Now I understand that we learned from WCI arc that Morgans manipulates the news to his hearts content and is sometimes used by 3rd parties for their own gain. And this is where one of my biggest gripes comes in... Much earlier in the story we saw the marines having a meeting to decide the bounties they would give out to the Strawhats. You can see "Marines" is written on Luffy's new bounty as if the news have got to the marines and back to Morgans with the new bounty amount. But if that were true you'd think that Coby would have heard about it and the recent events that have transpired. This suggests to me that Morgans has gone off on his own making the new bounty himself, along with the over exaggerated news that he had printed.
Morgans is an archetypical "sensational" news reporter, to him this whole situation was the equivalent of reaching Nirvana, so yeah it's not really surprising he wrote the article in such a way it would have the most impact. That doesn't take away though that nearly everything he said was true. The only thing that was wrong, was that he assumed all of this had been carefully planned by Luffy, while in reality it was mostly improvisation and luck. But don't forget Morgans was a witness of several of these events, with other words when it comes to the credibility of sources, it can't get any better than that and to many people it will have definitely looked like it happened how Morgans described it.
Yeah he could have been hypercritical, more reserved and have used more terms like "possibly" and "likely", only that would make everything rather boring and long. You have scientific journals for that, not newspapers.
Also hyping Luffy doesn't help the WG and by discrediting BM, he seriously pissed her off. So which third parties exactly? Yeah he has got underworld connections, but that's not really unusual even in the real world. You don't get the best stories by waiting behind your desk, you get them by pushing boundaries.
To be honest I like how this all was portrayed as it gives a rather accurate image of how it works in the real world. Yes Morgans isn't the most integer character around, but honestly when dealing with information objectivism/subjectivism isn't that black/white as most people think it is.
In regards to the bounties, the Marines have hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people under their command. Do you think that all of them are involved in the making of bounties or are notified by new ones immediately? Even if two characters have the same rank, it doesn't mean they have the same duties and even if that was the case, you can easily assume Cody was occupied with his task of escorting royals. Honestly I find a bit weird that you call that one of your biggest gripes while it's a rather mundane thing that's easily explainable.
You can say a lot of things about Morgans, but that he would make fake bounties that are perfectly justified either way, is a rather pointless thing to do.
I'm slightly surprised to see everyone wholeheartedly accept everything from this chapter. It's just got this element of something being amiss. I really enjoyed catching up with old characters and the nostalgia and hype was there with the few panels we got of them, but with the new information we got coming from primarily a corrupt news company, it leaves me with just questions and the want for more clarified answers.
Because it's not a corrupt news company, at least not in the way and magnitude you portray it to be. I mean to whom is it corrupt? Not Big Mom and not the Marines. Didn't Luffy fought together with Bege, Sun Pirates and Germa 66? Didn't Jinbei join the Strawhats? Didn't Luffy beat a 800m and 1b bounty? Didn't he challenge Big Mom, was part of an assassination attempt and got away with it all? Doesn't Luffy have seven crews under him for a total of 5000 subordinates? When they showed Bartolomeo and Cavendish, the people they were talking to were reporters. Morgans actually rather thorough as on top of what he witnessed himself he sought out alternative sources.
So I don't really get what you think is amiss. We know what happened, we know how Morgans interpreted the events and he was rather accurate, not completely, but no article is and I think most people really don't mind that he gave Luffy that much credit.
Something else that I really liked was Coby's reappearance. He seems to be more the adept with Observsation haki (and I presume Armament just due to Garp being his teacher)... But more importanly, the very minor comment from Kyros that seems to have been glossed over (or was just my translation that I read) of him seemingly sensing him before seeing him and sensing A BEAST... Maybe not as epic as that, but he could feel how strong he was and was surprised to see he was just some matured version of dweeb Coby xD
It has been explained before that most people tend to have an affinity for either the CoO or CoA. Coby is special in the sense that he unlocked his CoO by shock therapy and then had to learn to control it, while with most people it's something that happens gradually over time and it was rather obvious that Coby's CoO was powerful and that that's his specialty.
Kyros is strong to the point he can be called a beast, something he considers himself as such. This isn't anything new as this was elaborated on extensively during the Dresrossa arc. So the interaction between Kyros and Coby was not something we didn't know already.
Also, 5th Emperor has emerged? It was said as if they were expecting this at some point, or there's not always been the yonko in the last 50 years. I feel it would have been referenced in some way at some point as general knowledge. I dunno, might just be translation problems that have got me in a bit of a tiff.
As I said Morgans loves sensation. What he employed was simply a trick sensational reporters use: present a prediction as a reality. He clearly said in the previous chapter that he was making a prediction, but explicitly stating it like that in the newspaper lacks impact. If Luffy indeed becomes an emperor, Morgans can put that as a feather on his head as being the person who proclaimed him as emperor first. If Luffy would fail, well then he can just explain he meant it as a strong possibility, which isn't even a real lie as at this point Luffy indeed has almost all the requirements for it: territory, subordinate crews, infamous reputation and lets not forget his lineage. If you then add the reality he challenged another Yonkou successfully, well what else do you have to do to get some recognition?
Yes as BB pointed out he isn't there yet, but don't forget that the title of emperor is not something given by an official instance nor has it a fixed amount, it's something people start calling you gradually for a state of affairs that's already existing. Immediately after Marineford there was talk of people seeing BB as an emperor, but it's only after he defeated Marco he could consolidate that position. Now if Luffy would defeat Kaidou during the Wano arc, I think there's little doubt that Morgans statement will become universally accepted.
Also, going back to the bounties... I don't understand why they would just have two increase as a pose to their whole crew like always (except the first time, but that's different, they weren't notorious and well known then).
I almost want to predict that the bounties are made up by Morgans and real bounties are going to follow for the whole crew...
All in all I really enjoyed this chapter, it's just that I guess I'm not accepting its entirety as everyone else seems to be :O
At Dressrosa everyone's bounty got increased because they hadn't changed in two years. Now in the case of Zoro and certainly in the cases of Usopp and Luffy, their bounties are the results of the extraordinary feats they preformed at Dresrossa. With the rest it really was more because their bounties were just outdated.
Compared to WCI, Dresrossa was peanuts. Just beating Dogtooth alone warranted getting a bounty of over 1b purely because Dogtooth's own bounty was that high. Add everything else Luffy did to that and his bounty is perfectly justifiable. That he just got an increase, makes little difference as that's how huge the consequences are of WCI.
And in regards to Sanji, his bounty had been tempered with either way. Now that it has been revealed he's a Vinsmoke, it's likewise justifiable to increase his bounty. The Marines have to consider the possibility that via Sanji the Strawhats and the Germa 66 form an alliance. This is also how Sanji interpreted his new bounty, though not all scanlation groups translated it as such.
For all the others there was no reason to increase it yet again as half of the Strawhats weren't there and most of the ones who were, didn't do anything of the level it was needed.
No the bounties aren't made up.
