[Predictions] One Piece Manga Chapter 841 Discussion and 842 Predictions
- Thread starter loj
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Not really the chapter was OK to be fair. Sanji's story felt like it was brought together in a hurry. I mean they just decide to go to east blue and there happens to be cruise line where germa 66 is fighting? To be true it is pretty shallow.
I don't really see how that end was done in a hurry, Oda simply did what had to be done. When Sanji was introduced in the series and we learned about his past, he was working on a cruise ship in East Blue that got attacked by the Cook Pirates of Red-Leg Zeff, but both ships sunk during an ensuing storm resulting Sanji and Zeff being stranded on a deserted island. You know the rest. Now Oda had to make Sanji's current flash-backs connect to the earlier ones. You make it sound like that of all the seas they could have gone to, they "coincidently" went to East Bleu and "coincidently"there was a cruise ship there. That's not a coincidence, that was necessary to make sense. Also the OPverse is largely a nautical-based world. We most of the time see things through the eyes of pirates, but don't forget there are many other people sailing the seas. Cruise ships will really not be that uncommon and the Germa 66 are mercenaries, so that someone in East Blue hired them is perfectly possible. In fact it was quite necessary to explain exactly how they can cross from one sea to the next as they are from North Blue, but somehow Sanji ended up in East Blue while currently they are in the New World.
Don't forget that first we learned about Sanji's past after he was already in East Blue, now we learn about his past before that. If they would have gotten to another sea, there wouldn't have been a strawhat named Sanji and if he left out the cruise ship, then there still would be a void in his past.
The highlighted part is where you hit the nail on the head. It was necessary. Sanji's past is not something that flows with the story as most of them have been...... brook, Franky, Robin, Nami, Usopp, Zoro, chopper, Luffy. Look at how the past life of all these people was presented.... it did not distort the story in any way it just gave the story another dimension. Sanji's past with Zeff was cool and it also kinda explained a few things about sanji like him not using his hands and all that, while his perverted behaviour and chivalry was just another part of sanji as a charachter and then Oda goes back and thinks that maybe there is something more I can do with sanji's backstory and gave us these chapters. Which were kinda stretched in order to make them sync with the main story line.
Look at this as an example, Oda already put it out there that Sanji was a boy on a Cruise ship, so now he had to put a cruise ship in the story eventhough Germa 66 are always in places where there is war and strife which makes it a weird place for a cruise ship to be. And to make matters worse, it escaped unscathed from a war torn island with all passengers on board. That panel where that general tells them to let off the cruise line became a necessity and not something that was flowing with the story.
Actually there is no difference, at least not anything significant. Sanji, like most of the other Strawhats, had a flashback the moment he was introduced and these were all not merely for the sake of giving another dimension to the story, they were meant to explain the characters' personality and behavior, in specific what he/she was doing right then and there. In some cases this was even vital to explain the entire arc. Without Robin's history, both Water 7 as Enies Lobbies make no sense and now you have a similar situation with Sanji. Granted the whole Vinsmoke thing wasn't imperative and Oda could have easily done it via another sub-plot, but he didn't and Sanji's flashback is needed to understand this entire situation. Without it he might as well have abolished the Vinsmoke sub plot.
The only thing that's different here, is that Sanji has received two flashbacks on two different moments and not in chronological order, so obviously Oda had to connect the two with each other, but that's about it. In terms of their functionality they are the same as pretty much all flash backs in the story and it isn't distorting anything.
Your perception is simply off because for a change we already knew how it would end, we knew Sanji would end up on a cruise ship in East Blue and subconsciously you are using that knowledge to say it's forced, but it really isn't. Yes it's not something deep and elaborate, but that wasn't needed. Everything that had to be said and done in this flashback, had been said and done. The only thing that remained was making this flashback go smoothly over in the other one, which Oda did perfectly. He really didn't had to waste any additional panels. Also we have zero knowledge about the war the Germa 66 was involved in, so you can't possibly say whether it would now be that weird for there to be a cruise ship or not. You don't know if there was already war there. You don't know whether that country was war torn or not. The Germa 66 is a mercenary army, they fight for whoever pays them. For all we know they were hired to start this war. If no one expected an invasion, then it's really not weird for there to be commercial ships and one of the primary reasons the Germa 66 is so feared, is because of their discipline. They don't go raping, plundering and murdering as they see fit. They do exactly what they are told to do and if none of their orders involved cruise ships, well they are not going to bother with it.
You can create hundreds of scenarios to explain all of this. However it's because Oda remained so vague that everything fits smoothly. What you are implying is what would make all of this forced. If Oda would start explaining in detail what this war is about and why now exactly that specific cruise ship was there, things would feel really awkward as he start's focusing on things that have absolutely no value, I mean we know that cruise ship is going to sink in the near future. It's not always a good idea to be overly detailed about stuff. Btw Oda does this quite often, it's just that this time it's more noticeable as there was an earlier flash back that explained the rest.
chopstickchakra
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We should also be getting a 2nd Nami and Brook history too really. All we know about Nami is she was found by Belle-Mere we don't know her real parents, where she came from or a last name. Brook we know about his pirate days but he mentioned learning his sword skills in a place I think he called "that country" or something along the lines implying it to have some renown, to me at least.
Oda could potentially give to most of the Strawhats additional flash-backs. He could explain why exactly Franky's parents left him in Water 7 or why Yasopp never visited Usopp in all those years, however I doubt he's going to do all that unless it's imperative for the story. The only one I currently see in the near future getting any new background info, is Zoro. To be honest of all the Strawhats Zoro has one of the shortest or at least less impactful background stories. On top of that for a long time now there have been connections between Wano and Zoro, so there's a reasonable chance that Oda might elaborate on Zoro's past more during the Wano arc.
chopstickchakra
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I forgot about Franky, have you seen the theory(Vandenre1ch's iirc) about Franky being either related to or form the same place as Avalo Pizzaro? Zoro could get more depth at Wano, it would make sense but I feel like his story was pretty complete unless I'm forgetting something. I think his flashbacks will mostly add depth to the story set not add details to the backstory like Sanji's is. I'd like to know about Brook's time in that kingdom's military still though, the wording he used when he described it made it sound as if it were a famous kingdom, "I was leader of a battle convoy in a certain kingdom" why not just say the name unless it'll be relevant later?
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