manga update
PostPosted:Sat Apr 10, 2010 1:27 am
One Piece recently wrapped up a major arc, and hopefully it'll stop trying to embarass itself with writing anything complicated and just go back to the massive brawls that is its bread & butter stuff. I mean I suppose you can look at the arc as a satire on the entire OP itself, that Luffy is a complete moron that endangered himself and people around him for absolutely nothing because he's powerless to do jack and his luck finally ran out. But knowing how OP goes I seriously doubt that's the lesson here since Luffy can do no wrong. I suppose what Shanks said could be interpreted as that the arc is meant to show Luffy is a complete failure, but I'm guessing in a few arc they'll just blame it on some freak accident or whatever. I mean the whole thing got so ridiculous that apparently Luffy no longer has his instant-kill vulnerability after Gear 3 because the author got tired of explaining how he miraculously survived against guys who have like 10 times his power with an instant-kill weakness whenever he goes into Gear 3. Or that it only took 55 volumes before someone realized if you have a sharp enough object you can counter basically any of Luffy's hundred-hand slap style moves (he'll just get his arm sliced off against a sharp object). I don't really mean to hold OP to a standard of fighting worldview as say, Hunter Hunter, but it's really ridiculous that nobody ever realized there are totally trivial ways to defeat all of Luffy's moves. Heck, he went into Gear 2 and got his power neutralized and then somehow did NOT die even though it was said Gear 2/3 cannot be done by anyone who has a real body (your heart will explode from the pressure, or something).
On a brief detour, Bleach has the most ridiculous special power when Gin unleashed his bankai. As he's explaining what it does I'm left thinking 'this is supposed to actually kill people?' It's sort of like in Kenshin when someone does some special move and the cast remarked: "No way a normal human can do that!" and then someone will point out nobody in the series was ever a normal human so that's actually pretty normal. I mean, Bleach basically has all these inconsistent super powers in shikai/bankai, and then you got the generic 'mysterious powerful character' whose shikai/bankai are essentially completely useless. It doesn't even look like they increase his power by any meaningful amount! Or maybe the whole point is that Gin is just some guy who pretends to be really tough but is actually totally weak. After all any random captain/lieutenant didn't have too much problem with him before he betrayed...
Finally, Hunter Hunter finally resolved one of the ongoing mysteries. Resolve is a funny word, because any observent reader should have realized Kite died something like 5 years ago. Perhaps it's an influence from stuff like Naruto that people started thinking people can just randomly come back to life if the power of friendship is involved, though if one follows the series you can clearly tell Kite is indeed totally dead (he got his head chopped off! I think it'd be hard to recover from that even in Naruto). If there was any remote doubt it should have been removed when you see the Cat royal's ability clearly doesn't work on dead people, since if it did she (er, he) would never have been threatened by the fact that the Hunters had a hostage. He can simply kill everyone, including the hostage, and then bring the hostage back to life if his power was resurrection. But anyway, in part 304 the Cat royal finally went out and said he cannot bring out the back, and that Kite is already dead.
And here's the funny part, the story clearly portrays the Cat royal as someone who isn't particularly good at acting/lying. Perhaps that's why some people thought Kite might be back when the Cat royal agreed to bring back Kite in exchange for the hostage. Certainly it seems to be well established that the Cat royal does not ever lie. Of course, as one might suspect, he agreed to that because he has no idea of the names of the guy he's already killed so he clearly assumed Kite was someone who was living but might be badly hurt, which is a piece of cake to fix with his ability.
And unlike OP, the point of part 304 is obviously. Gon's recklessness was what got Kite killed in the first place. He does insist on taking on the impossible and to get out of that mess, he lost someone who was basically a brother to him. Just because you're the main character of the story doesn't mean everything has to always work out well for you. From the outset Hunter Hunter made it clear this isn't some kind of fairy tale world where good always wins and nothing bad can ever happen if you just believe in friendship. That was the message five years ago when Gon said "I believe in Kite, he is still alive!" and then scene cuts to the Cat royal kicking Kite's head around.
Too bad the Cat royal probably won't be kicking Gon's head around in the next week's part. Hunter is too consistent to allow Gon to even have a shot at fighting the Cat royal since Gon refused the original terms (Cat royal will fight with no limbs), but I'm guessing the Cat royal will decide to use the humans to find out which royal betrayed their King.
On a brief detour, Bleach has the most ridiculous special power when Gin unleashed his bankai. As he's explaining what it does I'm left thinking 'this is supposed to actually kill people?' It's sort of like in Kenshin when someone does some special move and the cast remarked: "No way a normal human can do that!" and then someone will point out nobody in the series was ever a normal human so that's actually pretty normal. I mean, Bleach basically has all these inconsistent super powers in shikai/bankai, and then you got the generic 'mysterious powerful character' whose shikai/bankai are essentially completely useless. It doesn't even look like they increase his power by any meaningful amount! Or maybe the whole point is that Gin is just some guy who pretends to be really tough but is actually totally weak. After all any random captain/lieutenant didn't have too much problem with him before he betrayed...
Finally, Hunter Hunter finally resolved one of the ongoing mysteries. Resolve is a funny word, because any observent reader should have realized Kite died something like 5 years ago. Perhaps it's an influence from stuff like Naruto that people started thinking people can just randomly come back to life if the power of friendship is involved, though if one follows the series you can clearly tell Kite is indeed totally dead (he got his head chopped off! I think it'd be hard to recover from that even in Naruto). If there was any remote doubt it should have been removed when you see the Cat royal's ability clearly doesn't work on dead people, since if it did she (er, he) would never have been threatened by the fact that the Hunters had a hostage. He can simply kill everyone, including the hostage, and then bring the hostage back to life if his power was resurrection. But anyway, in part 304 the Cat royal finally went out and said he cannot bring out the back, and that Kite is already dead.
And here's the funny part, the story clearly portrays the Cat royal as someone who isn't particularly good at acting/lying. Perhaps that's why some people thought Kite might be back when the Cat royal agreed to bring back Kite in exchange for the hostage. Certainly it seems to be well established that the Cat royal does not ever lie. Of course, as one might suspect, he agreed to that because he has no idea of the names of the guy he's already killed so he clearly assumed Kite was someone who was living but might be badly hurt, which is a piece of cake to fix with his ability.
And unlike OP, the point of part 304 is obviously. Gon's recklessness was what got Kite killed in the first place. He does insist on taking on the impossible and to get out of that mess, he lost someone who was basically a brother to him. Just because you're the main character of the story doesn't mean everything has to always work out well for you. From the outset Hunter Hunter made it clear this isn't some kind of fairy tale world where good always wins and nothing bad can ever happen if you just believe in friendship. That was the message five years ago when Gon said "I believe in Kite, he is still alive!" and then scene cuts to the Cat royal kicking Kite's head around.
Too bad the Cat royal probably won't be kicking Gon's head around in the next week's part. Hunter is too consistent to allow Gon to even have a shot at fighting the Cat royal since Gon refused the original terms (Cat royal will fight with no limbs), but I'm guessing the Cat royal will decide to use the humans to find out which royal betrayed their King.