gundamkyoukai
Member
IMO none of the groups in OP are good .
You have people that are good but not the organizations \groups.
You have people that are good but not the organizations \groups.
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One Piece Manga |OT| ZEHAHAHAHA! The Name of this Age is Blackbeard!
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LonelyGreyWolf
Banned
Yeah, someone posted this a few minutes/posts ago.
Is the pages colored? No?
LonelyGreyWolf
Banned
Of course not.
More Fun To Compute
Member
The idea that the 7 warlords all represent different seas is interesting but the theme isn't really explored. The different seas are not thematically linked other than representing different levels of danger with east blue being safest and new world being most dangerous.
But it is sort of possible to link most of the original warlords to a sea.
Crocodile - East Blue
Gekko Moriah - South Blue (this one is just because it's the last one left)
Bartholomew Kuma - West Blue
Donquixote Doflamingo - North Blue
Boa Hancock - Calm Belt
Dracule Mihawk - Paradise
Jinbe - New World
But it is sort of possible to link most of the original warlords to a sea.
Crocodile - East Blue
Gekko Moriah - South Blue (this one is just because it's the last one left)
Bartholomew Kuma - West Blue
Donquixote Doflamingo - North Blue
Boa Hancock - Calm Belt
Dracule Mihawk - Paradise
Jinbe - New World
Just saw this and I'm not following. This isn't the heart of the cards, Yugi.
It means hes better than us
LonelyGreyWolf
Banned
gundamkyoukai
Member
gundamkyoukai
Member
You had to say it in that kinda of way LMAO.
Tathanen
Get Inside Her!
Jesus this thread is moving so fast, I don't have time to respond to all this.
Okay I'll just address this bit. You are ascribing a degree of agency to the Marines that does not exist. When it comes to the Celestial Dragons, the Marines do what they are told. The CD are the unquestioned rulers of the world, they do not care about the autonomy of the Marines in any capacity. They are spoiled, selfish, sociopathic individuals and when they demand an admiral as their bodygard, they get one. This isn't a courtesy being offered by the Marines, they have no say in this function. "Oh we can provide a similarly powered force that-" no, the CDs want the admiral, and they will get the admiral.
This is also why you can't just give Garp a title in name only. If he's an admiral it means he is at the beck and call of the Celestial Dragons. The Marines can't just say "nah you don't have to go," that is outright insubordination and I have no doubt that the Celestial Dragons would gut the management structure of the Marines at the drop of a hat if they thought it wasn't going to give them what they want.
Okay I'll just address this bit. You are ascribing a degree of agency to the Marines that does not exist. When it comes to the Celestial Dragons, the Marines do what they are told. The CD are the unquestioned rulers of the world, they do not care about the autonomy of the Marines in any capacity. They are spoiled, selfish, sociopathic individuals and when they demand an admiral as their bodygard, they get one. This isn't a courtesy being offered by the Marines, they have no say in this function. "Oh we can provide a similarly powered force that-" no, the CDs want the admiral, and they will get the admiral.
This is also why you can't just give Garp a title in name only. If he's an admiral it means he is at the beck and call of the Celestial Dragons. The Marines can't just say "nah you don't have to go," that is outright insubordination and I have no doubt that the Celestial Dragons would gut the management structure of the Marines at the drop of a hat if they thought it wasn't going to give them what they want.
LonelyGreyWolf
Banned
All jokes aside, I agree completely with this. I find it slightly embarrassing when people call themselves "One Piece fans" yet they've never paid anything for it and just read it illegally online. I can understand not buying them if you're only remotely interested in One Piece and thus don't care too much though.
Not to mention that most people in this thread don't even read SBS, which comes naturally with the books.
Aaronrules380
Member
I subscribe to English shonen jump. I've also bought some volumes digitally, but I really want them to rerelease the second digital bundle before I buy more
You can support the franchise without buying the physical books. Also, having read all of the SBS up to this point, only about 10% of it is actual useful information, so I don't know why you're being snobby. Being a fan of something isn't a pissing contest measured by dollars spent or fringe content read. You could just like it because you like it.
gundamkyoukai
Member
Even if you don't buy the books there are a lot of ways to support OP.
Of course you don't have to buy stuff to be a fan .
Of course you don't have to buy stuff to be a fan .
I spread the good word
What? No, that part was just in reference to how you seemed to be hesitant of talking about this philosophical point because you were 'run out of the thread' the last time. I was just trying to encourage you to speak your mind.
Jeez, not everything I say is confrontational and contrarian...
Okay, first off, Akainu's beliefs, by his own admission, are not "for greater good". They're "Absolute Justice." And justice in OP has only ever been defined as punishing or exercising evil.
Now, I think you're misunderstanding my argument. I'm saying that the number of potential casualities scales with the number of casualties Akainu is theoretically willing to dispose of. What happened was that Akainu killed X amount of civilians to try and make sure Y amount of people didn't die. Akainu's character, as I see it, is one that believes in the principle of eliminating evil rather than the utility of it. Therefore, he would kill as many people that the weapon would to ensure the person who had it wouldn't use it. If he needed to kill 500 civilians to prevent a hundred thousand from dying, he'd do it. If he needed to kill 1000 civilians, or 50,000, or 100,000, he'd do it too. At some point, it stops being about preventing the thousand from dying, but about preventing the other guy from killing them. You might disagree that that's his character, but all evidence to the contrary. He's willing to slaughter people at the slightest twitch. Such as Ace. Now, you say that he isn't killing Ace just because he's a pirate, but also because he's a criminal and so on. That may well be how it worked out, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't kill him just for being the son of a pirate, even if the other factors weren't a consideration. He says this multiple times, and has mentioned that Luffy needs to die, not because of any ability he has or action he's taken, but just because he's the son of Dragon. Bloodline alone is enough to warrant a death sentence in his eyes. The only instance anywhere on record that has him oriented to save a life instead of executing it is his fight with Kuzan, and until we know more information, that seems to have been a friendship induced lapse into hypocrisy rather than something in line with his personal beliefs.
Now, you might be saying that he's purely utilitarian insofar as he believes even the slightest mark of piracy is worthy of summary execution and he lives in a time where there is a misunderstanding that piracy is inherent in genes, and thus adheres the to "greater good" code of ethics. However, he also murders fellow marines that were running away from whitebeard. Now, this is utterly pointless from a utilitarian perspective. He knows those marines weren't going to do any damage to Whitebeard no matter what. However, he kills them based on the fact that they aren't pointlessly throwing their lives away just on principle. That's what gets his murder on, the fact that they aren't sticking to the principle of what he sees as justice. The "Greater Good" philosophy is inherently a utilitarian principle, and no utilitarian would say that the marines continuing to attack Whitehbeard against sense and reason is right. At that point, it's not about the greatest possible good, but about having justice done, regardless of how much it hurts.
From that, I can only question what possible hold could the CD have on the marines to not just tell them 'fuck off'. If the marines, as a organization, decide to not enforce the CD's rule, what are they going to do? What do the Marines benefit from being their lap dogs? I can believe the Gorosei have power behind them, but the CD's have been shown to be a bunch of wimps, other than Doflamingo who is an outcast.
I know this is an actual plot point of OP, that we have to wait and see, but it is going to have to be something GOOD for the marines to justify this frankly asinine rule, when the marines could be such a more efficient organization, because that is a MAJOR limitation.
That is my impression as well. The CD literally own that whole shit, providing the majority of the WGs and Marines funds. I mean, they are the 1% of the 1%,
My impression was the opposite. They are only so well taken care of because the marines pamper their ass financially as well as politically. I mean, if its the case that they own money, that means they have to manage it, and I don't see them as workers of any kind to do that.
Besides, if it's just a money issue, the Marines still have the option of just robbing their ass blind. You know, for Justice.
Besides, if it's just a money issue, the Marines still have the option of just robbing their ass blind. You know, for Justice.
Old money runs deep and may work for itself. At some point you're so rich that it's downright difficult to get poor.
It's never been mentioned, but I've always assumed that the WG funds the Marines, Cypher Pol, and other branches through taxation of member countries. Like the Celestial Dragons are really going to cough up for that? Taxing those below them seems more like their type of deal.
LonelyGreyWolf
Banned
I hate it when this happens to me.
I'm trying to imagine the amount that they must have to do this. Imagine the number of high level pirates out in the world. All the supernovas, at the time they were introduced, were collectively valued at 2 billion alone. Not to mention I have no idea how much naval ships, and buildings,, and weapons and R&D and so on must cost. Then again, I wonder how work intensive those must be. Franky somehow built the Thousand Sunny in 3 days. I know he's a genius and all, but it's such a disparage of how long it takes to build a ship in modern times (3 years), I can't imagine the labor would be extremely expensive.
I don't know. One piece economics boggle the mind. Which, if it's the case, still doesn't explain why the marines don't just ransack the bastards.
The Marines tax regular people (or Morgan did, at least), and this probably funds a portion, but I would guess the current CDs inherited old money and have servants to do stuff like money management, but pay the Marines to exist and be protection.
We saw the way a man was shot for merely crossing the path of a CD on the street, so if you stole money, I would imagine your bounty would be quite large. For all we know, someone's current bounty is because of something like this. But I imagine it will be explained later, at least to some degree.
I'm not saying a marine should do it, but the Marines, the organization as a whole. I say robbing, but technically it would justified as a warfund acquisition. They wouldn't be able to place a bounty because the Marines are both the ones who issue it and who hunt the bounties down. They're not going to place a bounty on themselves.
As I said before, whatever hold the CD have on the WG better be amazingly good, because I can't think of any justification for them to be entrapped to these idiots the way they are.
I mean, it's mindboggling, but it worked more less for hundreds of years in Europe. That was the amazing thing about the New World (ours), about the american dream: that anybody could rise to be great, where on all levels in Europe family lines where important. The royal families, the merchant clans and big peasants had all giant linages that carried themselves. Until the french revolution hit, social movement was very difficult to impossible. I don't even mean getting from a peasant to a king, but even from a peasant to anything else above and royalty lived in incredible lavishness to the point where nobles where kinda disgusted by The Old Fritz of Prussia who chose to live relatively simple or when the russian king went on vacation in Europe and applied for simple work to learn how to build ships with his own hands. I can totally see how the World Nobles still feed off the Old Money, Old Connections and Old Ways.
Maybe they have the original Pluton? It has to be something huge, otherwise yeah, just Coby could probably tear up the CDs.
Again, the real world might be mindboggling, but it makes sense if you look into it from sociological perspectives and so on. There were technological limitations and people die really goddamn easily. Even social mobility, while it may have been nothing like it is now, there were avenues in which you could do stuff, like joining the navy to become a rich man.
In One Piece's world, this doesn't fly. For one, things simply aren't as difficult to accomplish. Building a ship can take 3 days, getting strong is just a matter of hanging out in the jungle for a while punching animals, etc. People have technology allowing mass communication, bodies that survive the guns that they have. If the Old World system exists in this frankly chaotic environment, I want to know goddamn how.
A lot of the questions I ask here, users point to external justifications to explain it away, but all it does is point out how underdeveloped the world of OP is. You can't just take all these elements of progress and just...throw them into the old world way of thinking, and expect them to co-exist without affecting each other. They would bring out a completely different dynamic that is nothing like what was before. In the old world, nobles had money and lived in an aristocratic government system, allowing them to pay their way into rulership. They paid guards and paid smiths to arm them with weapons and trainers to train them, so their soldiers were more powerful than any commoners can be, but were still held in place by the fact that the soldiers were dependent on the money they get from the aristocrat. However, that all goes out the window if those soldiers can be thrashed by a jackass who uses nothing but his own body and only ever got his training from the natural environment. Luffy is defeating soldiers by the thousands, alone, just by Enies Lobby. Usopp is somehow a more capable marksman with a slingshot than trained marines armed with the rifles. If that was possible in the real world, the aristocratic system would fall apart pretty fast. No one would care if you had money to buy them the fanciest of tech because tech wouldn't mean shit.
So referencing real life here doesn't get us anywhere. What works for us isn't going to work for OP.
No, we know for a fact that the original Pluton is hidden somewhere in Alabasta.
You could probably apply this to every argument about OP that has ever taken place, in this thread or anywhere. That's good news.
I thought it was just that the Alabasta poneglyph revealed the location, not that the ship was there? Also, who's to say it hadn't already been found and kept under wraps for decades or even centuries? They wouldn't go change the poneglyph.
You could probably apply this to every argument about OP that has ever taken place, in this thread or anywhere. That's good news.
I'm glad that's the case for you, but I can't agree. My understanding of good worldbuilding is that there should be a great deal of internal reasons to justify the structure of the world. That's why Tolkien is as renown as he is, the depth to the world he created is INSANE. It's most obvious when you talk to Edmund Dantès, there is an answer for almost any questions and you have to get really nitty gritty into pointless nitpicking (such as asking for the biological make up of Balrogs) before the illusion starts to crack. Ops world is huge and has consistently to it, but I can't get lost in it because any time I ask "how does that work", I realize that it actually doesn't.
I'm very much not getting into a wall of text battle with you, but I read this thread occasionally during my ban, and the impression I get is that you look at this series expecting it to be something it was never intended to be. It's cool to theorize about why this or that doesn't happen, but comparing Tolkien's work that was released in a completed form to something that exists in an unfinished format and can be swayed by editors or popularity polls or a variety of things, is like watching Scary Movie and wondering why it isn't as immersive and impressive as Amadeus or something. It's misguided.
There's nothing wrong with wanting more, but I'd be willing to wager that when this series is completely finished and Oda retires to his money bin, you still won't be satisfied with how his story is told. But it's his story to tell his way. :shrug:
I can't really make a big wall of text as of now in any case, and I don't want to go into the meta discussion of criticism itself, but I think I'm pretty fair in how I apply these standards to all stories, because I separate that from whether I actually like a work or not. It's not about expectations, it's about whether the work meets those standards.
One piece is a very celebrated work. When there was a best story ever thread, it came up a few times. The whole GOda meme stems from the fact that Oda is one of the few who pays careful attention to worldbuilding. He accomplished a lot when it comes to creating a world. However, it just doesn't seem sensible to me to only frame analysis of where one piece triumphs in regards to storytelling, and not acknowledge where it falters, even if it has good reasoning to falter.
Sibersk Esto
Banned
And some would say that Tolkien's prose suffers as a result.
The thing about creating a fictional world is while there's a temptation to explain every piece of minutiae, sometimes you need to leave things to assumed knowledge, because they screw with your story's pacing. And for a visual medium such as manga, that's even worse.
That's fair enough, I suppose.
His prose is fine, or atleast not relevant to his worldbuilding, it's the content that you are referring to. Only Tolkien is maniac enough to start his story with an essay on Hobbits. But prose just refers to style of writing, not what is being described.
And while I agree that there are instances where you don't explain things, an explanation ought to always exist. That's the way it was with Tolkien. I'm sure he knew exactly what Tom bombadil is, even if we'll never know for sure and I've heard some very strong theories that use plenty of evidence from the book, for example. There's plenty he doesn't explain in the actual stories, with a lot of background information that he wrote down in the silmarillion that was never intended to be revealed, and probably much more in his head. Trust me, Tolkien was riding the throttle hard when writing lotr and the hobbit. A clever writer usually gives hints as to what those things are, making them deductible or inherencial. In the modern age, writers come in for interviews and are asked about the minutae of their world they never put in their book but had an explanation ready when asked. That is what I recognize as good worldbuilding.
Tathanen
Get Inside Her!
There's something to be said about TOO MUCH worldbuilding. Tolkien is praised for it in many circles sure, but he's similarly lambasted in others for being an over-verbose windbag who's more concerned with writing an encyclopedia than a story. It's not really fair to compare Tolkein and Oda for a vast array of reasons, but I'd argue that One Piece strikes a better balance between worldbuilding and storytelling.
It's also difficult to critique certain elements of an ongoing story just because it's ongoing. We understand certain situations at a high level, but the questions regarding the specifics may just have answers that are yet to be shared. Much of One Piece's world is founded on the concept of a literally "lost" history, so these gaps are to be expected. We'll have to wait and see how they're filled.
More Fun To Compute
Member
I'm not sure that Tolkein "did the math" when he created the economies, agriculture or other infrastructure and logistics of the lord of the rings world. What he did do was write an allegory of how power and greed can change the culture and environment of nations. One Piece is similar in that it if you look at an arc like Dressrosa it deals with themes like how a control freak government can tear families and lives apart while going at great lengths to project a superficial image of a happy society. The important thing about Lord of the Rings to most readers isn't if Gondor can afford to maintain a large standing army while in constant war with major losses of territory.
http://www.middleearthcenter.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20330
Just googling Gondor Agriculture brought up this thread. Notice how many people are arguing based on logistics and infrastructure of the cities locations, customs, etc. Edheldae seems to have an especially expansive summary. Just remarking on a city being close to the ocean, or have horses as their mascots informs us of their culture. Notice how very few people, only at the tail end of the thread, refer to external reasons for theorizing how the culture worked (by pointing out that Tolkien based a lot of his cultures on vikings). This couldn't have happened by accident. I don;t know to the extent of the math that Tolkien didn't but he didn't go "There was a city that was in constant war" and leave it at that. By filling in the minutae details, he sculpted it into something believable, not just a hypothetical construct. And for the record, I've never visited that forum. I'm not even that huge a tolkien fan, I just thought he was a good example of what I'm talking about because he's well known. These are the tolkien enthusiasts, and look at them go, making informed speculation on something so minute to the story based on what they know in the books. They don't have an definitive answer, but that they can even do this speaks volumes of the depth of Tolkien's world.
I don't believe a discussion like that is possible for One Piece. We can talk about what the main narrative of OP is about, but as soon as we stray from that, every discussion seems to break down. I don't mean specifically economics, but architecture, or art. literature or non-world threatening government policies. Cooking customs, since Sanji's cooking is basically rarely touched upon besides for being made to look impressive. I don't have any earthy clue as to the methods of Nami's navigation. Stuff like that would lend so much authenticity to this crazy world.
More Fun To Compute
Member
The thing is that all of that is fan speculation and invention. To argue that we can't do that with One Piece is just to argue that you and I don't have the ability to do the same not that there is something especially missing in the One Piece world. In fact since this world is based so heavily on maritime trade it's much easier to invent arguments for each island having it's own very specialised economy even relying mostly on imports for food.
Like Dressrosa. We are actually told straight up that Dressrosa is mostly an agricultural economy that thrived on good land and the specialist knowledge of the Dwarves. We were shown fields of sunflowers so we can also assume that sunflower oil is a major component of the economy. Probably the people of Dressrosa use sunflower oil when cooking and also possibly for fuel and lighting.
Since Doflamingo came along we know that the economy also became more dependant on it's status as a major black market trade port and the smile trade which also guaranteed protection from the warlord Kaidou limiting the need to pay any taxes to any external force for protection. This inflow of cash allowed for more urban development in Dressrosa.
It's not hard in that way.
Actually, we saw one major sunflower field, that I recall, not many of them. A large one, in fairness, but I don't know if it and it alone is sufficient to be a major component of the economy. That the sunflowers of Dressrosa glow, so they wouldn't be used for lighting atleast, or atleast there would be no point. Also, do we even know if Dressrosa traded with anyone? The layout of the island has rocks on the outer rim of the island, which I would think would limit the ways traders can get in. Importing and exporting would be a bitch.
The tax part is flat out wrong. Kaido's deal was "I will not kick you" to Doflamingo, not "I will protect you". Otherwise, Law's plan makes no sense. Kaido would see his and the Strawhats as an attack on him, not Doflamingo failing to live up to his end of the deal. Doflamingo needed to be defeated for Kaido to transfer his wrath on the Strawhats. Was there even an urban development increase confirmed in the story?
Also, OP has the sheer physics of the story working against it. Again, the people of OP are capable of extreme things. If a real life kingdom got destroyed the way Dressrosa was, it'd essentially be considered unrebuildable, because the funds necessary for it would be astronomical. But no one in story seems concerned about this, so it brings into question exactly how much money even matters in OP.
So, speculation is easy if it's not put under any scruitiny. Speculation that can't be easily refuted due to being supported by information within the story is different. There is a distinction between inferencing things based on known information, and jumping to conclusions that go beyond what known facts can possibly tell us. That thread, people mostly agree on generalities and only quibble about uncertain things that might work against each other (how would horses be treated in Gondor, given their cultural significance?), but they rely on heavy support from the text. So, if you want to flat out make things up, yeah, it's easy, but once it's challenged to be supported, it mostly falls apart, atleast most that I can see. That's why its not dependent on the individual, atleast not entirely, and more on what you have to work with.
gundamkyoukai
Member
I mean these are people that have rule the world for 800 years .
The amount of money they would have must be crazy .
That is not taking into account that they are a group of people who are free to take and do what ever they want .
Only a few people in the OP world are capable of extreme things most people are just normal .
Also the people of Dressrosa will most likely use the money and treasure that don have .
The marines , other countries , citizens ,Tontattas will most likely help them rebuild .
Of course oda is not going to go to deep into the economy since you would have to explain things which can cause problems .
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