yeah definitely usopp, now he simply can´t run away from danger (pretty much anytime he´s scared), his fat will absorb physical damage and his shooting will improve due to more stability :D
these were my first impressions from yesterday:
the marines being so surprised is a bit hardly believable..
fact 1 - whitebeard was in the new world, wich means on the other side of the red line
fact 2 - the only way to get back to where marine HQ is for pirates, is through fishman island
fact 3 - to get through fishman island you need coated ships as it is underwater
the marine unprepared / bad tactics eh? weird
nice entrance for whitebeard in the middle of it all, seems like he´s very confident in his own, his crew´s and his allies´ strength, most of all, in saving ace...he looks like he´s able to just leap and land on the platform where ace is :)
the story didn´t move on "that much" (I mean the actual fighting hasn´t started):
1. usopp is now fat and happy, funny but weird
2. roger asking garp as the one he had countless battles to the death with, to take care of his child, was a logical and easily predictable explanation...the concept is that you learn the true nature of your oponent in such battles and garp is a good man, thus roger entrusted him the safety of his son
- yeah we already knew that garp wasn´t a pussy but strong as hell, now officially revealed to be an equal of the late pirate king, no wonder his son and grandson are that crazy and strong...that´s why luffy has the potential to become the pirate king, so does (did) ace (pointed out by sengoku)...they´re both "young" in the one piece world, their abilities not fully developed yet
- also what´s obvious from what sengoku told the world, garp didn´t tell the marines about ace´s existence, they only found out like a year after ace became a pirate
garp is the man
3. hmm, the war war scenery:
- doflamingo seems determined to face off
- moria is excited that there was such a miracle as roger´s son
- kuma is without emotion and unpredictable
- mihawk seemed shocked or angry (?) by the revelation and we know too little about him to predict what he does
- boa analyzed the relation between luffy and ace, either way I hope she´ll help luffy once again when she sees him / hears him scream something typical of him...it´d be nice if she kicked some serious butt in the process
- whitebeard brought allies with him, the marine recognizes them as powerful pirates (made a name in the new world), so it´s not as one-sided as it seemed before this chapter
4. what confused me a bit was that whitebeard wants to make ace the new pirate king and that ace was delusioned about him wanting to make whitebeard the pirate king...this doesn´t seem to fit in with my image of whitebeard as the proud "I am the best" pirate but whatever
- this fact could mean that ace will be saved, after all, making fans happy...this would be a huge disgrace for the marine though, which means that it has to be evened out somehow by at least whitebeard going down (this would correspond with whitebeards role above)
5. this is a somewhat new situation as there are too many known characters and too many possible pairings, I wonder how oda approaches this.
- one-on-ones could take 3 years to finish...he could do only the most important ones like whitebeard vs 3 admirals (lol this is just my wish)
- big all out war would be a mess...or there are such power differences that one WB weapon swing > 1000 marines fly or something
- this may also end pretty quickly with the help of some surprises
yeah I personally don´t want to see each of the 14 WB division leaders in action, I don´t care who they are or how strong, there are already plenty of interesting fighters in the story...let some of the main characters battle please
6. luffy is one lucky guy as stated by the blackbeard pirates, I mean the door just opened :D
now I´m not sure where the gates are positioned and how far from the marine HQ´(I have to check some maps or something), but hopefully they´re more from the side than from the front or else he´d have to pass the main battlefield (I mean the 43 WB allied ships) somehow...I could see him using the mess to sneak in...well, he likes big entrances and will rather scream something lol
that´s all for now
EDIT: I´m still one "ace won´t survive this" side...he still looks to have a broken spirit, like he gave up (remember his flashbacks with luffy as they wer kids?), his will to live, to survive and to be someone is nowhere to be found and nowhere near comparable to luffy´s at this point...he was always a laid back kind of guy who didn´t care about anything and thus "cool", but now he´s just a wreck...I don´t like it and how can he recover from that?
