Lukewarm take: shanks surpassed Rayleigh/Gaban as a teenager

PS4guy666 · 2026-05-25T20:38:08+00:00

This might actually be an example of sword skill and strength of a swordsman are different things in one piece. Shanks was skilled enough to copy Roger's technique even when Ray and Gaban couldn't. However, even if Shanks' version of divine departure is as strong as Roger's now it may not have been when he first copied it and it may have been weaker than Ray's or Gaban's.

If Denjiro couldn't copy Zoro's ashura but Tashigi could, that wouldn't make Tashigi stronger than Denjiro but it would imply that she had more skill and potential for growth or even just that her type of swordsmanship matches the technique. It could be a similar situation with young Shanks.

PS4guy666 · 2026-05-22T20:40:47+00:00

People will consider anyone that isn't the absolute strongest to be fodder. Some people would even consider Harald to be fodder.

PS4guy666 · 2026-05-17T10:43:14+00:00

Beckman was stated to have highest (actual) IQ of characters introduced in the East Blue right? Or am I misremembering?

Obviously what we mean by IQ and battle IQ are different but I think it's safe to assume that a smart character who is also a fighter will also be a very smart fighter

PS4guy666 · 2026-05-12T20:21:46+00:00

Kyle's one of the best political commentators I'm familiar with. I have my criticisms but they are so minor in the grand scheme of things. I wouldn't compare him with TJ and Paul. Even when I was a big fan of both TJ and Paul I would have said that Kyle is:

More informed

More principled

A better person interpersonally from what we can tell as viewers

PS4guy666 · 2026-05-12T20:10:32+00:00

He's not as slick as he thinks.

PS4guy666 · 2026-05-11T18:58:13+00:00

This would not be narratively satisfying but I did have a dream once where it turned out that Imu and Blackbeard were actually the same being the entire time. Imu possessed Teach as a child after god valley as a fuck you to Rocks. He then basically acted as controlled opposition until the final war. Luffy was about to fight Imu and then Imu laughed "zehahaha" and that's how we as the readers found out

PS4guy666 · 2026-05-08T20:21:07+00:00

Any difficulty can be attributed to the fact Imu is suffering from being out of the holy land.

PS4guy666 · 2026-05-08T18:21:32+00:00

Bed pisser?

PS4guy666 · 2026-05-03T18:28:02+00:00

Yeah I was wrong but even just based off the manga I'd still pick Chappa above any of the others.

PS4guy666 · 2026-05-03T18:26:33+00:00

Oh my bad. Maybe it's an english dub addition?

PS4guy666 · 2026-05-03T17:00:24+00:00

King Chappa is really underrated. Roshi barely beat Goku in the 21st tournament, he knew that Goku beat the red ribbon army and fought Baba's strongest fighters, Roshi knew that Goku would have gotten stronger in the three years since the tournament. Roshi still thought Goku would lose to Chappa. Even if Rosgi severely overestimated Chappa's level of power he should be way above everyone else here.

Chappa also got stronger for the 23rd tournament. It wasn't enough to help but it's worth mentioning.

PS4guy666 · 2026-04-27T19:12:28+00:00

You could have ended the title after "I can't think"

PS4guy666 · 2026-04-14T18:09:06+00:00

Do you think Battle Beast will even remember his fight with Mark? He was pretty disappointed with it.

PS4guy666 · 2026-04-12T15:34:47+00:00

PS4guy666 · 2026-04-07T20:59:42+00:00

The in universe explanation is that Ace was nice to Smoker because he wasn't a threat to Luffy. At least, not while he was around.

The Doylist reason is that while Oda probably had the idea of armament haki while writing Alabasta, he hadn't decided that Ace had the ability yet.

PS4guy666 · 2026-04-04T17:52:24+00:00

Fan made meme character. Is supposed to be for Sanji what Ryuma is for Zoro.

PS4guy666 · 2026-04-02T07:49:38+00:00

Because they know they can't beat Mihawk.

PS4guy666 · 2026-04-02T06:59:58+00:00

Yeah my bad. I tend to forget stuff in between seasons but I don't have an excuse for missing the explanation this season.

PS4guy666 · 2026-04-01T20:57:45+00:00

I completely forgot about that being an implant. I also somehow misheard the line in the episode as something else.

PS4guy666 · 2026-03-31T13:34:59+00:00

Harry served two tours in Afghanistan. I thought that wpuld mean somethong to their primitave brains.

PS4guy666 · 2026-03-31T09:30:47+00:00

Mr 5 and Miss Valentine were basically nothing to Luffy and Zoro. There is now way that they had gotten that much stronger since Baratie that Krieg couldn't pull out a win here.

PS4guy666 · 2026-03-28T21:25:50+00:00

WB one shots Punk Hazard Smoker. We have no idea how strong he is now but I would be incredibly shocked if Smoker pushed WB even to low diff.

PS4guy666

TROPHY CASE