I'll never forgive Oda if he trolls Ichiji.
Vinsmokes are by far the most overhyped villans in One Piece and the very definition of fodder.
You can't simply just give Ichiji the number 1 symbol and then give him the fodder treatment.
Bad writing.
And he even has the Title "Sparking Red" and that Title alone sounds so grand and royal like when compared to the other Vinsmokes.
And Oda even avoided having Sanji fight Ichiji so what was the point of all of that? Oda clearly didn't want Sanji to stomp Ichiji like he did Niji and Yonji so clearly he was saving Ichiji for something else.
And didnt Ichiji stop an entire war while Niji just carried a suit case?
when the vinsmokes first appeared I said ppl will overhype them, and ofc a day later I saw ''Sanji's father Yonko level?'' in many corners of the internet, ppl overhyped them way too much :/
no, they are nothing special from our pov power wise, but even if they lose here easily it doesn't mean they are fodder, it just means the are not the 0.0000001% of characters that are powerful enough to be significantly powerful to us as readers, you forget that even in teh NW and yonko crews and marines there are mostly relatively normal soldiers, just look at WB pirates, teh average power lvl of the main protagonists we have followed since the TS is so high that only the very few characters (most of which we have known since before the TS) are really relevant
look at DR, it takes a character of Doffys caliber to be relevant power wise, it's the bar that has been set post TS, that doesn't mean everyone not reaching that bar (Pica, CC, many of BM pirates, Bastille, ...) are weak, by pre-TS standards they would be insanely powerful, a good example of this might be Pekoms, he appeared relatively fast after the TS and he looked very powerful with his ''feat'' and position as a yonko crew member, but honestly so far there is nothing to make him relevant power wise, but we judged him with our pre-TS eyes and he seemed like extremely powerful
but at some time after that we started to look at characters with a post-TS pov and now too many ppl throw around the word ''fodder'' even though just being beaten easily in teh NW doesn't mean you are one, far from that in many cases
if this post is weird sorry, phone