Sengoku is a dirty dude. This clearly wasn't all about Ace. He held him as their trump card so they could slaughter all the Whitebeard's and their allies. Sure, perhaps Ace's execution was the immediate goal and they knew Whitebeard would not let that happen so they decided they had to use his life to control the Whitebeards. But still, to declare Ace's execution almost as a bell to start the bottleneck slaughter of pirates with one option left was just gross to watch. It was a seriously grisly sight and it makes sense that Whitebeard is prepared to retire after this. We know how important a ship is to pirates, the Merry was part of the crew, so to apologize to the Moby Dick was a way to see that here too, on top of the emotion from everyone as they panicked to save her. Then on top of that it rained lava, send pirates into the boiling sea, presumably drowned power users, and all the while sprayed canon balls at everyone as they struggled to stay safe. Finally they focused all their fire on the one entrance as everyone's futile attempts to break in were stopped. Plus the Pacifista's I was wondering about are still around, they finally made their way up to the main action to work as barricades and supporting fire. It was just horrible to watch and it makes sense why the World Government would cut broadcasting after "revealing" Whitebeard to have cut a deal and before showing this mass slaughter. The encircling walls certainly are acting as the casket of the Whitebeards.
It was interesting to show all the supernova's as it did. Notably Bonney was crying and even more notably Law started to perhaps head to Marineford?! He seems absolutely disgusted at the slandering the navy has done to Whitebeard.
And just as I was thinking about how little Luffy has really done in this battle except boost morale he's the one who launched his way over the wall with some help from Jimbei. Really, how many times has Jimebei saved Luffy already!? Anyways, that was beautiful what Luffy did. Just, actually so cool, he did exactly what Luffy does best. Road right in to face the three admirals himself. However, thinking clearly about it Luffy has never harmed a single one of these guys, his best bet will be to create a diversion to make an opening so that the Whitebeards can rush in like they want to, and on top of that play a game of evasion and nab Ace. In my mind that's the best outcome here, unless he unlocks some accidental super haki that is, which to be fair he has done twice already so it's not entirely off the table. But the camera panned up from his perspective so I'm sure he realizes this too.
Two things I found odd was how Whitebeard could probably crack the earth in half yet couldn't break the wall but that may be explained through his injury, of course his relative frailty in his age, and also being cautious of his own men. The other being that Marco who can fly hasn't just flown in there. Obviously that's dangerous, Marco seems to only be able to keep up with one admiral, but with seemingly no hope and Ace's execution in moments I was expecting Marco to fly in there to try and grab Ace and maybe throw off the pressure from the bottleneck. Of course we don't know his personality too well so he may not be the risky type like Luffy is, but it just surprised me a little not to see him trying anything like that.
P.S. Win or lose, Luffy will be in like a 2 year coma after all of this. o-o |