One Piece

[Don]

So One Piece volume 50 is out, where the Straw Hats are exactly halfway around the world, so it'd seem like this might be the halfway point of the series, and it looks like as good time as any to discuss this series. Now people probably know that I don't like One Piece, but up until about volume ~30 it's mostly because I'm not interested in the genre it represents. However, things have been going downhill after about CP9 arc, maybe even during the CP9 arc.

First I'll go over what I think One Piece does very well. It is probably the best manga out there when it comes to battle flow. There is practically no strategy behind any of its fights, but all the moves and frames make sense. You never have to wonder how did something happen between two frames. Certainly if all you're looking for is something that involves people beating each other up in the name of friendship, there's nothing better than OP out there. I think this is about where One Piece's strength ends, but I do consider this a very strong strength because stuf like Naruto and Bleach can't even make the beating each other up part exciting.

However, while nothing beats OP when it comes to one on one fights, the lack of tactics or rather forethought really hurts the series. I think this is a limitation of the author himself. Up until CP9 you can make an argument that all the Straw Hats match up 1 on 1 versus someone pretty well because they're never matched against someone significantly stronger than they are. In fact it is rare to see Sanji or Zoro matched up against someone stronger they are unless it's your usual 'head bad guy beats up #2 and #3 and Luffy comes to save the day' deal. In particular the girls of the Straw Hats match up pathetically on whoever they are up against. If the wanted amount is supposed to be some kind of power level indicator, then the difference between Nami and Luffy is astronomical. While Nico Robin has a high ransom amount (80 million), it's said that's only because she can decipher ancient languages, not because she's actually that strong. At around even volume 30 you still seeing 30 million range guys getting KOed in one hit, and yet the 2 girls of Straw Hats that have roughly an equivalent 30 million rating inexplicably continue to fight, and win, against people who they have no business winning against.

Nico Robin, in particular, is a huge problem. If you ignore the fact that she always manages to snap the neck of people whose necks cannot be snapped, she basically is even worse than Nami. It's stated many times that just because she can make more arms, doesn't mean she gets enhanced strength from it, and any damage the extra body parts take carries to herself. This basically means anyone with a stronger physical strength can just break her extra arm and by extension break her real arm.

Now you could just don't care about the girls when it comes to fighting. I'd assume they're just there to fill some girl quota that any Shonen manga must satisfy. We can even ignore the fact that Luffy is always using moves that shorten his lifespan. However the overall battle flow runs into problem when running into people who are very much stronger than the Straw Hats. The encounter against Bear is a pretty good example, where there was really no reason why anyone should've lived, but they did. There's even some reasonably good explanations, like maybe Dragon showed up or something, but it's not even used.

Continuing on the battle front, there's a huge weakness with the worldview of OP: the natural-type Devil Fruits. As the series moves into the New World, it seems like the amount of natural-types show up way more frequently, and it wasn't even interesting the first time seeing some guy gets blown up and then reform like Meijin Buu or whatever. Battling against such guys is truly an exercise in futility. Luffy may have went from 30 million to 300 million but he still won't be able to hit Smoker. So right now Smoker could still wipe out the entire Straw Hats by himself, simply because there's not a single person on the Straw Hats that has an ability to hit a natural-type user. I suppose the loophole would be something like if you hit someone fast/hard enough it'd get through their immunity versus physical damage, but the latest battle with like one admiral vs 4 guys at 100 million+ range, and the 4 guys wasn't able to hurt the admiral at all. Sure the admiral got blown to pieces but he just glue himself back together. Since the Straw Hats obviously don't invest in anti-Devil Fruit weaponry, basically they will never be able to beat any Natural-type user as long as that person doesn't have a weakness versus one of the Straw Hats.

OP said many times that you're supposed to train harder to make better use of your Devil Fruit power, but no matter how much Luffy trains he's not going to be able to glue himself back together after being shattered to a million pieces. If you look at say how the ice Admiral fight, it's not clear this guy has any reasonable physical ability. Sanji was able to disarm him, and if he wasn't immune to physical damage, both Zoro and Sanji would've done fatal damage (well, as fatal as OP gets) in the first frame. But since he is immune to physical damage, instead Zoro and Sanji got hurt for hitting him. If Zoro was smart and bought a sword that contains the anti-Devil Fruit stuf like Smoker has, he would have taken out an admiral in one hit. No matter how you look at it, for something that revolves a lot around fighting, this is a pretty ridiculous premise.

Lastly, I have problem with the very recent arc which seems to be a leadership by association ala Laguna and Squall. Back in the very beginning against Arlong, Luffy said he basically don't know anything but he can beat people up. Anything also includes leadership, and while his crewmates says he naturally knows who to fight first, it's not exactly rocket science for the strongest guy to match up against the strong guy. That says more about his ability as a fighter rather than any leadership skill. Of course it's not the appeal of OP is because Luffy is a great leader. This is until when the first person that actually knows about the One Piece (the stuff they're supposed to searching for), Luffy basically said no one on his ship can ask because he wants to find it himself, and the guy nods and says that's what makes him a great leader. Huh? You got a bunch of guys who are basically risking their life to find the legendary treasure, and you're not even allowed to ask what/where it is? And this is good leadership? It seems like similar to the case of FF8, the author makes the association that because Dragon is a great leader, his son must be a good leader for no reason whatsoever.

The weird thing Dragon has appeared in probably no more than 10 frames, and yet he somehow does strike me as a man fitting of the 'most dangerous man' in OP label. But his son is not like him in any remote way. It'd have been fine for the guy to just oh you got to see One Piece for yourself or what it is, but I find it pretty offensive that Luffy would tell his crew they're not allowed to ask about it, and then be praised for doing that. The charm of OP is not Luffy's leadership. I'm not convined he even has any of that quality, not that it's an important part. At best I'd say he has a good eye for recruiting, but leading? Not even close.

Now, even OP at its worse is still better than most other manga out there by a large margin, but after flirting with brilliance in Skypiea and the CP9 arc, it's a shame to OP settle for merely 'good enough to beat Naruto'.

[RentCavalier]

I always wonder if One Piece is meant to almost NOT be taken as seriously as all that. In many ways, it sort of parodies the genre it encapsulates, with characters and villains being obviously comical in design.

None of your complaints really matter much to me except for the one pertaining to Luffy's leadership skills. I agree with you mostly that Luffy is a pretty terrible captain. He's only in charge because he's the strongest and, maybe, the most charismatic, and for most of the series, its fine because his naturally good heartedness and disposition to beating up things is all you seem to really need in the world of One Piece. He embodies very archaic and, in a way, childish views on heroism and adventure, and as such is the most incorruptable member of the cast, if not the stupidest.

I think, truth be told, your complaints could all be solved if we got a new crew member--a tactician or somebody of that nature, to sort of play Deus Ex Machina and get things back on a proper track. If we just had one character, outside of Nami, who is at all good at forming strategies, we would likely have a much brainier brawler.

[Don]

Well OP is obviously not about being super smart tactics while fighting. But currently the way some of the Straw Hats match up is suicidal. There's basically only 3 guys that can fight in the Straw Hats: Luffy, Zoro, and Sanji, and once you get below Sanji there's a huge chasm in fighting ability. For example if you look at the fight against Bear, with Luffy out, Zoro was the only person who can even hurt him. With people starting to hit the 300 million+ range of *power*, you notice that these guys tend to have sweeper moves that instant kills (or as close to killing as it gets in OP) people below about 50 million range. The one simple change they need to make is just when the multiple hundred million guys fight, people like Nami should get way out of the way instead of coming up with some dumb justification why someone who will be killed by collatoral damage can actually contribute. Nico Robin is the worst offender because you can argue Nami's lightning zap at least has a chance to bother someone. Nico Robin is limited to either neck-snapping people who turn out to be immune to it (that is to say, everyone), or at best momentarily blinding the enemy with extra hands. It's like none of the enemy has figured out at this point that she is not very strong and you can simply break the extra arms.

Now the fact that Luffy isn't a good leader isn't inherently a problem if the author is good at writing escape routes, but he obviously lacks the ability to do it. So you basically have a leader that tends to get your whole group into dead end situation because he obviously have no ability to gauge his crew's strength relative to the enemy, and you also have an author who does not know how to get out of such death traps. Zoro should have died while fighting Bear because they obviously have no way of beating someone who is probably more like in the 500 million+ range of power especially with Luffy out. Everyone but the top 3 should've just died when Bear did his Bear Shockwave thing, no question asked. Consider that even the cloned Bear needs the whole Straw Hat team to beat (and Luffy going gear 3) we'd have to guess even the cloned version has a power of 300 million+ (higher than Luffy), which again is a range where many of the weaker members of Straw Hats would simply get killed by accident.

The situation with Devil Fruits kind of reminds me of the same problem with Hikaru no Go, where the author said he liked drawing the older guys but all his fan like to see the pretty boys which he didn't like. All the guys who look genuinely cool and powerful are NOT the natural type Devil Fruits. Mihawk, Bear, Dragon, Karp, Shanks, and Whitebeard don't really look like natural-type users, and certainly even if they turn out to be such users they have yet to use any abilities that are of the natural type Devil Fruits. The author is obviously best at portraying 2 guys who are NOT of the natural-type whlie fighting (though the lightning guy works out pretty well). Ace vs Blackbeard really isn't a natural vs natural since Blackbeard does not have physica damage immunity and he cancels out physical immunity of his enemy, which is why that fight looks good. I mean what would be the point of say, Ace vs Smoker? Like Ace said, they'd basically throw projectile at each other and never hit each other because neither of their element counters each other. And yet that's what you're dealing with as the most powerful guys (at least the Admirals) in this world.

I think you started having this balance break down toward the end of CP9. During the Buster Call, one of the Straw Hats is like: "What? We got to fight 100 guys that are like Smoker?" and someone else said: "That just shows how scared of us they are!" Excuse me? Without Luffy they can't even beat ONE guy as strong as Smoker. They won't be able to be able to beat 100 guys as strong as T-Bone. Even if you assume these guys are the stronger membrs of their given rank, the notion that Straw Hats can fight 100 of these is just nonsense. Indeed later Smoker was shown taking out a guy and complaining why is this weakening worth 50 million, which would suggest again only the top 3 even has a chance to fight him straight up, and again since none of the Straw Hats guy can counter his element, they've no way of actually beating him. Note that Smoker does have anti-Devil Fruit accessory mounted on his swords so the reverse is not true, not that any of the Straw Hats have any ability that's nearly as indestructible as Smoker's.