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>16 pages >all fighting >Super Saiyan Luffy
are we still reading One Piece?
To add on to this, I feel that all the new world fights are super bland. With everyone using Haki to turn black and Luffy using stupid power ups that look like they're straight out of Naruto but have some dumb time limit, it just doesn't feel the same. "Messy" would be the word I'd use to describe it. Messy powers, messy art, messy fights.
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I actually agree. The fights themselves are bland. It's the powerful characterizations and storyline that makes one piece tick. It is feeling a bit like luffy vs doflamingo again. Do I really want to read through several chapters for a quite mediocre depiction of a fight?
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The last weeks have been boring...
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i really liked the intensity of that last chapter
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I am a bit disappointed in this chapter as well.The last page is especially a let-down. The both-fighters-hit-each-that-emits-this-big-cloud-of-smoke-and-our-hero-might-have-lost is such a cliché. The action sequences were not all that interesting either.
I have to say, I feel the buildup was more intense than what this turned out to be.
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At least Snakeman is a lot more interesting and cooler than Boundman and Tankman.
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for this to live up to the lucci fight toei better do a damn good job. we might end up with goku vs frieza instead
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The fight vs rob lucci is pretty much the same thing. Long slugfest, luffy looks like he is losing the entire time and a desperate last stand before he powers up and win. In fact it is so overdone in one piece and just about every damn shounen manga, that I just wish they would keep such boring cliches to just a couple of chapters max.
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On February 17 2018 02:26 Dangermousecatdog wrote: The fight vs rob lucci is pretty much the same thing. Long slugfest, luffy looks like he is losing the entire time and a desperate last stand before he powers up and win. In fact it is so overdone in one piece and just about every damn shounen manga, that I just wish they would keep such boring cliches to just a couple of chapters max.
Bullshit Luffy and Lucci were pretty much kneck and kneck the whole time
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don't forget that it's still a shonen at the end of the day
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France7248 Posts
I'm only surprised Luffy can still stand up
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I thought the fight and snake-man was pretty hype though it would be nice if it wrapped up really soon for pacing reasons.
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On February 17 2018 03:03 ZigguratOfUr wrote: I thought the fight and snake-man was pretty hype though it would be nice if it wrapped up really soon for pacing reasons. I agree, I enjoyed this chapter. Its been a while since we last had a chapter dedicated to a brawl like this.
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The fight lacks weight. If Katakuri gets beaten it won't even have that big of an impact storywise since Big Mom, Smoothie and a slew of other powerful characters are still in play. Luffy has also been a lot more durable than seems even fantastically realistic. When you get the feeling a character isn't allowed to lose it sucks all the gravity out of a fight.
One piece suffers from the "I'm going to beat you no matter what" surrealism where if a main character proclaims they'll do something no matter what, somehow the entire universe conspires towards that goal even if it makes no sense. Sometimes there's nothing more refreshing than a protagonist getting beaten up and having to run away, especially if we are to continue to believe the absurd power associated with a yonkou and their crew.
One piece has always done a good job at making clear that there are much more powerful characters in play than Luffy and that bit by bit he is climbing that ladder. But it feels like Oda has gotten impatient and is having Luffy jump to a skill level where he can take on the 3rd in command of a yonkou crew, get beaten up by a Sanji that isn't holding back, fight a yonkou army on an empty stomach then eat a bento and go toe to toe with the 2nd in command of said yonkou crew in a battle of endurance. It's not the level of power that is hardest to believe, just that he can get beaten up for 2 days and then be a challenge for the strongest member of Big Moms crew.
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One of the major issues with this fight, I think, is that the powers look super lame.
Katakuri started off pretty amazing with him splitting his leg into multiple limbs and stomping Luffy or effortlessly creating a larger elephant gun. That was cool (even though Katakuri's power does not mesh well with him at all).
Now, Katakuri is doing some lame Donut punches that appear out of thin air with square fists? And his latest powerup is transforming into a Donut and then grabbing Luffy with a giant arm and slamming him on the ground? It looks and even sounds super lame. A better version of his ultimate Donut attack should be him just doing the Sonic spin-in-place in Donut form and then charging Luffy at full speed. Maybe he'd be able to switch directions or adjust the environment with awakening powers to make a "skate park" of sorts? That would have been funny and more satisfying.
And Luffy's snake form and Gear 4 in general just look awful and behave in the most boring way. Pound man is, at the end of the day, Luffy just flying at someone and punching them. And snake man is Luffy just stretching his arms at angles. The great thing about Gear 2 and Gear 3 was that they were just faster movement / larger bodyparts. Luffy could still be creative and use his environment with Gears 2 and 3. Gear 4 is him just doing the same thing, every time.
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Sorry for posting again but I just realized what the ENTIRE issue is with this fight, this arc, the new world, haki, and everything. It's the timeskip. The timeskip is what marked the decline of One Piece from what it was to essentially Naruto 2.0.
If you recall, Naruto was actually really good up until a certain point: the timeskip! Naruto Shiddupen was far less captivating than the original series and the manga felt like it was becoming a shell of its former self until we came to the final fight which literally lasted for years in real life. Why did this happen? Well, once the timeskip occurred to give our main characters new powers, the manga switched from a sort of "adventure" series where the main cast discover the Ninja world along with us and gradually became a DBZ battle manga where it was basically a never ending boss rush.
This is the same thing that I think is happening with One Piece. There are still some "discovery" elements in the series - Zou was cool and creative, Totto land is unique - but the main focus is now becoming a power level boss rush. Why is Luffy fighting Katakuri instead of Big Mom? Because of power levels. Luffy hasn't leveled up enough to actually fight the main villain of the arc and if he defeats her then he basically "wins" the boss rush because there are no more bosses more powerful than Big Mom.
Except in old arcs this was never an issue. Luffy took down a Shichibukai as the first major opponent of the grand line. I know there's theories about Crocodile holding in rain or something but that's just retroactive justification BS. The real point is that power levels didn't exist back in the day so Luffy could fight anyone and have an epic battle that would be decided by tenacity instead of experience points.
The timeskip is what made the series jump the shark and become a boss rush because the entire point was to equalize the power levels. Now everything is about power levels. Every chapter has some dumb display of power gap as Luffy takes out people by staring at them or turning completely black or transforming into Mega Luffy or something ridiculous. And also the timeskip was entirely unnecessary and completely failed since it created even more problems with continuity. The timeskip makes everyone in the New World look like they're 100 times more powerful than everyone in Paradise. So that means CP9, Moria, and Crocodile are now all chumps compared to New World fodder because Luffy defeated them before he went Super Saiyan.
What could have been done instead? Simply take the 2 years and make them into 2 weeks. Have Rayleigh teach Luffy the basics of Haki and leave Luffy to figure it out on his own in the New World with his crew by his side. That would have been so much more captivating. Imagine Luffy and the Straw Hats discovering Haki over time while journeying through the rest of the Grand Line. All the dumb power ups that we have now to show progression could be scrapped. The story would no longer be about Ultra Mega Power Luffy vs. Super Duper Katakuri and instead could take its time since more characters would actually matter than the top 1%.
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There's tons of stuff happening outside Luffy's fights so I totally disagree with your assessment. Timeskip did not change a single thing for me except making Nami less beautiful than she used to be
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On February 17 2018 05:54 sharkie wrote: There's tons of stuff happening outside Luffy's fights so I totally disagree with your assessment. Timeskip did not change a single thing for me except making Nami less beautiful than she used to be I agree with this post, except the latter point, because long hair>short hair
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Dragonball avoided the issue by having stronger and stronger guys being intruduced. When you already know who the tops guys are the MC proggression gets more inspection.
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Dragonball, the series where every time a new conveniently power leveled villain comes along and our heroes need to achieve a new hairstyle to beat them? That IS the problem in shonen.
One Piece is just struggling to convey meaningful and sensible power-ups without resorting to new forms. Gear second is cool because the idea of achieving superhuman blood flow due to the elastic nature of Luffy's body makes sense. Inflating his bodyparts with air for gear 3rd makes sense because of the elasticity. Gear 4 is kind of lacking in the logic department because it's not intuitively clear why that form would make him stronger or why he suddenly has markings on his body. It feels like a super saiyan power-up that has no internal logic, it's just a distinctive way of showing you the character is stronger now without having to explain why.
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