One Piece: The Whitebeard War
Jul. 5th, 2012 07:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopWow.
When your opening volley alone involves one side summoning a tsunami and then the other freezing it solid before it hits, it might just be time to reconsider your definition of the word ‘epic’. Henceforth, things that are epic shall be rated on a scale that goes from zero to the Whitebeard War.
So this is it, boys. War in fiction generally falls into two broad categories, highlighting either the glory (an epic victory against an irredeemably evil foe, say, Star Wars) or the futility of the exercise (I can think of no better example than Grave of the Fireflies). It’s not an either/or proposition, there’s plenty of middle ground (say Lord of the Rings) – longer works may run the full gamut from one end to the other and back again. But right from those early Impel Down scenes where Ace talks about the prospect, here you quickly get the impression this one maybe isn’t going to lean so heavily on the idealistic side of the scale.
One Piece does avoid the worst of the futility and misery by ending the battle in the space of a day, but there's nothing terribly glorious about it either. We've seen this once already in the civil war in Alabasta, but whereas that was about a desperate population manipulated by an outside aggressor, this time the conflict is utterly and openly political. Catalysts aside, what both instances have in common is that there’s no easy black/white division between the opposing sides, and for all that we’ll inevitably be cheering for the pirates, by this far into story the marine ranks are littered with friendly faces like Garp and Coby, and it’s pretty hard not to notice that your typical marine grunt is probably just an ordinary guy following his orders. Most of the truly sadistic bastards are to be found higher up the chain, and even there you hit the odd white sheep like Aokiji all the way to the top.
At the centre of the whole mess we have poor Ace, stuck with the combined horror of knowing there’s going to be war because of him while at the same time it’s hardly about him at all – it’s what he symbolises that people are going to die for. The marines are executing the third-in-command of the most powerful pirate crew on the seas to show that they can, and the pirates are retaliating to show them they can’t. Or so you think, looking at things from the outset. But we’re not far into the action before we’re learning that to the marines, Ace symbolises a whole lot more than merely sticking it to ol’ Whitebeard, while for Whitebeard Ace is family, and he symbolises no more or less than what he’d do for any one of his ‘sons’. So while the marines will fight and die because they’ve sworn their loyalty to the flag, the pirates will fight die for Whitebeard because he’s sworn his loyalty to them. It’s fascinating, the contrast there.
More importantly, because this is One Piece this is all going down with a cast of thousands. Roll call time. Starting with only those characters we already knew, we have:
On the side of the Marines: Garp, Sengoku, Aokiji, Kizaru, Kuma, Moria, Doflamingo, Mihawk, Sentomaru, Smoker, Tashigi, Hina (and groupies), Coby and Helmeppo, plus a smattering of Vice-Admiral types who I know we’ve met in passing even if I cannot remember their names off-hand.
On the side of the Pirates: Luffy, Ace, Whitebeard, Marco, Jinbe, Ivankov, Crocodile (!!!), Hancock (who was not supposed to be fighting for the pirates today but is really not fooling anyone), Buggy, Mr 3 and Inazuma
On neither side: Blackbeard & co.
Appearing only via flashback, but still holy-fucking-relevant: Gol D. Roger, Portgas D. Rouge and Thatch
New faces: Akainu, the rest of Whitebeard’s division commanders (including, but not limited to, a swordsman who can hold off Hawk-eyes Mihawk himself, a massive guy who can turn his body to diamond, and a very pretty man with two pistols and a very fetching geisha outfit), Oars Junior, Squardo, a whole army of allied pirate crews who will appear on and off through the rest of the battle, and an opposing force of Vice Admirals and giants on the side of the marines, not to mention the Level 6 escapees from Impel Down
Cameo’d in passing: The rest of the 11 pirate rookies
Sirs and Madams Not Appearing In This Fight: The rest of the Straw Hats.
This is not even counting the last few late arrivals to show up post-climax in the final few episodes. I bet I’ve still missed someone. First person who can tell me who wins, IDK, maybe a drabble request or something.
It’s a testament to Oda’s skill as a writer that a clusterfuck this huge works at all. It would have been so easy to leave the audience wondering why the army of common plebes even need to be there when it’s obvious the real battle is going to be between the handful of honest-to-god forces of nature up there in the higher ranks. What we get instead – and early enough to set the stakes – is the disaster of Oars Junior charging in ahead of the rest of Whitebeard’s forces and running face-first into the full power of marine artillery, ultimately doomed to go down like an avalanche inches from his goal. It makes sense, in that context, that Whitebeard might choose to direct his forces from the rear for most of the battle rather than leading the charge. The leaders on both sides are fighting smart, even when they’re not fighting clean.
At the end of the day though, we’re not here to watch these guys play chess with each other. It’s the emotional impact that sells this arc, and oh boy does it deliver. From the outset, long before Luffy makes it onto the scene, we see the battle unfold largely through Ace's eyes, and it's not pretty. Whitebeard didn't make the much of a first impressions for me back when we first met him in his meeting with Shanks – a meeting which involved Whitebeard dismissing what would shortly prove to be incredibly prophetic advice. In retrospect though, it's hard to imagine that was anything less than deliberate misdirection when we finally learn the rest of the background behind that situation at the start of this arc. Whitebeard is an enormous, rumbling mountain of a man (and just about as immovable as one too), and now that we meet him properly, he quickly goes about establishing exactly how such a gruff and terrifying character has managed to inspire such heartfelt loyalty from an army of crew and allies. It should have been just about impossible to make us believe that a major military power and such a skilled strategic thinker would still have such boundless affection and forgiveness for his 'family' – the sort that easily parallels even Luffy himself – without descending into unbelievable caricature, but Whitebeard pulls it off with aplomb. This matters, because the fact that Whitebeard isn't going to make it out of this fight has been not so much foreshadowed as telegraphed from miles away, and now we care.
Speaking of Ace’s various father figures, have I mentioned before how much I love Garp? I say this with full appreciation of the benefits of being able to like him from a safe distance (the thought of being actually related to anyone like that is a truly terrifying prospect), but he is such a character and you can so clearly see the family resemblance between him and Luffy, and no matter how disappointed he may be with his grandsons’ chosen careers, one has to love how freely he’ll twist all semblance of military protocol around his finger to drop in on Luffy and say hello. So when he sits down next on the execution platform next to Ace and dissolves into tears, any part of your heart that hadn’t already broken for the D family is going to break then and there, and we’re not even halfway through yet.
Then just when things are starting to look truly dismal, Luffy and his mismatched band of escapees literally fall out of the sky, and everything I was on my way to concluding about how this is the part of the series that will make you believe Luffy will be the next Pirate King is back in force, a thousand times over. He’s not been on the field more than minutes before he’s got Whitebeard’s attention – his recognition, even – and his mere presence seems to electrify the entire invading force on the spot. Even effing Crocodile gets caught up in it all somehow, and he’s a villain so far beyond redeemable that dusting him off for another appearance sounded like an exercise in frustration. What we get instead is the gradual shift from the his tentative short-term truce with Luffy, to being forced to give up on killing Whitebeard, to him getting pissed off at Doflamingo, to him lashing out at the marines for little more reason than because he doesn’t want them getting the satisfaction either, to him openly stepping up to defend Luffy towards the end despite apparently lacking more than the faintest clue why he’s doing it. It all works better than it has any right to.
Being so thoroughly spoiled for it all, it probably goes without saying that I was primed to pay attention to Akainu from episode 1, and now that we finally meet the guy… I guess my overwhelming impression is that ‘dog’ is a good name for him. Ruthless, clever and willing to fight dirty, not to mention utterly dedicated to the marine idea of justice, and… that’s about it. You really can’t picture this guy having ever had a single hobby. He lives his job and has zero patience for anyone who doesn’t, and unlike just about every other superpowered enemy ever, there’s basically zero suggestion he’s in it for his own gain, or for anything other than that he believes everything the navy embodies. For a character who’s actions have such a profound impact on the course of the series, he’s curiously flat – almost to the point where he goes full circle and becomes interesting again. He’s pretty much everything every villain ever wanted in a chief henchman but couldn’t quite track down. But then again, One Piece does have this thing where the big arc villains will be unmistakably moustache-twiching evil, but if Blackbeard’s anything to go by, the ones who will define the whole story in the long run may just as easily be that cheerful guy Luffy met in a bar that one time. Or maybe the generic-looking character on the left of the two admirals with the real personality who hasn’t done much to stand out yet.that bastard cannot die quickly or painfully enough
Spoiled as I was, it was nice to have one or two major things I didn’t know were coming in this arc, in particular Coby’s big moment at the end. It was well set up, when his and Helmeppo’s role through the whole rest of the battle had been to offset all that violent fervour on the parts of both armies by being the two guys who’d shown up that day to find themselves completely out of their depth and horrified by the reality of war. But Coby has become one of those wildcard characters who we can assume Oda has a plan for even if we don’t have the first idea what it’s going to be, and this I did not see it coming until Coby had jumped right in front of Akainu himself, and was screaming at everyone in sight to stand down. Hell of a moment.
When all’s said and done though, I am here to talk about Ace today, and so much so that I think it’s about time for a subheading.
Ace
In today’s issue of When Spoilers Aren’t Spoilers, I just – man, I had all the big surprises spoiled for me, and when we got there, I still had no idea.
If I can take a minute to reminisce here, I think I must have been something of an Ace fan since way back before I was even officially a One Piece fan. This, like most things in my OP experience, was my sister's fault. The first I heard of Ace was when she reached his introductory episodes and, with some amazement, told me about how Luffy had a big brother who was not only 1) more or less as required, a total badass, but also 2) a really nice guy who'd just popped up to see how his little brother was doing and politely thank his crew forputting up with taking care of him. Only in the world of fiction could the idea of two brothers who actually like each other be so revolutionary, but when your defining examples from the genre are the likes of Raditz, Sesshoumaru and Itachi,1 then, well, yeah, it really is. In traditional shounen manga, older brothers exist to remind their younger brothers how inferior they are. This is why hearing about a shounen lead who for once got to be ridiculously happy to run into his big brother on his journey got an instant, “Wow, Iamstillneverwatchingthisbecauseitistoolong but that sounds like SO MUCH AWESOME :DDD” from me. As those of you who've read the rest of my One Piece posts may remember, this is more or less how all our conversations on this subject used to go.
As luck would have it, one of few episodes I caught in almost-full while my sister was getting through the series herself just so happened to be the confrontation between Blackbeard and Ace.2 And that, plus regular updates on the situation from the same source, is the tale of how I managed to get myself so invested in the welfare of some guy from some show I wasn’t even watching at the time that when I heard the conclusion of that particular plot arc… let’s just say ow.
Perhaps the worst of it is that as a plot development, Ace's death makes nothing but cold, logical sense – the role his character was likely conceived to play from day zero. Over the whole run of the show the stakes have been steadily rising with each new arc, and while it's all very well for the antagonist of the week to go loudly predicting the Straw Hats' doom at every opportunity, it doesn't carry all that much weight until the day comes when we see Luffy definitively fail. Oda couldn't have killed off any of Luffy's crew, not when he's spent so much time establishing their bonds as unbreakable. Luffy's brother, on the other hand...
For all that manga like One Piece make their reputation on the kind of boundless idealism where hard work and friendship will bring down the devil himself, the best in the business are experts in the art of combining humour and tragedy in proportions calculated for devastating effect. It's been well established by this stage of the story that one does not qualify to join the Straw Hats without first surviving a tragic childhood with traumas which start with the death of or abandonment by both your parents, and generally grow to include further deaths in your adoptive family (if not, in fact, of every person you have ever known), exile, or perhaps an amputation or two, and, finally, the inevitably spending the rest of your life with the knowledge that this was, in some small way, all your fault. By the time we're watching the final performance of the Rumbar Pirates fade out as Brook's crewmates keel over one by one, one might even find oneself reflecting that the captain himself (who's childhood trauma was limited to losing parents he never remembered anyway and the loss of one arm on the part of a mentor figure in a scene of only minutes in length) has actually gotten off awfully lightly.
Hindsight being 20/20, we probably should have realised that was only because Luffy's tale of family loss and tragedy was hardly getting started.
No matter how much it hurts, the narrative value of killing Ace is impossible to argue. When you get down to the execution level, it’s hard to argue because it hurts – because Oda, who has long proven himself only too adept at playing with our heartstrings, might well have calculated the entire saga of Ace’s life for maximum effect. And not just because in the space of only a handful of appearances the story has established Ace as a ridiculously likable character, but because it hurts Luffy, who loves those he cares for in the way only the innocent can.
I was, more or less, prepared for all this. Heck, I've been pretty well prepared for it since long before I first 'met' Ace in Alabasta.
But given that Ace's whole role could be cynically summarised down to being fridged to create angst for the leading man, what I hadn't counted on was how much more we were going to learn about Ace in those final episodes. I'd been well and truly spoiled for the reveal that his real father was Gol D. Roger the Pirate King Himself. What I hadn't known was how he felt about it – how much he resented having to live in the shadow of a father who'd left him with nothing but a legacy that he could hardly hope to live up to, and a connection that would have him marked for death by the world government from before he was even born. (Heavy-handed as those 'little Ace asks people what-if-Gold-Roger-had-a-son scenes' were, when you consider it where it got him, you can't much disagree.) I'd known about his fierce loyalty to Whitebeard; but I hadn't had the first idea why until we’re seeing Whitebeard refuse, in front of thousands of witnesses, to let Ace accept even a shred of blame for his own mistake. I was not particularly well prepared for how hard it was going to be to watch him watch his crew and his own brother go to war in his name. (There are plenty of parallels between this and what Robin's went through at Enies Lobby, but the shear scale of Ace's own plight is orders of magnitude beyond – not least because the rescue would fail.) I can only wish those few scenes of him and Luffy fighting back to back after he'd been freed had gone on for longer.
And you know, I don't think I could honestly call his last episode one of the best-directed in this arc, but you had better believe his last words gutted me – even though I had known, for months, exactly what they were going to be.3
It takes some doing to pile that much additional angst into a character's backstory to twist the knife right before killing them off for good and not have it come out cliché and overdone, but it leaves you feeling oh man, Ace, we had NO IDEA... If nothing else it drives home how little we ever knew about the guy before this arc, and we fell for him anyway.
So, yeah. If the best stories are all in the execution, this is one heck of a case study in how you can be spoilt for all the major plot points, and for hardly anything that matters at all.
Apropos of nothing, I could possibly use a hug right now.
1. If you’re willing to negotiate on your definition of ‘older’, then naturally if the hero has an ‘older’ identical twin, that twin is going to be evil (see esp: the case of Vash and Knives, or Dante and Virgil of the Devil May Cry franchise). Going a little further afield or loosening the gender-restriction, we could even count Lina Inverse’s near-phobia of her older sister, Avatar’s Azula, and Dave’s relationship with his Bro from Homestuck. If you want a TV tropes link for the phenomenon, the page you’re looking for is under Abel and Cain, proving that no matter how common this may be in contemporary Japanese pop fiction, the idea itself is pretty well older than dirt. It’s not for nothing that Ed and Al of Full Metal Alchemist fame seemed like such a novel concept.
2. There was a little more than pure luck to the fact I stuck around to watch, since for one thing, this was one of those rare standalone events that didn’t hinge on the last forty episodes or so of plot, and for another, I was curious about this Ace character my sister was so taken with.
3. You can get that scene on a tea towel from Shounen Jump stores in Japan. A. FUCKING. TEA TOWEL.
When your opening volley alone involves one side summoning a tsunami and then the other freezing it solid before it hits, it might just be time to reconsider your definition of the word ‘epic’. Henceforth, things that are epic shall be rated on a scale that goes from zero to the Whitebeard War.
So this is it, boys. War in fiction generally falls into two broad categories, highlighting either the glory (an epic victory against an irredeemably evil foe, say, Star Wars) or the futility of the exercise (I can think of no better example than Grave of the Fireflies). It’s not an either/or proposition, there’s plenty of middle ground (say Lord of the Rings) – longer works may run the full gamut from one end to the other and back again. But right from those early Impel Down scenes where Ace talks about the prospect, here you quickly get the impression this one maybe isn’t going to lean so heavily on the idealistic side of the scale.
One Piece does avoid the worst of the futility and misery by ending the battle in the space of a day, but there's nothing terribly glorious about it either. We've seen this once already in the civil war in Alabasta, but whereas that was about a desperate population manipulated by an outside aggressor, this time the conflict is utterly and openly political. Catalysts aside, what both instances have in common is that there’s no easy black/white division between the opposing sides, and for all that we’ll inevitably be cheering for the pirates, by this far into story the marine ranks are littered with friendly faces like Garp and Coby, and it’s pretty hard not to notice that your typical marine grunt is probably just an ordinary guy following his orders. Most of the truly sadistic bastards are to be found higher up the chain, and even there you hit the odd white sheep like Aokiji all the way to the top.
At the centre of the whole mess we have poor Ace, stuck with the combined horror of knowing there’s going to be war because of him while at the same time it’s hardly about him at all – it’s what he symbolises that people are going to die for. The marines are executing the third-in-command of the most powerful pirate crew on the seas to show that they can, and the pirates are retaliating to show them they can’t. Or so you think, looking at things from the outset. But we’re not far into the action before we’re learning that to the marines, Ace symbolises a whole lot more than merely sticking it to ol’ Whitebeard, while for Whitebeard Ace is family, and he symbolises no more or less than what he’d do for any one of his ‘sons’. So while the marines will fight and die because they’ve sworn their loyalty to the flag, the pirates will fight die for Whitebeard because he’s sworn his loyalty to them. It’s fascinating, the contrast there.
More importantly, because this is One Piece this is all going down with a cast of thousands. Roll call time. Starting with only those characters we already knew, we have:
On the side of the Marines: Garp, Sengoku, Aokiji, Kizaru, Kuma, Moria, Doflamingo, Mihawk, Sentomaru, Smoker, Tashigi, Hina (and groupies), Coby and Helmeppo, plus a smattering of Vice-Admiral types who I know we’ve met in passing even if I cannot remember their names off-hand.
On the side of the Pirates: Luffy, Ace, Whitebeard, Marco, Jinbe, Ivankov, Crocodile (!!!), Hancock (who was not supposed to be fighting for the pirates today but is really not fooling anyone), Buggy, Mr 3 and Inazuma
On neither side: Blackbeard & co.
Appearing only via flashback, but still holy-fucking-relevant: Gol D. Roger, Portgas D. Rouge and Thatch
New faces: Akainu, the rest of Whitebeard’s division commanders (including, but not limited to, a swordsman who can hold off Hawk-eyes Mihawk himself, a massive guy who can turn his body to diamond, and a very pretty man with two pistols and a very fetching geisha outfit), Oars Junior, Squardo, a whole army of allied pirate crews who will appear on and off through the rest of the battle, and an opposing force of Vice Admirals and giants on the side of the marines, not to mention the Level 6 escapees from Impel Down
Cameo’d in passing: The rest of the 11 pirate rookies
Sirs and Madams Not Appearing In This Fight: The rest of the Straw Hats.
This is not even counting the last few late arrivals to show up post-climax in the final few episodes. I bet I’ve still missed someone. First person who can tell me who wins, IDK, maybe a drabble request or something.
It’s a testament to Oda’s skill as a writer that a clusterfuck this huge works at all. It would have been so easy to leave the audience wondering why the army of common plebes even need to be there when it’s obvious the real battle is going to be between the handful of honest-to-god forces of nature up there in the higher ranks. What we get instead – and early enough to set the stakes – is the disaster of Oars Junior charging in ahead of the rest of Whitebeard’s forces and running face-first into the full power of marine artillery, ultimately doomed to go down like an avalanche inches from his goal. It makes sense, in that context, that Whitebeard might choose to direct his forces from the rear for most of the battle rather than leading the charge. The leaders on both sides are fighting smart, even when they’re not fighting clean.
At the end of the day though, we’re not here to watch these guys play chess with each other. It’s the emotional impact that sells this arc, and oh boy does it deliver. From the outset, long before Luffy makes it onto the scene, we see the battle unfold largely through Ace's eyes, and it's not pretty. Whitebeard didn't make the much of a first impressions for me back when we first met him in his meeting with Shanks – a meeting which involved Whitebeard dismissing what would shortly prove to be incredibly prophetic advice. In retrospect though, it's hard to imagine that was anything less than deliberate misdirection when we finally learn the rest of the background behind that situation at the start of this arc. Whitebeard is an enormous, rumbling mountain of a man (and just about as immovable as one too), and now that we meet him properly, he quickly goes about establishing exactly how such a gruff and terrifying character has managed to inspire such heartfelt loyalty from an army of crew and allies. It should have been just about impossible to make us believe that a major military power and such a skilled strategic thinker would still have such boundless affection and forgiveness for his 'family' – the sort that easily parallels even Luffy himself – without descending into unbelievable caricature, but Whitebeard pulls it off with aplomb. This matters, because the fact that Whitebeard isn't going to make it out of this fight has been not so much foreshadowed as telegraphed from miles away, and now we care.
Speaking of Ace’s various father figures, have I mentioned before how much I love Garp? I say this with full appreciation of the benefits of being able to like him from a safe distance (the thought of being actually related to anyone like that is a truly terrifying prospect), but he is such a character and you can so clearly see the family resemblance between him and Luffy, and no matter how disappointed he may be with his grandsons’ chosen careers, one has to love how freely he’ll twist all semblance of military protocol around his finger to drop in on Luffy and say hello. So when he sits down next on the execution platform next to Ace and dissolves into tears, any part of your heart that hadn’t already broken for the D family is going to break then and there, and we’re not even halfway through yet.
Then just when things are starting to look truly dismal, Luffy and his mismatched band of escapees literally fall out of the sky, and everything I was on my way to concluding about how this is the part of the series that will make you believe Luffy will be the next Pirate King is back in force, a thousand times over. He’s not been on the field more than minutes before he’s got Whitebeard’s attention – his recognition, even – and his mere presence seems to electrify the entire invading force on the spot. Even effing Crocodile gets caught up in it all somehow, and he’s a villain so far beyond redeemable that dusting him off for another appearance sounded like an exercise in frustration. What we get instead is the gradual shift from the his tentative short-term truce with Luffy, to being forced to give up on killing Whitebeard, to him getting pissed off at Doflamingo, to him lashing out at the marines for little more reason than because he doesn’t want them getting the satisfaction either, to him openly stepping up to defend Luffy towards the end despite apparently lacking more than the faintest clue why he’s doing it. It all works better than it has any right to.
Being so thoroughly spoiled for it all, it probably goes without saying that I was primed to pay attention to Akainu from episode 1, and now that we finally meet the guy… I guess my overwhelming impression is that ‘dog’ is a good name for him. Ruthless, clever and willing to fight dirty, not to mention utterly dedicated to the marine idea of justice, and… that’s about it. You really can’t picture this guy having ever had a single hobby. He lives his job and has zero patience for anyone who doesn’t, and unlike just about every other superpowered enemy ever, there’s basically zero suggestion he’s in it for his own gain, or for anything other than that he believes everything the navy embodies. For a character who’s actions have such a profound impact on the course of the series, he’s curiously flat – almost to the point where he goes full circle and becomes interesting again. He’s pretty much everything every villain ever wanted in a chief henchman but couldn’t quite track down. But then again, One Piece does have this thing where the big arc villains will be unmistakably moustache-twiching evil, but if Blackbeard’s anything to go by, the ones who will define the whole story in the long run may just as easily be that cheerful guy Luffy met in a bar that one time. Or maybe the generic-looking character on the left of the two admirals with the real personality who hasn’t done much to stand out yet.
Spoiled as I was, it was nice to have one or two major things I didn’t know were coming in this arc, in particular Coby’s big moment at the end. It was well set up, when his and Helmeppo’s role through the whole rest of the battle had been to offset all that violent fervour on the parts of both armies by being the two guys who’d shown up that day to find themselves completely out of their depth and horrified by the reality of war. But Coby has become one of those wildcard characters who we can assume Oda has a plan for even if we don’t have the first idea what it’s going to be, and this I did not see it coming until Coby had jumped right in front of Akainu himself, and was screaming at everyone in sight to stand down. Hell of a moment.
When all’s said and done though, I am here to talk about Ace today, and so much so that I think it’s about time for a subheading.
Ace
In today’s issue of When Spoilers Aren’t Spoilers, I just – man, I had all the big surprises spoiled for me, and when we got there, I still had no idea.
If I can take a minute to reminisce here, I think I must have been something of an Ace fan since way back before I was even officially a One Piece fan. This, like most things in my OP experience, was my sister's fault. The first I heard of Ace was when she reached his introductory episodes and, with some amazement, told me about how Luffy had a big brother who was not only 1) more or less as required, a total badass, but also 2) a really nice guy who'd just popped up to see how his little brother was doing and politely thank his crew for
As luck would have it, one of few episodes I caught in almost-full while my sister was getting through the series herself just so happened to be the confrontation between Blackbeard and Ace.2 And that, plus regular updates on the situation from the same source, is the tale of how I managed to get myself so invested in the welfare of some guy from some show I wasn’t even watching at the time that when I heard the conclusion of that particular plot arc… let’s just say ow.
Perhaps the worst of it is that as a plot development, Ace's death makes nothing but cold, logical sense – the role his character was likely conceived to play from day zero. Over the whole run of the show the stakes have been steadily rising with each new arc, and while it's all very well for the antagonist of the week to go loudly predicting the Straw Hats' doom at every opportunity, it doesn't carry all that much weight until the day comes when we see Luffy definitively fail. Oda couldn't have killed off any of Luffy's crew, not when he's spent so much time establishing their bonds as unbreakable. Luffy's brother, on the other hand...
For all that manga like One Piece make their reputation on the kind of boundless idealism where hard work and friendship will bring down the devil himself, the best in the business are experts in the art of combining humour and tragedy in proportions calculated for devastating effect. It's been well established by this stage of the story that one does not qualify to join the Straw Hats without first surviving a tragic childhood with traumas which start with the death of or abandonment by both your parents, and generally grow to include further deaths in your adoptive family (if not, in fact, of every person you have ever known), exile, or perhaps an amputation or two, and, finally, the inevitably spending the rest of your life with the knowledge that this was, in some small way, all your fault. By the time we're watching the final performance of the Rumbar Pirates fade out as Brook's crewmates keel over one by one, one might even find oneself reflecting that the captain himself (who's childhood trauma was limited to losing parents he never remembered anyway and the loss of one arm on the part of a mentor figure in a scene of only minutes in length) has actually gotten off awfully lightly.
Hindsight being 20/20, we probably should have realised that was only because Luffy's tale of family loss and tragedy was hardly getting started.
No matter how much it hurts, the narrative value of killing Ace is impossible to argue. When you get down to the execution level, it’s hard to argue because it hurts – because Oda, who has long proven himself only too adept at playing with our heartstrings, might well have calculated the entire saga of Ace’s life for maximum effect. And not just because in the space of only a handful of appearances the story has established Ace as a ridiculously likable character, but because it hurts Luffy, who loves those he cares for in the way only the innocent can.
I was, more or less, prepared for all this. Heck, I've been pretty well prepared for it since long before I first 'met' Ace in Alabasta.
But given that Ace's whole role could be cynically summarised down to being fridged to create angst for the leading man, what I hadn't counted on was how much more we were going to learn about Ace in those final episodes. I'd been well and truly spoiled for the reveal that his real father was Gol D. Roger the Pirate King Himself. What I hadn't known was how he felt about it – how much he resented having to live in the shadow of a father who'd left him with nothing but a legacy that he could hardly hope to live up to, and a connection that would have him marked for death by the world government from before he was even born. (Heavy-handed as those 'little Ace asks people what-if-Gold-Roger-had-a-son scenes' were, when you consider it where it got him, you can't much disagree.) I'd known about his fierce loyalty to Whitebeard; but I hadn't had the first idea why until we’re seeing Whitebeard refuse, in front of thousands of witnesses, to let Ace accept even a shred of blame for his own mistake. I was not particularly well prepared for how hard it was going to be to watch him watch his crew and his own brother go to war in his name. (There are plenty of parallels between this and what Robin's went through at Enies Lobby, but the shear scale of Ace's own plight is orders of magnitude beyond – not least because the rescue would fail.) I can only wish those few scenes of him and Luffy fighting back to back after he'd been freed had gone on for longer.
And you know, I don't think I could honestly call his last episode one of the best-directed in this arc, but you had better believe his last words gutted me – even though I had known, for months, exactly what they were going to be.3
It takes some doing to pile that much additional angst into a character's backstory to twist the knife right before killing them off for good and not have it come out cliché and overdone, but it leaves you feeling oh man, Ace, we had NO IDEA... If nothing else it drives home how little we ever knew about the guy before this arc, and we fell for him anyway.
So, yeah. If the best stories are all in the execution, this is one heck of a case study in how you can be spoilt for all the major plot points, and for hardly anything that matters at all.
Apropos of nothing, I could possibly use a hug right now.
1. If you’re willing to negotiate on your definition of ‘older’, then naturally if the hero has an ‘older’ identical twin, that twin is going to be evil (see esp: the case of Vash and Knives, or Dante and Virgil of the Devil May Cry franchise). Going a little further afield or loosening the gender-restriction, we could even count Lina Inverse’s near-phobia of her older sister, Avatar’s Azula, and Dave’s relationship with his Bro from Homestuck. If you want a TV tropes link for the phenomenon, the page you’re looking for is under Abel and Cain, proving that no matter how common this may be in contemporary Japanese pop fiction, the idea itself is pretty well older than dirt. It’s not for nothing that Ed and Al of Full Metal Alchemist fame seemed like such a novel concept.
2. There was a little more than pure luck to the fact I stuck around to watch, since for one thing, this was one of those rare standalone events that didn’t hinge on the last forty episodes or so of plot, and for another, I was curious about this Ace character my sister was so taken with.
3. You can get that scene on a tea towel from Shounen Jump stores in Japan. A. FUCKING. TEA TOWEL.
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Date: 2012-07-05 04:19 pm (UTC)Oh man, from your commentary you have not been spoiled about something dealing with Luffy. It is gonna be great when you find it out!
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Date: 2012-07-06 03:01 am (UTC)Oh man, from your commentary you have not been spoiled about something dealing with Luffy. It is gonna be great when you find it out!
ffff well that's nice and vague. XD Can you give me some sort of hint as to when I'm supposed to run into this 'something' so I know it when I see it?
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Date: 2012-07-06 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-06 05:18 am (UTC)Er, more to the point, we're through that section already (these posts take a while to write ^^; ) and I was spoiled for it well in advance anyway. I mean, not for every detail (so much <3<3<3 for Dadan!) but there was no way my sis wasn't going to tell me all about it she went through the first time. ;)
So I'm guessing you mean all the other backstory tragedy with Sabo? For better or worse I was definitely spoilt for that much. Though I still feel like even losing Sabo only barely compares to what Luffy went through losing Ace, when I said 'Luffy's tale of family loss and tragedy was hardly getting started', I was including both things to come and things we just hadn't heard about yet. Man but you'd never even imagine there's going to be so much more hidden in Luffy's backstory before it all rolls out in front of you. Lufffffyyyyyyyyyyy ;_;
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Date: 2012-07-06 05:38 am (UTC)But yeah I kept seeing long posts and comments about how it cheapened Luffy's bond with Ace by having another brother. I rather disagreed, but there ya go.
The posts are totally worth the wait. You always have such shiny brain thoughts to share!
It helps that Luffy just never talks about his past. SO MANY THINGS can be hidden there!
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Date: 2012-07-06 07:18 am (UTC)I'm still sorta amazed people are actually reading all my blather. Mostly when I get all wordy about my new shiny thing these days I get stoney silence in reply and get all embarrassed and have to go find some other distraction. XD; So basically it is entirely the fault of the few people replying to these things that I keep writing them. ;)
It helps that Luffy just never talks about his past. SO MANY THINGS can be hidden there!
That and that he's such a bouncy little airhead with nothing but his hat and his enthusiasm to his name when he sets out to sea. You never imagine there was anything very notable in his past between the Shanks days and when he set out to sea, let alone all he went through with Sabo and Ace. You just never know when Oda's going to play all his tropes straight or when he's going to blow all your expectations out of the water.
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Date: 2012-07-05 08:26 pm (UTC)The fact that he apologises for not getting rescued... OWWWW.
At the end of this arc I wanted nothing more than to see all the Strawhats teleported instantly to Luffy's side so he could cope.
Coby's Important Moment surprised me as well and brought me one dearly needed piece of joy at those moments. As Shanks pointed out, Coby's speech saved Luffy's life, delaying Akainu just enough for Shanks & crew to arrive.
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Date: 2012-07-06 07:05 am (UTC)At the start I was mostly just concerned about Luffy, but this arc - and to a much lesser extent, his brief scene in Impel Down - made me truly care for Ace for himself as well. Damn you, Oda.
I know what you mean, especially coming on the heels of everything Luffy went through in Sabody. Then suddenly Ace isn't just a part of Luffy's story, he had his whole own story that we knew nothing about until now. IKR?
At the end of this arc I wanted nothing more than to see all the Strawhats teleported instantly to Luffy's side so he could cope.
I just got up to Luffy's "Nakama ga iru!" scene with Jinbe in the aftermath last night. (Not even for the first time - this was one of the scenes I ran into while borrowing one of my sisters' manga at random for something to flick through on the train in Japan, and even back then, damn. Which just goes to prove yet again how stupidly overinvested I've been in this show since well before I decided to watch it ^^; ) At this point they've been off screen so long that they're starting to feel practically irrelevant - I mean, they just missed basically the biggest event in Luffy's whole life - and then you get to that scene and suddenly they're the reason there's hope again and arrrrrggghhhh. So very well done.
As Shanks pointed out, Coby's speech saved Luffy's life, delaying Akainu just enough for Shanks & crew to arrive.
Oh yes, it may have bought only seconds, but it was no useless gesture. But hell, it was hardly just Coby - what with Jinbe and Shanks and Law and all the Whitebeard pirates and even Crocodile which still gets me, so many people stepped in to help get him out of there in those last moments. Some of that was always about sticking it to the marines in the last chance they had left, but so much more was down to Luffy himself and how much of an impression he made that day. Coby's such a great example though, because while I doubt saving Luffy was the first thing on his mind when he stepped in, without Luffy's influence he'd almost certainly never have joined the marines or been there that day to begin with. Just about the whole world tilts on its axis when Luffy gets involved.
Whoa, got a bit rambly there. All these rants and I still have so much leftover to say about this show. ^^;
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Date: 2012-07-06 09:35 am (UTC)Oh, absolutely! All those things were touching, too. And like you point out, I don't think Coby himself was even aware of the Luffy aspect right then - he just wanted people, his brothers-in-arms particularly, no longer be slaughtered needlessly. I think what made me feel extra good about it was that Coby's such a decent character and it both felt really good to have someone stand up for not killing anymore, especially on the Marine side - and to have that someone be Coby.
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Date: 2012-07-06 10:46 am (UTC)Every time you think you've got these characters figured out they go and throw you for a loop in the best possible way.