It’s interesting how Punk Hazard, Dressrosa, Zou and Wano all spill into each other with actions in one arc directly leading to motivations and consequences in another. Like all three of those arcs are essentially set up for Wano when you look at the big picture. They’re all explaining how exactly it is that all these characters ended up her fighting these two menaces. And that makes sense given that Wano is kind of the biggest deal we’ve ever gotten in terms of over arching storyline in One Piece and what is revealed there forever changes the story.
But yeah I just thought it was interesting because outside of Sagas like Water seven and we’ve never really gotten that tipping over feeling before. But while water seven feels just like one big arc with individual pieces. All those arcs are distinct from each other and it’s only when you get to Wano and see the bigger picture can you really fit together just how we all ended up here. It also doesn’t help that Wano’s where they’ve been trying to go from the start.
It’s also the first time they Straw hats actually have a plan to go out of their way and antagonize somebody. Like they are actively trying to antagonize Kaido before they got to Wano. They’ve never done that before they’ve always just kind of tripped and fell into trouble trying to help a friend. Which is kind of how the kaido thing starts but it snowballs into much more than that. The closest to anything like it is Vivi and alabasta. It really helps post time skip feel distinct from pre time and really sets you up with out even knowing it to prepare for something big to go down. It’s almost like a visceral shift from One piece as a serialized story to an a connected one.
A detail that I always found curious in bsd is how in fifteen Dazai needs to consciously activate his ability, but in the current time of the story he doesn't. At first I just thought Dazai had trained his own ability to the point where he could keep it active all the time, but Dazai's ability doesn't really seem very important to his work in the mafia, because we only see him using No Longer Human a few times during the light novels that take place during the time he was in the Port Mafia, so I don't believe this was something trained by Dazai, but rather the effect that All Men Are Equal has on him.
We know that Fukuzawa's ability is a suppression ability that influences the abilities of ADA members, allowing the agents themselves to adjust and control their powers, so it makes sense that joining after the ADA, Dazai made No Longer Human always be activated, so he couldn't be affected by abilities attacks even if he was caught by surprise.
The fact that the agents themselves can adjust their abilities with the help of All Men Are Equall made me think about the other ADA members, and how they are affected by Fukuzawa's ability. In Yosano's flashback, it's never said that she can only heal people with fatal wounds, and when Yosano refuses to heal Tachihara's brother (who Mori says is not seriously injured) she says that she doesn't want to heal him, not that she can't, so I believe that after everything Yosano went through in the war and with Mori, she herself chose to only be able to heal people who were almost dying, so she doesn't feel like she was reducing the value of the lives of those she heals, and so that others detectives of the agency understand the value that their lives and wounds have, and don't end up like the soldiers in war.
In Kenji's fight against Tetchou, we have a flashback of a conversation between Kunikida and Atsushi, and Kunikida says that Kenji's ability is driven by his anger, the angrier he gets, the more powerful he will be, however, his hunger can calm him, and I wonder if that might have something to do with Fukuzawa's skill. Kenji is a very calm person, and Kunikida says that this prevents his monstrous strength from coming out, so creating a way to calm him down so that his ability doesn't go out of control may have been Kenji's own choice when he joined the agency.
Kunikida only using his ability in his notebook of ideals may also have been his own choice. We know how connected to his ideals Kunikida is, and he says that all of his future and ideals are written in that notebook, so it makes sense that he would want his ability, an important part of his life, to be in his notebook too. On the other hand, All Men Are Equal could be the reason why Kunikida can only create objects the size of his notebook, but I can't see a specific reason for this choice.
I don't see many ways in which Fukuzawa's ability can affect Tanizaki's Light Snow, other than limiting the area in which he can use his ability. We know that Tanizaki can be very aggressive if provoked, so the fact that his ability can only be used at a short or medium range may be to prevent him from doing more damage than necessary when angered.
I believe all of these assumptions make a lot of sense, based on what we've seen of the influence of Fukuzawa's ability on Atsushi (forbiding him from fully transforming into a tiger, and from losing his mind while using his ability) and Kyouka (allowing her to control Demon Snow without her phone), and I really hope this topic is explored at some point during the manga.
The besties of all the time!!!
kunikida had the most wild time in dazai’s entrance exam like imagine being under the stress of working at a dangerous detective agency AND doing math tutoring at the tender sensitive age of 20 years old and suddenly your boss throws a guy at you who is the BIGGEST walking red flag and has no recorded background or history and just happened to meet a really important government guy at a bar and land a job at your workplace and is obsessed with suicide and tries to kill himself at work and has detailed knowledge of the human organ trafficking business and your boss is like “well, he’s your problem now, if he gives you bad vibes just shoot him in the head if not I want to know if you’d recommend him as our newest employee. okay bye”
More members to the pink-haired princess club
Loki really is the princess of the arc, isn't he?
Thinking about how Chuuya's father-son relationship with Adam plays into the metaphor of 'Child of Adam, which inadvertently proves his humanity and presents the Abel and Cain dynamic with Verlaine. Abel being the younger brother and a shepherd, (King of The Sheep) and them both giving offerings to God (Guivre and Arahabaki), but God only favoring one of them (Chuuya being able to in-part accept his humanity), and Cain killing him in response (Verlaine stripping Chuuya of his loved ones.) It also drives the point home when you think about the fact that Verlaine's kill signature is a white cross made of birch.
Luffy and the east blue crew 👒⚔️🍊🎯🚬
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