One Piece Episode 618

[toonice714]

I think that Kraco is right in the sense that we have a preconceived notion on how match ups should go because its a fighting manga but I too enjoy the fact that fighting for some of the crew has become a more auxiliary component to their usefulness to the crew

[DarthEnderX]

It's kind of tricky, really. After crossing over to the new world, our expectations for the capabilities of new enemies is so high, that for Nami to be able to solo one would just seem insulting

Not to me it doesn't. The whole point of them spending 2 years gaining abilities nobody has ever seen before. If they COULDN'T take on the 7th or 8th most powerful member of any given group, I'd feel as though they'd wasted two years of their life.

Edit: Also, sure, everyone has trained hard the past two years. But unless you can say that Nami and Usopp are stronger now than Luffy was two years ago, then it's still not enough for them to reliably solo new world enemies.

That implies that everyone on everyone ELSES crew in the New World is ALSO stronger than Luffy was two years ago, and that's simply not the case. The Whitebeard War was jam packed full of pirates that weren't as strong as Luffy that all came from the New World.

I don't see why the power gap between the leader of any other group and their 7th-8th most powerful members would be any smaller than the power gap within the Strawhats.

[Kraco]

I don't see why the power gap between the leader of any other group and their 7th-8th most powerful members would be any smaller than the power gap within the Strawhats.

No, it's likely much, much bigger. I reckon Straw hats is an exceedingly strange crew as far as pirates go. They have absolutely no cannon fodder members like all the other gangs. In fact, they have subordinates who ought to be captains themselves, like we already heard way back during the Enies Lobby arc. I imagine in most crews the captain is a lot more powerful than the rest. Then there's a couple of lieutenants, but that's almost it as far as real fighters are considered. Straw hats have a super class captain, a vice-captain (if you can call Zoro that as the second oldest member) who's also a real monster and easily captain class even in the New world. Sanji probably isn't that far behind. The rest could serve in the role of a lieutenant no problem. This is talking about fighting capability, naturally, because considering more diverse skills they are peerless.

[DarthEnderX]

That's why I'm saying, it's not unrealistic that even the weakest Strawhats would still be able to have battles and believably be able to win.

It's just a matter of making sure the monster Strawhats take on the monster enemies.


Hell, Ceasar is the kind of opponent I would normally have put up again one of the weaker Strawhats. Because combatwise, he's pretty weak. It's just a matter of getting around his Logia, which someone smart like Nami or Usopp would probably be able to do. In fact, Nami could probably seriously mess up Ceasar with some atmospheric mojo.