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One Piece Manga |OT| ZEHAHAHAHA! The Name of this Age is Blackbeard!
- Thread starter TheGreatDirector
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BobTheFork
Member
Belmare died and Nami was left long ago with her feelings about that and the ideas of how she wants to live her life. I'm not saying that is vague but by comparison, if this were Naruto, someone would revive Belmare's body so that She and Nami could Literally have a conversation where Belmare says 'I love you and I'm happy that you moved on and the decisions you've made' so that Nami could just hear that from her Dead foster mother.
The way it is now, she just remembers Belmare and knows that she loved her and would be happy that Nami is living her life, without having to hear either one say it to the other.
The worst OP did was Pell to me. HE gets his 'I'm willing to sacrifice my life' speech, you get the emotion from his death and then just ROOOOOLLLLLL it back so that it didn't happen and no one has to be sad. It's about having your cake and eating it to. Instead of making a decision about which out two thing you want, you just BS it and do them both and I've never been a fan of that.
Yeah, that's basically what I was saying. It's definitely left up more to the reader than naruto, but I can't really think of any situation where the reader was asked to engage themselves with the question of character feelings. Everything is clearly laid out, just not her literally saying "I am happy for you"
BobTheFork
Member
I think Zoro is kind of an example of that. We never get any impression of how Kuina feels about how a sword should be used and Zoro Never thinks about it. We draw our own conclusions of if Kuina would approve of how he bares his sword and he just carries her with him but only with his own will.
LonelyGreyWolf
Banned
One Piece Manga |OT|
_/¯I don't think she had any thoughts on it at all. Kuina was like 10. Her thesis on swordsmanship amounted to "I should be able to do it too and it's unfair I don't have a penis so I can" As far as I can tell, Zoro is just trying to be the best swordsman he can by his own regard. He can't turn his back or back out on his promises and generic shit like that. The closest I can say is that he emulated her cockiness, but I'm pretty sure he was cocky before he met her too. I once read a piece that suggested that Zoro would ultimately lose to Mihawk because his character trait is insecurity and low self esteem (due to his proclivity for self injury and sacrifice and such) him giving up the need to be the best physically against Mihawk would be the climax of his character arc (meaning he no longer thought so lowly of himself) while still demonstrating somehow he is more or as skillful, which Mihawk would then graciously bow out to. That would make sense to connect Kuina's character to, since she used her cockiness to cover up her insecurity as well, I guess. But that's for much MUCH down the line to prove to be true.
Cloud Strife
Member
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
...dammit.
Tathanen
Get Inside Her!
Haha man it's just so preposterously huge.
Cloud Strife
Member
Reminds me of the Buster Sword one, that shit would be heavy.
Sibersk Esto
Banned
More Fun To Compute
Member
If you want to see what a practical weapon in this style looks like then this video is great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjoWAg1HJKw
Awesome
That guy has such a nice and friendly demeanor about him! I just want to give him a big ol' hug.
There's a new chapter of Clover today, so I'm good. Also High Score Girl.
LonelyGreyWolf
Banned
o.o
Rashida Jones?
o.o
She wishes
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Maybe during Arabasta/Skypiea
o.o
Cloud Strife
Member
Idk, I can see it.
More Fun To Compute
Member
I've been reading the manga from the start and it's amazing how strongly Drum Kingdom defines the major themes that the series has been following since. Without the direction of this arc it's hard to imagine One Piece having the longevity that it had.
Eh that kind of stuff really started with Arlong arc imo.
It's pretty barebones but all the elements were there. Character development, tragic backstory, etc. Then to top it all off Loguetown was the beginning of the infodump arcs we're accustomed to.
More Fun To Compute
Member
Tragic back story is a device but the major themes are inherited will, dreams and destiny. Drum Kingdom is the first arc to tie them together so well. As an example Sanji's story does this by implication but Drum Kingdom communicates it well. We don't really know anything about all blue other than it being a childhood dream with no personal link. Arlong Park was about people wanting to be left alone and not oppressed so much but Drum Kingdom was more complicated.
And some funny nit picks from the start of Alabaster. The guys are complaining about not having eaten for four days on the merry in one frame but a couple of frames later the tree is shown loaded with ripe oranges. When Ace is introduced people are shocked that he is associated with Whitebeard despite having a huge Whitebeard tattoo on his bare back.
More Fun To Compute
Member
Things introduced in Drum Kingdom. Blackbeard, Ace, Reverie, Mariejois, Will of D. There was world building going on.
Jigolo
Member
Yes I agree. It became my favorite shounen after Aokiji/water 7/ envies lobby
Simply incredible, those parts were. This is coming off of the nasty taste in my tongue from Skypeia (not a fan of it).
I'm gonna put out a controversial opinion here and say that One Piece Started with chapter 1.
OP was always about interconnected stuff. Morgan would later be revealed to be a marine because Kuro had Jango hypnotize him into it, and Gin promised to see Sanji on the Grand Line, and so on. That OP wanted to be an interconnected world have been clear from the beginning. Thematically, even the whole destiny thing played into it via narration, saying "The Long Journey has begun".
What your actually saying is that Drum Kingdom is around where OP grew the beard.
OP was always about interconnected stuff. Morgan would later be revealed to be a marine because Kuro had Jango hypnotize him into it, and Gin promised to see Sanji on the Grand Line, and so on. That OP wanted to be an interconnected world have been clear from the beginning. Thematically, even the whole destiny thing played into it via narration, saying "The Long Journey has begun".
What your actually saying is that Drum Kingdom is around where OP grew the beard.
Oh I do agree, but you don´t see the implications of it until Ennies Lobby, when you realize the Government is truly behind a lot of the stuff its going on, the super weapons, GEAR 2, the gigants subplot and the Straw Hat crew actually challenging the World Government directly.
More Fun To Compute
Member
Declaring war on the world government was obviously a huge raising of the stakes but without the underpinning of them somehow enabling the dreams of the people in the countries they visit it wouldn't be as meaningful.
Actually, I kind of disagree. I think the writing was a bit better before Water 7. I think Oda's ratcheted everything up a bit more than it needs to be. Don't misread me, I enjoy the complexity and I really like what the series has become, but it's a different beast. I like what it was before and I like what it is now, there's pros and cons to each.
My point is, sometimes too much world building can be a negative. Smaller, more intimate character moments can get lost a bit in the whirlwind. Adding more elements to the world doesn't necessarily make that world more detailed or the story that much deeper. If adding more characters and elements made something better, Bleach would be incredible.
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Even way back in like, 2005 or so people were starting to complain OP was too formulaic at the time. Find place, find bad guy, beat bad guy, party, leave. One of the very first reviews I ever read on the series mentioned that (Japan was on Davy Back at the time I think, the first real break from "the formula") so the series had to evolve to survive. It evolved into something equally as special as it was before, just in a different way.
The formula remains.
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
True, but it has so much more going on behind the scenes now. With Davy Back there were the games going on, with Water 7 it was character centric (Usopp and Robin), there's a huge overarching story that's taken center stage and Luffy and friends aren't always the invincible heroes anymore. The formula adapted.
Arlong, Arabasta, Skypiea - they were all the same arc with different characters and self contained stories. Arabasta name dropped Pluton and introduced the Shichibukai and Skypiea may possibly be paying off soon with the moon people if those theories are correct but the world building wasn't as front and center back then.
And I posit that this is a better thing. To me, world building is second to memorable character moments. Sure, it's easy to titillate your readers with the promise of things to come, but it's another to deliver something really emotional. Alabasta is my favorite arc because it's really dang memorable.
World building is often a trap. It's very very easy to get lost in world building, and it sells more stuff quite frankly. Too many things these days get caught up in world building and don't have the emotional heft behind them to really hold up. Oda has a pretty great balance, but I still think that some of his greatest, most emotional moments are before the timeskip rather than after.
That said, pre-timeskip has tons of world building. Oda's formula has pretty much stayed the same where most of the world building happens between arcs. Even Jinbei was name dropped between Baratie and Arlong Park. We also learned about the Sichibukai, the Grand Line, all sorts of things. We just don't see being as important because it's all things that we've already taken for granted.
World building is often a trap. It's very very easy to get lost in world building, and it sells more stuff quite frankly. Too many things these days get caught up in world building and don't have the emotional heft behind them to really hold up. Oda has a pretty great balance, but I still think that some of his greatest, most emotional moments are before the timeskip rather than after.
That said, pre-timeskip has tons of world building. Oda's formula has pretty much stayed the same where most of the world building happens between arcs. Even Jinbei was name dropped between Baratie and Arlong Park. We also learned about the Sichibukai, the Grand Line, all sorts of things. We just don't see being as important because it's all things that we've already taken for granted.
Doc Holliday
SPOILER: Columbus finds America
For me One Piece became great when Mihawk showed up. That might be my greatest anime entrance ever. What a monster.
Storytelling isn't a zero sum game where you can only do one or the other. Or that they are entirely that different in the first place. Worldbuilding shapes who characters become, what they do, what happens to them. And that in turn shapes the world, building it further than what was introduced. I hate it when people try to divide storytelling into catergories like that, character vs plot vs setting. It's like a blindman feeling different parts of an elephant, saying they're different things, when it's all actually one thing.
You're right to think that his greatest moments are pretimeskip if you want, but I highly doubt the reason you think, if you actually examined what you liked about those moments, would be because he hadn't built the world to the extent he has now.
You need both to have a great story. I said oda has a very strong balance. World building can also build and support strong character moments. However, many authors tend to get wrapped up in expanding the world with plotlines that may or may not be actually interesting instead of spending time with their individual characters and growing them as people. I'm definitely not saying one comes at the expense of the other, but that lore/world building can be a huge trap.
I absolutely do not think that the reason I liked those moments is because he WASN'T world building, but rather because he was focusing more on the crew, their relationships, and the emotional moments that came with their fights. I feel like now he's focusing on a lot of plot lines, a lot of characters, and a lot of locales that aren't necessarily relevant at the moment, at the expense of the crew, their growth, and the drama that this could contain. Quality, not quantity. Oda does a good job at balancing all of it though, and that's why I really like One Piece, even now.
I think a lot of people confuse plot (things happening) with story (growth happening). The two are intertwined, but in my opinion it's more important to have the second than the first. Now, if you're able to set up a lot of things AND have them pay off emotionally, then that makes you a great writer.
We're splitting hairs here, though. I only love previous arcs a slight bit more, and there's plenty of things I like about the current stuff more than I like about previous arcs.
The issue your getting at doesn't seem to be worldbuilding precisely, but rather it's the pacing. Having an understanding of how things in your world work is very important, though when they are revealed is a different thing. The events of OP were, theoretically, going on before Oda ever revealed them to the reader. The Shichibukai didn't come into existence the moment Johnny mentioned them for the first time, but before then. Oda could have set everything that is to come up in chapter 1 if he wanted, the Shichibukai, the Yonko, the Marines, etc. But good writers know to starve the reader, only giving them the pieces of information when they're hungry. This would include everything from far off events like Kidd's allegiance to what Doflamingo is going to do next while in the middle of the Doffy fight. That's pacing.
As far as emotional payoff goes, I can't really talk about it too much in these series, as I don't consider OP to have ever paid off emotionally for me. Pacing for that is good too, but I can't bring myself to care for other reasons, so it's difficult to gauge in this series. But I wouldn't worry about it too much. After all, I would say it's still fairly early in the Timeskip, personally. Fishman was beginners arc, and Punk Hazard was clearly a set up for Dressrosa. I'm sure there will be a more personal arc soon.
As far as emotional payoff goes, I can't really talk about it too much in these series, as I don't consider OP to have ever paid off emotionally for me. Pacing for that is good too, but I can't bring myself to care for other reasons, so it's difficult to gauge in this series. But I wouldn't worry about it too much. After all, I would say it's still fairly early in the Timeskip, personally. Fishman was beginners arc, and Punk Hazard was clearly a set up for Dressrosa. I'm sure there will be a more personal arc soon.
More Fun To Compute
Member
One Piece had a lot of popularity from the start with appealing characters and an intriguing world. What I noticed with Drum Island was how the writing seemed to focus more on the concepts of freedom and the three pillars of Gol D Roger. Inherited will, destiny and dreams.
NHarmonic.
Member
My opinion as well.
cool thing is that mihawk is still a monster, they did well with portraying how strong the strongest dudes are
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Mihawk cutting a ship in half was one of the most impressive things I've seen in an anime.
There wasn't even any buildup to it - just BAM! Ship gone. The following fight was amazing too. Zoro lost, but that was one of his best moments. "A wound in the back is the shame of a swordsman."
There wasn't even any buildup to it - just BAM! Ship gone. The following fight was amazing too. Zoro lost, but that was one of his best moments. "A wound in the back is the shame of a swordsman."
sssstententen
Member
Man I've been re-reading with the full-color edit.
It really breathes new life into the series.
Oda really did powercreep really well with the big guys at least. Some of the new powers are getting a little silly, but most guys who were monsters originally still are monsters. It's quite well done.
It really breathes new life into the series.
Oda really did powercreep really well with the big guys at least. Some of the new powers are getting a little silly, but most guys who were monsters originally still are monsters. It's quite well done.
Yeah some dudes after new world are a bit OP, Doflamingo's power just don't make sense... like the bird cage, literally everyone couldn't cut through it, like... what.
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
The ship is her-OH SHIT!
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