![One Piece Book Club - [Part 10, Wano Act 1-2]](https://img5.saketami.com/storage/10/mc/wz/9a2cd0-019e879d-2c3e-730b-be0b-3c10d6fa11db.jpg)
One Piece Book Club - [Part 10, Wano Act 1-2]
Added 2023-10-22 18:50:14 +0000 UTCThe penultimate One Piece book club. I absolutely hated reading Wano serially. Did I like it better this time around? Yes, surprisingly. Find out why!
Comments
The main problem is armies are absolutely useless in One Piece narrative, as in they've never meaningfully inconvenienced protagonists. At this point Oda can't just say "Bad Guy has strong elite mooks oh no!" and have the readers feel intimidated, but that's basically what he tries to do. As you said, Big Mom's crew feels threatening because they have a strong fighter core backed by a bunch of good fruit powers - which we've already seen is a winning combo in OP world - and they visibly inconvenience the SH with it. Whereas the SMILE army made Zoro pant for one page and go "Boy this fodder is strong" before wiping said fodder offscreen anyway like they were capeless marines. And it's even more undermined when all of Kaido's top brass, the ones that naturally get a lot of screentime, are just regular Zoan users anyway!
Alex Peter Rose
2023-11-23 09:26:23 +0000 UTCI still have so much to catch up on even ever since these streams, nevertheless I'm still pushing through and I think I'm gonna watch the previous streams as I go through the arcs. That being said, I'm curious about Wano and will see this stream even if it spoils me.
Vanilla Snow Golem
2023-11-14 13:11:33 +0000 UTCno see here's the thing, I know that and it's all bullshit. Ultimately the problem is still that Oden is way too important to both Whitebeard, his crew and Roger's crew for any of these people to not at least come visit or check out what's going on and actively fight Kaido over it. Like in the next arc Oda has characters come up with these exact kind of excuses because all too late he too realized that if Whitebeard had ever done anything about Wano then Kaido would have died 15 years ago. But again it's all bullshit, the problem remains that in order for Wano to happen as an arc it needs some of the only people capable of stopping Kaido dead, not to do so, even though they have a real incentive for it. So all these excuses are just that, excuses the likes of which only exist because Oden was made far too important to the two strongest pirate crews in the world, because Oda couldn't help himself from making Oden the coolest guy who has ever lived because Wano is the one arc Oda has wanted to do since the start of the New World and he's just done a bad job of figuring out why and how it exists within the setting.
BreadBunny
2023-11-08 18:27:42 +0000 UTCAt the end of the day, Oden is a ruler incapable of making civilian sacrifices. First, Oden investigates the situation, he doesn't charge in with his friends because that could risk civilian casualties. He is told that they will release the hostages and leave provided he humiliates himself, which he chooses to believe because the alternative would be a guarantied sacrifice of the hostages vs the slim chance that Orochi would be satisfied. Stupid, yes, but Oden is incapable of sacrificing anyone. By the time he figures out he's been tricked, he's in Wano and Whitebeard is uncontactable and Roger has disbanded his crew and is probably already dead. So Oden attempts to face Kaidou, which he is probably at the very least tied in strength with if not stronger. However, gets distracted by the threat of his son's death and is defeated. After Oden's death, Whitebeard probably figures it out quickly since vivre cards are a thing. However, Kaidou has solidified his position in Wano, the only ways into Wano are the secret entrance controlled by Kaidou and the elephant koi. It's fair to assume Whitebeard knows about the Koi and the risks it poses. Attempting to scale the waterfall will lead to a very disadvantageous battle with Kaidou and King which I'm not certain Whitebeard wins. If Whitebeard scales the waterfall safely he still faces an all-out battle with the beast pirates, which on paper, he should win. However, he will be fighting in Wano and won't be able to pull out his biggest moves without destroying the island, which doesn't strike me as something Whitebeard would be willing to do for the sake of avenging Oden, same reason he doesn't just sink Wano outright without bothering to scale the waterfall. In short if Oden had been willing to risk civilian casualties and attacked with his crew from the beginning, he would have easily won. Civilian casualties would have been inevitable, but Wano would be in a far superior state than it is now.
Persona189 blank
2023-11-08 03:37:24 +0000 UTCFor Dungeon Meshi, I imagine it would be a comfy 2 session read if it included the The Adventurers Bible in the second session as a sort of post-story inclusion, though I struggle to think of where the cutoff point would be for the first session (Maybe either chapter 62 or 67?)
Azelhi
2023-10-24 09:24:36 +0000 UTCin terms of cutting the Red Scabbards I would just take Kinemon and destroy him and give his devil fruit to Kiku and she's now effectively in Kinemon's role in the story. And like if we don't just cut all the samurai characters pre-wano, I think it'd be fun to have Kiku be Mononosuke's guardian. Kaido's smile trade would have worked better if he had actually been the center for devil fruit trading. Because like all devil fruits apparently have like a standardized market value but there doesn't seem to be a market for devil fruits, so have Kaido originally be trading in normal devil fruits to get an all devil fruit crew, and then because that was just not keeping up with how big his crew was he invested in the creation of smiles. Aside from that I will say I have one big problem with this arc that cannot be solved but because of what the problem is but hey, so Kaido should be dead. Given how important Kozuki Oden is to both Whitebeard and Gol D Roger and their respective crews. These people would have killed Kaido 15 years ago for killing Oden. And I get why that can't happen, because then Wano as an arc can't exist. And sure Wano is a closed country but do you really think Whitebeard would hear about Kaido squatting in Wano which is public knowledge, and then he wouldn't have sent someone to check that situation, instantly figured out what's going and killed Kaido for it. Because like 15 years ago Whitebeard wasn't dying of old age yet! He was stronger than Oden, He could fucking trash Kaido with EASE. It's just like Oden was fully whitebeard's second in command, and it's not like Oden leaving to go to Laughtale with Roger's crew was something Whitebeard held a grudge over or anything. So it's just... Whitebeard would never have let Kaido do any of that. And like the Roger pirates literally go ashore on Wano, why don't they get invited to Oden's palace expecting to be treated like important guests instantly seeing that Wano has gone to shit and gone "hey Oden want us to help kill that guy for you?" But no not only is Kaido apparently so unbothered by the ROGER PIRATES (admittedly without Roger) being in Wano that he doesn't even do anything about it but he's lucky enough that they simply LEAVE without so much as stepping outside of the beach.
BreadBunny
2023-10-23 19:58:31 +0000 UTCI've loved the journey through One Piece, but I'm excited for Delicious in Dungeon. I'm up to volume 5 now and its way better than I thought it would be! I couldn't understand but are you reviewing all 97 chapters? Just checking but that's a lot of story to go over.
Zayn Ryzen
2023-10-23 06:01:51 +0000 UTCI made a comment last Book Club comparing Big Mom's Island operation, and how it worked near perfectly as HER setting, to Kaido's, who failed at ever feeling fit for Wano. After rereading the first two acts of Wano and hearing all your thoughts I want to circle back to my point and express how I cannot fathom how Kaido's operation is supposed to be threatening in the least and how little Oda does make him feel like a character or an Emperor through the setting of Wano. Like you all said, Kaido's whole "trump card" for gaining military power, SMILES, are trash tier even when they work and they have such a high percentage of failure the story does next to nothing to sell us on these things being as worth all the investments put into them. The fact not a single important figure in Kaido's crew has one kind proves they are bad in universe and makes me question what even got him in on this SMILE thing in the first place. The most useful Smiles we see do things like running fast, flying, or some nebulous strength boost, abilities many characters without these things or OG devil fruits could do. The rest of his military power consists of the Lead Performers (two of which are nothing characters who do little for the Raid), Orochi and his cut-able goon squads, the Numbers (who, as Act 3 will show, are just a irrelevant as Jack or most of Big Mom's kids), and the Tobbi Roppo who exist to be Straw Hat fights and get to show Arim as an awesome voice actor in something more mainstream. His entire "Military", despite that kinda being his whole thing, is a joke. Kaido feels like a One Piece Villian Luffy is meant to defeat, Big Mom does not which is the problem. Big Mom feels like an emperor in her organizations power and how well she has built up her power base. Linlin has thousands of soul-infused objects, animals and soldiers on every corner of the map in her turf, all of her children and regular crew mates show off overwhelming force and have many cool weird powers that are super useful when Luffy and Nami get jumped post Cracker fight and during the Wedding. Her organization feels threatened despite being, conceptually, much more silly and cartoonish which fits her character perfectly. Does Kaido measure up? NO. Kaido, like Jello rightfully pointed out, is a nothing character and therefore has basically no real staying power in Wano as a nation or how his crew is strucutred despite having just as long to build it up as Big Mom. Kaido basically uses Wano as slave labor, cheap resource exploitation and place to hide due to its utterly incomprehensible geography, that's fine especially for a guy who is clearly set up by Oda to basically embody tyranny (even if he fails at it), but does he really feel like he owns the place? Orochi does on paper but Kaido is the real power behind the throne and, as Jello spoiled, Kaido gets rid of the guy the moment he objects to his plans so why bother keep him around at all. Wano is Wano and as Jello, Aloha, and Bo masterfully pointed out, does not feel fit for One Piece, and it shows when Kaido has next to nothing going for him in Wano as a setting besides being the Big Bad everyone hates, and owning a castle shaped like his skull that is still Japanese themed for some reason despite it being Kaido's own fortress whose crew have three thing they have as an aesthetic and it is as followed: Horns, Biker, and Animal. Kaido is a bad character for a lot of reasons, which I am sure the Book Club will get into in three weeks with the rest of the arc review, but he is made even worse when his entire organization is a joke despite his entire thing being about Strength, and his main base of operations fails to build him up as a person besides "evil exploiter" and not in a way that feels truly HIS like Big Mom, who is an evil exploiter too but in way that is unique and informed by her as a character and no one else. Kaido truly leaves no impact in either how his operation runs, or the very setting he was built up for an entire decade as the big bad, and that feels like proper failure in storytelling.
Zach Rainey
2023-10-23 00:19:21 +0000 UTCI dreaded rereading Wano and as a pallet cleanser I pre gamed Dungeon Meshi and finished it all before this half of Wano XD
PrettiestBeardedLady
2023-10-22 20:49:36 +0000 UTC
