We Need to Be Real About One Piece

Previously on Man on the Internet Talks About Fictional Pirates, I went through some of my biggest disappointments in One Piece, but now it is time for your disappointments starting with when Kin'emon didn't die after Kaido split him in half. I did not expect this, but this was the number one most commented One Piece disappointment according to all of you. Although I do remember this being quite controversial when reading weekly, but again, I just did not expect to see such passion for this in what is it now, 2026? Let's cast our minds back to the raid on Onigashima in chapter 1015. Mr. Kin'emon heroically stood up to Kaido in order to give Momonosuke an extra few seconds to escape. And so Kin'emon has this really touching flashback about Momonosuke and learning to call Kin'emon his father for the sake of hiding their identities. And when Kaido then punctures Kin'emon telling him to face his death like a warrior, the scene is one of the father sacrificing himself for his child in the same sort of way that Momonosuke's actual father, Kozuki Oden, sacrificed himself for Kin'emon and the other vassals during the hour of legend. Actually, I think this is one of the best death scenes that Oda has ever written. However, and I did say this five years ago in the review video for chapter 1015, there was no part of me, none whatsoever, that believed that Kin'emon was actually dead. Because we were over a thousand chapters into One Piece at that point and this point too. But by that stage, come on, we know how greedy story man Eiichiro Oda likes to handle these things. And I knew that Kin'emon was not going to die, at least not before he was reunited with his wife Suro. But what I could not have predicted was just how absurd Kin'emon's survival would be. He got skewered by Kaido, but survived because Kin'emon speculates that he was never reattached properly after Law cut him into pieces on Punk Hazard. Which sort of makes sense and sort of it does not. Which is usually what happens with Law's ability in general. It's so overpowered that Oda always has to write in arbitrary restrictions or in this case weird bonus effects. But what he's asking us to buy right is that Kin'emon stabbed Kin'emon in the exact same spot that Law cut him and also another thing Law sliced Kin'emon into pieces where as Kin'emon stabbed him into not pieces. So even if Kin'emon's body wasn't reattached properly it still shouldn't have come apart like the slicing. I don't know. No no one does. As convoluted as it is though I'd say the most thing that disappointed me and I'm not saying that sentence again, you know what I mean. Isn't the fact that Kin'emon survived. I like that he lived. I like Kin'emon. But what I don't love is we then go back to the Punk Hazard running legs Kin'emon. So we abruptly shift from this dramatic powerful sacrifice made by a symbolic father to his symbolic son to wacky comical running legs that can only communicate via farts. It's kind of like the Marvel effect of having every dramatic moment be undercut by an immediate joke. And One Piece it does do this a lot and usually to great effect. But to a lot of fans who wrote many things in my comments this was a very unsatisfying response to Kin'emon's very well written and very well drawn sacrifice. And it does mean that when you go back to reread or rewatch this moment it loses a lot of its weight. And all you're thinking about are the soon to appear farting legs. And if you weren't reading weekly during this era here's something that I found quite notable. You could tell that this Kin'emon business was a big controversy because his legs appeared in chapter 1030 which was the same chapter that ended with both Trafalgar Law and Eustass Kid revealing that they had actually awakened their devil fruits and they used their abilities on Big Mom which was bombshell news and yet almost no one was discussing that because all of the online energy was going into the Kin'emon debate. For me when Yamato didn't join the crew after all the build up and declaring it to the other crew members who are sticking with Wano here. And this twist is definitely something I did not predict. Back during the raid days I was counting Yamato as a straw hat guaranteed. And I was really taken aback when that did not turn out to happen. In fact, there's this huge conspiracy theory amongst fans that Oda introduced Yamato fully intending for this to be our next crew member, but changed his mind over the course of the raid. However, for me personally, I have since come around to this idea and I'm not hugely bothered by it anymore because it does at the very least give Yamato a solid character arc. We're introduced to Yamato larping as Kozuki Oden, and the main reason why Yamato wants to sail with Luffy to replicate what Oden did by sailing with Roger. At the time though, this made perfect sense to a lot of readers because all of the Straw Hats, they carry this inherited will by a mentor or another figure of the past. So, Yamato carrying on the will of Oden felt like a fantastic addition to the crew. However, something that I didn't think about anywhere near enough during the raid was that that will was not necessarily Yamato's to carry, and that will instead falls onto the shoulders of Momonosuke. And part of Yamato becoming a unique person and shedding the need to be a copy of Oden may have been rejecting that offer to become a Straw Hat and instead to spend some time discovering who Yamato is before eventually setting out to sea. That's how I'd reason it, but of course, the counter argument to that is that Yamato goes and does what Oden did anyway by traveling around Wano gathering vassals, etc. And at some point in the future, Yamato will rejoin Luffy and this Oden business, it will continue. So, maybe I'm just making excuses because I'm trying to believe in Yamato being able to break out of this weird Oden quirk lest Yamato end up in the bad timeline future where trying to literally become Oden results in this. And while we're here, I should also mention that I got a lot of similar comments about Carrot not joining the crew after all of her build-up. And this one, I agree with a lot less, but I do understand. However, personally, my most disappointing moment with Carrot was that she didn't get to be the one to avenge Pedro on Onigashima by defeating Charlotte Perospero. Because just hear me out here, Perospero being beaten by Nekomamushi, it also works. Pedro was one of Nekomamushi's soldiers, and so it was nice that it falls to the leader to avenge his fallen warrior. However, Nekomamushi had much more business with Inuarashi's opponent, Jack. Jack was the one who robbed each of them of a limb, and in my mind, I was thinking that Nekomamushi and Inuarashi would team up to finally beat Jack, which to be fair, they sort of did earlier on in the raid, but it was off-screen. But I think it would have been very cool to finally see both of them working together against Jack instead of taking it in shifts like they did during Zou. To show the reunion between cat and dog. But that also would have left Perospero open for Carrot. But that's not how things went. And as much as there was a brief moment during Whole Cake Island where I felt that there's some potential for Carrot joining. The fact that she was completely sidelined for all of Wano removed that possibility for me very early on. When the giant girl got her fingers chopped and then instantly got them back. This undermines how dangerous Imu is supposed to be in my up opinion. So the giant girl's name is Gerd, and in chapter 1,180, she was one of a series of victims of Saint Imu Nerona who sliced her fingers off in order to liberate Saint Summers. The scene itself, it was quite shocking and very visceral. Slicing fingers is actually quite a common trope in anime and manga. Uh the series that lean more into horror aspects at least, which is not One Piece, not usually anyway. And that's why it was pretty confronting to see Oda use it, especially because it's both a brutal yet gentle act. Saint Imu Nerona is a being with the power to obliterate everything that is good from existence if he so desired, but he only harmed Gerd as much as was needed to free Summers. Imu didn't even slice off all of her fingers, it was just the Summers holding ones. But this also comes with the extra oomph that Gerd is the doctor of the new giant warrior pirates, and losing her fingers is one of the worst possible things that could happen for her role in the crew. And also that her hobby is making teeny tiny clothes for teeny tiny humans. So losing these fingers is just taking everything away from Gerd at the same time. So there's a lot going on here. But at the same time, there's also nothing going on here because Gerd's fingers are effortlessly reattached by Chopper in chapter 1182. And Chopper does say that it'll take months for them to recover, but those statements like that never matter in anime and manga at all. Gerd actually said the same thing to Loki when she healed him from his shamrock wounds that it'll take Loki months to recover, but minutes later Loki is flying up to the Sun World and fighting Imu with no issues. And I guarantee you that it is not going to be months before we see the final war in One Piece and Gerd, she's going to be there and her fingers are going to be just fine. Sabo getting introduced as Ace dies so he can become blonde Ace. As I've said before, Sabo, he didn't start out well, but he's grown on me quite a bit. And I think that he's actually on a very interesting path as a character at the moment. Uh well, then for quite some time, especially after his reintroduction on Dressrosa, I had a lot of difficulty not just seeing him as a fairly lazy replacement for Ace. The whole idea that oh no, my fire using brother has died. So I guess I'm going to go downtown to La Tienda a Mano and buy myself a new fire using brother, yes. And I think that it took a very long time for Sabo to really be able to separate himself from the spectre of Ace because aside from Dressrosa, we just didn't get to see enough of Sabo. So his progress has been quite slow up until recently. But from my point of view, it is the implementation of Sabo that hurts him more than anything because he is a low point in Oda's writing. As Sabo on paper sounds like an incredibly cringey fan fiction self-insert. There's even a fantastic meme of someone presenting their original character and it's just Luffy with Sabo's outfit because that's something that not a lot of people notice. Sabo is very much a reskin of Luffy's design template in the same way that Vivi and Rebecca are Nami reskins. So, as much as the original comment was about Sabo being a blonde Ace, he is quite literally a blonde Luffy. But here you go. This is my OC. His name is Sabo. He's Luffy's second secret brother who was never mentioned in the series because amnesia. He has Aces cool fire powers and he works with Luffy's dad Dragon as the second in command of the Revolutionary Army. He also spent two years with Robin during the time skip and the two of them they became very close and she probably touched his peen. And also he has another girlfriend named Koala on the side. And now that Luffy is an emperor Sabo himself is also an emperor. He's not one of the four emperors of the sea, but he's like the super special flame emperor, which is similar, but different. So, I understand it's really hard to shake the the fan fiction vibes from Sabo and it probably always will be. The death of casual crew interactions. I can't even remember the last time that Luffy goofed around on the Thousand Sunny. So, this one isn't a specific disappointing moment. It's not even a moment. It's a lack of moments, but I always understand this feeling because something weird happened to me recently. Going through the One Piece anime as one often does, I landed on episode 775. This is an episode that I remember vividly disliking when it first aired because it is mostly filler. It's the one after Zunesha defeats Jack and it features the crew helping to rebuild Zou and healing Zunesha's Jack wound before going off to Whole Cake Island. Originally, I didn't like this episode because I felt like it just got in the way. There was such a sense of urgency with needing to catch up to Sanji that we are not meeting. And the meta reason why this episode exists at all is because Toei needs these filler episodes to not catch up to the manga. So, that's a really interesting dynamic actually. The Straw Hats, they need to leave desperately to catch up to Sanji, but the Toei production company desperately needs the Straw Hats to not catch up with Sanji. That's how I felt at the time, but these days however, I actually really appreciate episodes like this because this whole episode is filled with these casual crew interactions that we are missing from the One Piece manga in the modern era. It was laid-back, it was fun, and it makes me crave a One Piece spin-off anime. Maybe something that takes on a more slice-of-life genre about what the Straw Hats do between islands and between the big action spectacles. A series that's more comedy focused like Oda originally intended One Piece to be. Although, I suppose this does sort of exist at least in the form of the spin-off manga series like One Piece Party. It's a pure gag manga that takes place in the One Piece world using the One Piece characters. There's no overarching story. It's more like an anthology series. For example, in one chapter of One Piece Party, they have a mascot competition and Tashigi submits this hilarious Fleet Admiral Sakazuki mascot while Crocodile and Mr. 1 work together to create a banana outfit for a clearly naked Crocodile to wear. One Piece Party is kind of like the opposite of the main series at this point. It's all casual interactions and wacky weirdness and nothing else, but I personally find that it helps to fill that void. Unfortunately, it doesn't have an official English translation yet, but you can still read it in English if you look hard enough. You know what to do. The world's strongest creature not having a single clean win against any top tiers. This right here, it is your classic Kaido criticism. And I want to note that I spelled criticism with a K for alliteration. On land, sea, or air, always bet on Kaido. That's how he earned the title of the world's strongest creature, but he's never actually shown defeating anyone within that top tier realm of power. He's shown fighting Big Mom to a standstill. Also, he was repeatedly defeated by Whitebeard in Rocks D. Xebec during his time with them, and he did have an encounter with Shanks, but that resulted in nothing, and Shanks rocked up to Marineford completely unharmed. Kaido was also on the verge of losing to Kozuki Oden on Wano before Higurashi did a transform into Momonosuke and distracted him. And it's the same sort of criticism that Mihawk faces a lot. He's the world's greatest swordsman, but we've yet to see those skills applied against anyone else said to be on or near his level. Because in terms of named characters, Mihawk has defeated East Blue Zoro, and he had enough trouble against Vista that he decided they should postpone their match. So, it is difficult to really comprehend what the world's strongest swordsman means, or what the world's strongest creature was intended to mean. Zoro's backstory and entire lineage being revealed in an SBS and not in the manga. Yeah, I remember that a lot of people weren't too thrilled about this. I've also got [snorts] my dog with me today, and she's just roaming around. Can you sit Can you come up here? Can you say hi? Here we go. Here she is. In the SBS of volume 105, Oda did something pretty wild, which was to reveal Zoro's family tree. This is something that we don't have for any other crew member. It's quite detailed, and it's pretty intrinsically linked to Wano as we trace Zoro's history back to his father, Roronoa Arashi, who was killed by pirates, to his grandfather, a swordsman named Roronoa Pinzoro, who married a Shimotsuki clan member, Shimotsuki Furiko. So, on Zoro's grandmother's side is his link to the legendary samurai Ryuma. Now, before revealing this family tree, Zoro had said in a previous SBS that he wasn't sure whether he wanted to feature Zoro's lineage in the main story or not. So, he was keeping all of that for a potential moment on Wano to have a big flashback like you Sanji on Whole Cake Island or Brook on Elbaf. But by the time volume 105 came around, Oda said, "Yeah, I didn't end up using this, so here it is." And it is a bit of a shame because I would have loved to have seen Zoro's history given some more expansion. I think every Straw Hat deserves that second flashback treatment that Luffy, Sanji, and now Brook have had. But, I can also understand why Oda decided not to include it. And that's because it's simply not important to Zoro himself. With all of these second flashbacks comes unresolved business. Luffy with Sabo, Sanji with his family, and Brook with his life prior to becoming a pirate and resolving Shiryu stuff in the modern day. And exploring stuff like Sanji's family is integral to Sanji because he's someone who really cares about his history and has been trying to run from it for his entire life. But, Zoro doesn't care about his family history in any way. He is firmly fixated on the future. So, if Oda was to have drawn an expanded Zoro flashback, it would be for the readers and not the character. And that's a problem. Zoro wouldn't gain anything from the time it would have taken to draw this. And so, I think that on this occasion, and not all occasions, but on this one, it was the right move to save this information for the SBS. Catching up and learning that the fan base complains about everything. Catching up means that no matter how good the chapter is, as soon as you check social media, the fan base is complaining about it. So, granted this whole video is about complaining, I think it really depends on what social media you're using. On Twitter, you'll find nothing but complaining. And on Reddit, you'll either find nothing but glazing or nothing but complaining, depending on which One Piece subreddit you're on. However, on YouTube, that's where I think you'll find most of the normal people. Because despite the topic of this video, week after week, I mostly see genuine affection for One Piece being expressed in the comments, no matter how weird things may be getting. But, feel free not to do that and leave more of your One Piece disappointments in the comments below.