I don't know if it's just a freak coincidence, but with HXH being reserialized it's a very bad time for an 'epic battle of good and evil' arc since nobody currently on Shonen Jump can do it better than Togashi. Of course there's nothing to be ashamed of that, but OP can usually be counted on predictably epic battle of blood, sweat, and friendship of reasonable quality. Well it's still blood, sweat, and friendship but the quality isn't there anymore. It's pretty clear Oda has no kind of reasonable world structure or power rankings and he's just making stuff as he goes, and that works well for the mostly evenly matched fights so far. But the current arc is bascially your classic good guys versus impossible odds, and the plot holes are even more gaping than the time where a normal guy survived a bomb that was supposed to take out a whole nation just to make sure nobody ever dies in OP.
The first biggest problem is the whole Conquerer's Aura (your translation might translate to something else, there's really no equivalent English concept anyway, sort of like HXH's Nen). It's pretty clear there was no such thing as "Conqueror's Aura" prior to this arc, as in, the concept did not exist at all. Clearly it was invented to stop the silliness of god mode versus god mode of the devil fruit users. While Oda made some stupid attempt to account for its rarity (only one in 5 million people can use it!), he forgot that a random large nation in OP has something like 50 million people. So you got one of the Admirals in the Marines fighting the right hand man of the most fearsome pirate known to mankind. He is using his fruit power because it never occured to him the right hand man of the most fearsome pirate known just MIGHT know how to use Conquerer's Aura. After all what's the chance that the strongest 10 or so people in the world might know how to use such a technique (answer: 100%)?
And then it's like okay we're going to execute Ace and we don't want to have it interrupted. So we'll put 2 random guys as the executioner who will be instantly KOed by the Conquerer's Aura the moment they tried to execute Ace, because clearly no one thought White Beard (currently strongest man in the world) can use Conqueror's Aura? They might as well replace Conqueror's Aura and rename it as 'Convenient Plot Device' because that's all its good for.
The second issue is the ridiculous sequence of events. For example one week ago Marco just got lasered and handcuffed and stuff, and this week he's back in action thanks to the power of friendship. I realize nobody actually dies in OP just because they got shot through the heart 5 times by a laser beam, but even if you ignore that, he should've been at least out of the for longer than 3 frames. I fully expect the guy got frozen into a statue to return to fight next week too. In an ultimate showdown between good and evil and the world's fate depends on it, both sides sure are very sloppy about making sure they actually kill the other side's major participants. I mean the blue Admiral even said all he has to is freeze someone and then shatter it and that guy will stay dead, even if it's a devil fruit user, but somehow shattering a frozen person is extremely hard in OP.
Then we also have the ridiculous devil fruit properties. It only took 58 volumes for someone to figure out rubber is weak against slashing? Don't tell me it's just because Hawkeyes is the #1 swordsman in the world. Anybody with a sharp enough sword could've easily chopped off Luffy's hand whenever he does his hundred hand slap attack.
Another thing is that the Marines still haven't figured out Boa Hancock betrayed them. It's like seriously? She attacked multiple Marines repeatedly to protect Luffy, and they still think she's on their side? A single PX could've taken her out. I'm sure even someone like Colonel T-Bone could've taken her out and at least restore some respectability.
This whole fight for Ace is turning into an utter joke. Apparently no one on the marine side had the time to just pick up a sword and chop his head off. Clearly only the guys labeled as 'executioner' can do this, even though there are at least 2 Admiral class guys on the Marines that aren't currently busy. Besides, you only need like a Colonel-class person to not get defeated by Conqueror's Aura, so someone like Smoker can easily do the job.
I realize it's like a rule that if you got a plan you must talk about it and wait long enough until it can be foiled while you're doing the talking, but failing to kill a defenseless guy, surrounded on all asides by super powerful beings, for something like 15 minutes in a row, is pretty bad even in the scheme of failed plans.
The first biggest problem is the whole Conquerer's Aura (your translation might translate to something else, there's really no equivalent English concept anyway, sort of like HXH's Nen). It's pretty clear there was no such thing as "Conqueror's Aura" prior to this arc, as in, the concept did not exist at all. Clearly it was invented to stop the silliness of god mode versus god mode of the devil fruit users. While Oda made some stupid attempt to account for its rarity (only one in 5 million people can use it!), he forgot that a random large nation in OP has something like 50 million people. So you got one of the Admirals in the Marines fighting the right hand man of the most fearsome pirate known to mankind. He is using his fruit power because it never occured to him the right hand man of the most fearsome pirate known just MIGHT know how to use Conquerer's Aura. After all what's the chance that the strongest 10 or so people in the world might know how to use such a technique (answer: 100%)?
And then it's like okay we're going to execute Ace and we don't want to have it interrupted. So we'll put 2 random guys as the executioner who will be instantly KOed by the Conquerer's Aura the moment they tried to execute Ace, because clearly no one thought White Beard (currently strongest man in the world) can use Conqueror's Aura? They might as well replace Conqueror's Aura and rename it as 'Convenient Plot Device' because that's all its good for.
The second issue is the ridiculous sequence of events. For example one week ago Marco just got lasered and handcuffed and stuff, and this week he's back in action thanks to the power of friendship. I realize nobody actually dies in OP just because they got shot through the heart 5 times by a laser beam, but even if you ignore that, he should've been at least out of the for longer than 3 frames. I fully expect the guy got frozen into a statue to return to fight next week too. In an ultimate showdown between good and evil and the world's fate depends on it, both sides sure are very sloppy about making sure they actually kill the other side's major participants. I mean the blue Admiral even said all he has to is freeze someone and then shatter it and that guy will stay dead, even if it's a devil fruit user, but somehow shattering a frozen person is extremely hard in OP.
Then we also have the ridiculous devil fruit properties. It only took 58 volumes for someone to figure out rubber is weak against slashing? Don't tell me it's just because Hawkeyes is the #1 swordsman in the world. Anybody with a sharp enough sword could've easily chopped off Luffy's hand whenever he does his hundred hand slap attack.
Another thing is that the Marines still haven't figured out Boa Hancock betrayed them. It's like seriously? She attacked multiple Marines repeatedly to protect Luffy, and they still think she's on their side? A single PX could've taken her out. I'm sure even someone like Colonel T-Bone could've taken her out and at least restore some respectability.
This whole fight for Ace is turning into an utter joke. Apparently no one on the marine side had the time to just pick up a sword and chop his head off. Clearly only the guys labeled as 'executioner' can do this, even though there are at least 2 Admiral class guys on the Marines that aren't currently busy. Besides, you only need like a Colonel-class person to not get defeated by Conqueror's Aura, so someone like Smoker can easily do the job.
I realize it's like a rule that if you got a plan you must talk about it and wait long enough until it can be foiled while you're doing the talking, but failing to kill a defenseless guy, surrounded on all asides by super powerful beings, for something like 15 minutes in a row, is pretty bad even in the scheme of failed plans.
