One Piece

Ehhhhh there’s a reason why you don’t really compare breather arcs to the serious stuff.

I mean Sanji & Zorro’s primary contribution to the Foxy arc is just them constantly bickering back & forth. I mean sure there are some good gags & they of course pull through in the end but I wouldn’t really call that a good use of them overall.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 25th 2020 at 11:45:33 AM

I think the issue might be that it is a breather arc, but One Piece usually doesn't have those, more that it has breather moments in arcs that slowly build to something bigger.

But the whole Foxy thing just feels entirely pointless and skippable. Skypeia has a similar issue of not feeling as connected to most of the story as the things before and after it, but even it has certain things stick around.

Yes, it's not a classic comparison, but they're both story arcs, and Marineford lasts about 3 volumes (not counting the flashback) so...

I loved Zoro and Sanji vs Hambuger team! How the two argues about who will be the ball, until Nami says "you look good with the ball in your head, Sanji" and he proudly wears it, the looney Toones-style weapons the villains used, how the referee is blatantly in favor of the villains and doesn't see the fouls with the most blatant excuses, and how Zoro and Sanji, sick of being beaten up, decides for a 10 seconds truce to beat them! That last moment was awesome

That's a fair point but... is funny? Why skip something funny? It's like skipping the "dwarves washes their hands" scene in Snow White

Edited by fishysaur on Mar 25th 2020 at 11:51:46 AM

I liked Marineford mainly because it gave us a taste of what the real heavy-hitters of the One Piece world can do. We see the Warlords in action. We see the commanders of an Emperor crew in action. We see an Emperor in action. We see the Marine Admirals in action.

The arc highlights just how far Luffy still has to go if he wants to be Pirate King. Aokiji even warns him that it's too soon for him to be on the same stage as them.

Edited by M84 on Mar 27th 2020 at 3:00:59 AM

Yeah, showing how far Luffy still has to go is indeed something the arc did pretty well, along with the showing off (mostly... we already seen most of them)

And still, while I found the arc overrated, I like it and think it's still good beacause to me the pros (showing how Luffy has to come, everything about Whitebeard, Blackbeard's arrival and Shanks ex-machina) outweight the cons

yeah skypeia had dials and stuff that lasted beyond but you could cut foxy and his crew out and nothing would change.

That assumes a given person found it funny. If they did, great, but if they didn't it just feels like a waste of time. And I'm in the latter group.

What is funny is subjective, of course. I'm in the former group :)

Edited by fishysaur on Mar 26th 2020 at 2:05:21 AM

I think the Foxy arc was good, and it would be kind of needed to keep the pacing in the live-action series consistent.

• Assuming Season 2 covers all of Baroque Works, that's chapters 101-217. At 9-11 chapters per episode, that works out to around 12 episodes.

• Assuming Season 4 covers all of CP9, that's chapters 322-441, which works out to another 12 episodes.

• Season 3, on the other hand, would logically cover Jaya and Skypiea, except that's only 218-302, which only works out to 8 episodes. If you add in the Davy Back Fight, that's another 19 chapters, or two more episodes, making Season 3 work out to a good 10 episodes. The Foxy arc may seem like an odd place to end a season, but it's a fun enough Breather Episode, and ending a season with a fight against Aokiji is actually a pretty decent spot.

The whole skypeia and Foxy portions of the series just feel like Oda wanted to write something silly before we got to the doozy that was the Water 7/Enies lobby arc

Afro Luffy and Eminem the thunder god were definitely the sillier ideas to form an arc around.

The Foxy arc actually cost me a lot of me investment in Luffy's fights. Like it became clear to with that fight the amount of punishment Luffy could take was basically totally arbitrary. Which in turn makes it a lot harder to care when he takes hits, which makes it harder to care about his fights in general.

Like, the sheer number of times Luffy shrugged off getting pointy spikes shoved into his torso during the Foxy fight, when realistically the number of times he should've been able to shrug that off was 'maybe once'...

That was what did it? Not Krieg's stakes in the Baratie arc? I feel like those were MUCH worse.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Mar 26th 2020 at 8:24:55 AM

That is basically true of every single shonen battle manga character since time immemorial. And to be honest, all stories to a certain degree.

Both Krieg and Foxy, to me, demonstrate the main reason Luffy wins fights. He doesn't stop.

Characters like Zoro may power through and refuse to quit. The idea of doing so never for a moment enters his head. The closest its come was his order to retreat from Kizaru.

Edited by sgamer82 on Mar 26th 2020 at 9:32:28 AM

What about when Crocodile impaled him? Or more recently when it looked like he got a chunk of his abdomen ripped out in the fight against Katakuri. Or the entirety of Impel Down/Marineford. We should make a top 10 moments Luffy should have died list.

Edited by WashTheLaundryHero on Mar 26th 2020 at 8:42:47 AM

The Katakuri fight is really bad since he spent 90% of it getting his ass tapped like a bongo drum.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 26th 2020 at 8:43:36 AM

Yeah, even once he started landing hits on Katakuri he still only got in like one hit for every ten he took.

Edited by Moth13 on Mar 26th 2020 at 12:03:26 PM

Hey, no badmouthing the Katakuri fight, it's one of my favorites.

The fight was over 2 hours in the anime.

2 hours of Luffy trying & failing to reach Katakuri until he suddenly can in the last round.

I like the fight, don't get me wrong but Goddamn was the pacing fucked.

"Pacing fucked" is pretty much the default state of the anime.

It's why I only bother picking up clips of the highlights on Youtube.

Speaking of which, here's one I've seen recently:

The difference between Krieg and Foxy, to me, is that the way he keeps going after getting hit by Krieg is treated as a big deal. We get a slow and dramatic sequences of him pulling out the bloody stakes, visibly pushing through the pain to keep fighting. The attack had narrative weight behind it, and there was a sense that although he was fine for the moment, he'd be in trouble if he kept having to take hit like that.

With Foxy, though? We have spiked gloves being treated as if they have the same effect as regular punches would. Like the spikes are just there to make sure Luffy can't use his DF to power through everything and otherwise don't make a difference. But really he should've been a bloody mess after the first barrage of punches.

So that fight is the point where Luffy's feats of endurance stopped feeling impressive and started feeling like bullshit plot armor to me.

I dunno, I feel like the fact that it's mostly a joke fight prevents it from setting a real precedent for Luffy's endurance.

True. Luffy took a hammering but Foxy's threat was an inditect one. A straight fight was always going to favor Luffy.

Truth be told at the time I was mostly following the anime and thought the Foxy fight was filler.