. This bothered me a lot because I felt like there was supposed to be this setup of you expecting Vivi to join the crew and then there was a surprise reveal that Nico Robin joins instead. But the opening killed the surprise! I think this is kind of dumb and I'm hoping that there aren't spoilers in future openings/closings.

The other is that no one ever really dies. I mean we see flashbacks of characters dying like Hiriluk or Bell-mere and I'm not saying characters have to die off for me to enjoy it but at this point I just never believe it anymore when a character "dies." Like just from this last arc Igaram was dead and then he somehow managed to survive without it being explained how he did, Koza got shot like a million times but still powered through, and even Pell lived after taking that crazy bomb explosion right to the face! I thought this would be an actual death since they showed his gravestone and everything but nope, Pell came back. And maybe this is on purpose so that when there's an actual character death it'll hit harder but man, I've been very surprised at the lack of deaths in One Piece.

I know I’m way behind everyone else lol but hey, I’m back to watching One Piece. Back in March I started from the beginning all over again so now I have two watches of everything through Alabasta under my belt and my thoughts on those first 130 episodes are still the same, all the great moments and stuff make it an incredible watch.

But now that I’m past that I actually finally found something that I don’t particularly care for: the Luluka Island/Rainbow Mist filler arc. I get that it’s filler and it was kind of cool that it was foreshadowed with the books that Robin was reading but yeah this is the first time One Piece felt underwhelming for me, which was surprising because I really enjoyed the Warship Island arc and that was filler too. Hope it picks back up with the next episodes that are actually non-filler.
 
phoopes i don't watch the anime but the only filler i've ever heard praise of is after the next major arc, and it's the only arc i've ever fully watched in anime. besides that one you can just skip all the filler arcs if you don't wanna be underwhelmed between enjoyable canon arcs
 
One Piece gets more and more commie as the days goes by.

I mean before Luffy wanted to be King of the Pirates (where a pirate ship is a floating worker Coop in the Industry of looting Empire Ships and sometimes causing worker uprisings in the form of empire sailor mutinies), pursued by a Fascist global military and slave trade empire, and son of the leader of the Revolutionary Army that opposes them (with commoners, furries, and the LGBTQ KingQueendom)-- and now he's the Warrior of Liberty who has actual ideals around Freedom from Hunger. Luffy is so based.
 
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Also to the point above though, it would have been way way way way more awesome for Oda to just go ahead and write "A world where my friends everyone can eat as much as they want! That's my kinda world!"

It would be way more fucking based, none of this bullshit Rurouni Kenshin "I'll protect as far as my sword goes, the people I see in front of me." bullshit. We know Luffy is going to eventually ally with the Revolutionary Army to overthrow the WG of the Fascist World Nobles anyway. Putting in "My Friends" is more in line with Luffy's character up until now and in the theme of "selfish but free" pirates-- but we're already so so so so sooooo far into this and he's literally set up as the Warrior of Liberation waited for by all the characters of destiny and what not now. Other people are depending on him, and Luffy's from here on out a transformative figure.

It would be better to just rip off the bandaid and have a transformative moment for the character's motives as well. Like he doesn't have to be reborn as a socialist super hero, but just maybe surrounded by the environmental degradation, starvation, and enslavement in Wano that goes quiiieeeeeet a bit farther than even Ancapistan-But-Actually-Slaves-Controlled-by-Puppet-Strings Dressrosa (so just Ancapistan then?) and Big Mom's Diversity Quota/Neoliberal/Girl Boss Dictatorship (So Just Clintonism then?)-- just have Luffy blurt out this gut reaction; that it's not just about himself or his friends, that all of this domination by the current powers of the world is bullshit he's gonna smash, and just a wild moral impulse that everyone should be able to eat.

There's still time to evolve the character more as he meets Dragon at some point (where either way he'd have to be given even more Revolutionary sympathy), or rejoins Sabo-- either character would be able to massively grow Luffy's character by unlocking a deeper sympathy for the suffering and injustices in the world-- but including "my friends" in that sentence still seems too small potatoes of a character development for how many many many years we are into the story and the gravity of the moment in defeating Kaido.
 
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no discussion on 1050 here yet? personally i'm not impressed by the bait. a dark sky full of volcanic ash is ominous as fuck in a series known for its heavy sun symbolism, can't wait to see what direction 1051 goes in. the rest of kaido's flashback is gonna be some of the most exciting shit we can experience at least.
 
luffy and big mom literally have the biggest and most intensely hate-filled mutual grudge in the new world. the two of them actually despise each other on a level that we haven't even seen with any of luffy's prior villains. do people really think that the two of them somehow not fighting is actually even an option on the table?

she's not coming back in elbaf after she literally went through everything just to have a shot at taking his head in wano. we have all of act 4 to finish and resolve this plot thread that's literally been built up for 400 chapters since fishman island.
 
is this a second timeskip?

No, I believe Oda is just taking a month’s break to sort everything out for the final saga when he comes back, which will be the longest publishing break since the timeskip which he also took a month’s break. Sorry for any confusion!
 
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