To be frank, I am somewhat bored by this conflict still. I do find myself waiting desperately for Doflamingo to lose or for something super engaging to occur. While this wasn’t totally vapid, Luffy positing that he has to wait ten minutes before fighting again after bounce man disappointed me a little. Luffy isn’t the only hope. Sabo and Fujitora, the no.2 of the revolutionaries and an admiral are here. But since this is shounen and it is One Piece, there isn’t any fear in me that Luffy won’t barely get by for ten minutes, get big and strong, and punch the lights out of Doflamingo. It feels slightly contrived for the point of main character bias. Complaining about this stuff feels a little silly, perhaps with better pacing, or if I didn't find Doflamingo too strong in such a boring way this wouldn't be an issue for me. Why I say this isn’t totally vapid is because Gyats and Sabo and the potential of how Luffy will be protected is still interesting.
Notably the Luffy, Sabo, and Ace content as well as the confrontation with Burgess was great! Firstly, Burgess is dirty, as if we didn’t know before, he was willing to assassinate Luffy with a knife and a surprise attack. This definitively shows us that if he doesn’t have an attachment with his victim, he is willing to do whatever is most efficient when it comes to accomplishing his goal. Sabo ended up acknowledging his goal, that of collecting devil fruits, and showed him the power that he had achieved through the colosseum, something far greater than the gum gum fruit, thus shifting Burgess’ attention. But first we reflected on Ace. This was a confrontation of two brothers and one of the men responsible for the war and for Ace’s death. Seeing Ace claim he would make Whitebeard the king, showing such loyalty and gratefulness and manliness, made me tear up as that absolutely didn’t happen. However, Sabo telling Luffy that Ace’s memento is safe with him and sharing the smile between the two was unbearably sweet. I feel like Luffy tapped into his inner-child, back when he was still depending on the other two. Shockingly, Sabo didn’t go full psycho like I thought, I was expecting him to make the face he made with Bastille and let out some aggression but that could still come.
As a user in this thread postulated, we should be worrying about what Blackbeard’s plan is. He has been set up to be the anti-Luffy and the ultimate bad guy. We saw him and his friendly beginnings with Luffy and he holds the same ideology, that dreams never die, he stood up for Luffy. He traveled on Whitebeard’s ship looking for a devil fruit, killing a crewmate, he captured Ace, he became a Warlord, he freed the most dangerous crew imaginable, he started a war, he crashed the war to steal the most powerful fruit from Whitebeard while killing him, and he became an emperor of the sea, using his knowledge from Whitebeard’s crew to quickly take control. He may be an idiot who goes on power trips and gets his ass handed to him by Magellan or Whitebeard, but he is a planner and an opportunist. Thinking he is simply getting these devil fruits for their prowess is most likely a mistake. Slightly relevant, while reading through Skypiea I saw a cool little moment recently, Blackbeard’s sniper shoots birds from the sky while in Jaya which the crew cannot yet see. Usopp doubts a sniper could be that skilled. Then in Water 7 he plays that role to save Robin. This is equivalent to Zoro stating he can't cut steel bars for power progressions sake in Orange Town, but it also chooses to inadvertently parallel the two snipers.
Outside of that Gyats was also pretty cool. He was always a likable commentator, being unable to hide his passion even against Rebecca and having a crush on strong warriors and their skill. It was a nice treat to have him be the one to team up with Luffy as the other civilians ran. There are many people that could save the day for Luffy here, from the samurai and Franky or Fujitora or whatever, so I don’t think voicing predictions would be too helpful but ultimately I think Fujitora has to act at some point, so I’d at least wager he’ll be doing something. |