Marineford Saga or the Dilemma of Setup-as-Payoffs
Can we get much higher? (So high)
It has been two years since the Strawhats have seen one another. Naturally, they will look different, even if this “different” means that Zoro is overweight and sticks to Sanji a lot. And Robin has gotten quite short, too… huh. Chopper happily trails behind them, though, and doesn’t mind that they don’t look at him or interact with him. Of course, these aren’t the real Strawhat pirates. They’re fakes who leech off of the crew’s name. At a loss on what to do, they decide to kick out their fake Chopper (a fox) with this real “raccoon dog”. Robin turns to him and says, “Come, Chopper. It’s a cucumber.” Then she’s kidnapped by the World Government.
You know, like… the character that… previously recognized Robin by smell as if we were in The Song of Achilles… now… can’t tell this isn’t her… alright.
This is part of a series in which I talk about One Piece. It has a tag that you can peruse. I think each of these posts build off one another in one way or another, usually revolving around writing choices. Today I’m discussing the stretch from Sabaody Archipelago to… Return to Sabaody Archipelago, aka the Marineford Saga, and spoilers mostly boil down to these arcs only.
Remember when I said I felt blueballed? Today we’re getting to the apex of being blueballed.
Let’s rewind to where we last left off. In Sabaody Archipelago Luffy meets silver fox hottie Rayleigh, the right hand of Gol D Roger. Usopp wants to know if the One Piece is real and immediately Luffy punches Usopp and loudly shouts that no, he doesn’t want to know. Later, the Strawhats get blasted off in many different directions, overpowered by Bartholomew Kuma (RIP, a true king) and the Pacifistas. Luffy has to watch his whole crew disappear in front of his eyes. Drama! Luffy is sent off to the Women’s Island Amazon Lily, and the vain Empress Boa Hancock falls in love with him. There, he finds out that Ace, his chosen brother, gets indicted to Impel Down and is facing execution. Luffy will drop everything to get to him, including… breaking into a high-security prison.
On a writing level, this is basically the payoff of the longest setup Oda has left cooking so far besides whether the One Piece exists or not: Ace was looking for Blackbeard, who we find out had killed a comrade to get the Yami-Yami no Mi (Darkness powers). Ace lost to Blackbeard because the power is practically overpowered. For Luffy and the Strawhats, this is incredible writing. Dramatic, strong, high-strung. No… to be precise, this is an incredible setup. Yes. The payoff to a setup is more setup. It creates the drama, the tension. Can we get much higher?
So: Luffy in Impel Down. Great arc. Very fun to see Baroque Works again and longhaired Buggy. Jinbei is a cool new addition and setup for later. Bon Kurei should’ve been a Strawhat. If this was a review/reflection on just that arc, I’d have more words, but we don’t have time for all that. Luffy gets out of Impel Down to meet Ace in Marineford, as is the whole of Whitebeard’s crew. For Luffy and the Strawhats, this is incredible writing. Fun, a bit meandering, scary setup. Can we get much higher?
Ace is taken to Marineford, cuffed and about to be executed. We get an epic battle between the Marine and the Whitebeard Pirates, of which we know of literally nothing up until this point. Do we find out anything about them? Marco can turn to a phoenix. There’s some swordman. We learn, if we do anything about anyone, about Whitebeard, who has rejected knowing the location of the One Piece, rejected the King title, and just wanted lots of sons. I respect that. He put the PATER in patriarch. He’s like if Nicki Minaj was a man, so like Roman Zolanski if he was white and a DILF. He said all you bitches is my sons, so accordingly there’s no women in that crew lmfao. And he dies.
From the Marine side, we learn that Garp likes Ace a lot because he also raised Ace. We also learn about the last of the three admirals, Akainu. Clearly the most cunning and capable Marine we’ve seen yet, he provokes multiple people into doing the things he wants. He is the reason Ace dies. If I was to simply analyse that part by itself, I would end up a stenographer. It’s flawlessly written. I was furiously taking mental notes. Ace dying by Akainu is great. It’s even better when Blackbeard kills Whitebeard, both character we know of and heard of for a longer stretch of the narrative. No notes.
What’s the payoff? That the One Piece is real. Like… the thing Luffy didn’t want to know, Oda lets the readers/viewers know anyway. One line for so many arcs. Okay, no. Clearly, there’s more. There’s repercussions to be had. The Fishman Island, which follows this saga, will be directly impacted as a result of this one.
Fine. Oda can write; I don’t dispute this. I’m just asking: what is the payoff of Ace’s death?
Ace’s chest, pierced by Akainu’s magma hand. Right in front of Luffy, while Ace was trying to rescue Luffy. What an image. You can’t get higher than this.
So what is it of Ace that we know prior this point, besides the polite, hot (fire!) version of Luffy? Very little. He travels with them in Alabasta and then he’s just chasing Blackbeard. So it is up to Marineford Arc to fill in the blanks. Ace, who had before always just been Luffy’s brother, is now a chosen brother, and actually Gol D Roger’s son, a burden in every sense of the world as he was growing up. It was Whitebeard that took him in regardless of his origins, causing a filial piety so big that Ace pays with his life for it in the end. Ace just wanted to be loved. He’s so happy that he cries, so prideful that he didn’t want anyone to rescue him. It took him five minutes to be dead.
On its own: this is incredible. Great work. Ace hangs there uselessly and cries and is in despair. Beautiful men in fiction should always suffer a little bit. We never have to know anything about beautiful men in fiction, unless it’s sad, in which case it adds to their beauty. No notes.
And then what happens? We get a flashback of Luffy remembering Ace as a child. Him and Sabo. Who is Sabo? The first big retcon of this series (Sanji is #2). Literally, we find out about Sabo when Ace dies. We don’t even see him before. Sabo ends up the focus of the flashback arc, in which Oda once again pulls from the war crime template to show indescribable crimes happening to the good ones, plus some of the class war he’s so, so good at. To what end? You can’t make Luffy more complicated through this. It’s too late for that. You can’t make Ace more complicated with this… he’s dead. Setup for Sabo (setup in character)? You know it. (One thing about a dead character you don’t see the lifeless body of – that character is not dead.)
Do you spot a theme? This obsession with ending things and, almost immediately, starting another. All these set ups. The payoff becomes setup for something else. You’re basically delaying the inevitable but also ramp up the heat to such a degree that any payoff can’t possibly match what you were hyping up.
Actually, there is something for Luffy there. The same thing he was babbling about in Water 7. Him finally realizing what he wants to do. Being so strong none of his friends are hurt. What a payoff. It’s starting to look like Dragonball here. Is that the payoff to Ace’s death? Yes. And no.
To be clear: death, in fiction, must always act as a catalyst. Death changes everything within us in real life, even if life demands everything stands the same. It’s even more pronounced in fiction. I know Oda knows this, because Whitebeard’s death directly supports my theory.
The payoff to Ace’s death begins with Luffy completely unmoored (this is realistic and good) and then Jinbei is like, think of the people around you! And then Luffy counts his friends, and yes I also teared up because we spent three arcs not seeing the Strawhats, but also… they weren’t here now. He’s thinking of them of before, which makes him say, I love my friends so much. We got so high only to fall back down to the ground with a satisfying, loud splat.
That thing I said about Luffy not being allowed to be human? We see the real consequences of that decision. Ace dies and it ends up only setup to humanize a whole new character who thinks he’s Karl Marx. Is the decision without merits? No. It’s still a joy to hear Luffy shout: “I will be King of the Pirates!” despite all that has happened to him. Joy is not a weak character trait, nor boring. But… Luffy has had joy before. This is a pivot of 360 degrees.
Which leads us to post-Marineford, into Return to Sabaody. I promise you, I’m not going to use that word now; I risk un-seeing the word and turning it to a shape. It’s just funny, though, what these little resets have done to the characters. Usopp is no longer weak until, of course, he will end up hiding behind someone despite looking buff now. Haha, look, Zoro lost his way and slices a ship because he’s at the wrong place! Isn’t it so funny that Sanji repeatedly calls cis women “real women”! Robin is whitewashed and lost her goth cowboy fashion in favor of bigger boobs! I know you’re jumping in your seat at this next one – Franky, the guy who was quasi-homosexual in Water 7, has become a total robot! Haha!! Brook, a white guy, Austrian, is now the Soul King and holds concerts in a soul/jazz/rock blend! And of course he will drop all that as soon as his captain is back!
And Luffy mistakes Zoro and Sanji! Just like Chopper did! And instead of simply pointing out that bullets don’t work on him, not even point blank, Luffy lets his Haki talk. Wooooow.
So what happened? All the hype popped like a balloon, and only a cucumber was left behind. This is One Piece now. The world grows more complicated and our characters are perennially two-dimensional. It can’t even lead to anything satisfying anymore. In this sense One Piece is like the Marvel properties: all hype, great matches, to a conclusion that looks all too much like the beginning, and characters that don’t bend or change from such devastating changes. (In that sense, it’s quite different from Lupin III movies – the characters are inflexible, but the movies I’ve seen typically emphasize the comedic, not the dramatic) It shook me that Film Crit Hulk saw through this dilemma of the hype not matching the resolution as early as eleven episodes in. But by the end of this saga, it’s pretty much undeniable. It will haunt One Piece up to the end of its run. We can get much higher, and thankfully, the falls will feel softer. No Ace-like characters left to kill off, after all; thus, there is nothing to traumatize Luffy with. He’s sedated. He’s got that Haki now. And in turn, those of us tuned in get cucumbers.