 I love One Piece, but I hate this. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. My name is Liam and I have opinions because today we are here to talk about what I consider to be the absolute worst aspect of One Piece, something that at its most potent comes close to genuinely enraging me. And that is Oda's wildly inconsistent use of death. But wait a minute, Grand Line Review Man, haven't you made a video on this topic before? And the answer to that unsolicited question is sort of. I've gone through some of the worst fake out deaths in the series and I do talk about this in a lot of other videos, but that's only because it continues to be absurdly relevant. In fact, at the time of writing this, we are at chapter 1,015 of the manga and the concept of untrustworthy deaths is more relevant than ever before. So we're going to go through what holds this otherwise brilliant series back and detail some of the most egregious examples that would have any other author being mocked in the streets or, I don't know, wherever it is that they live. And it's all going to begin with a quick round of rest in, Pete, no wait, you're still alive. A very simple mini-game, the rules of which are as follows. Three characters have all of a sudden, quote unquote, died in One Piece, but it is going to be your job to guess which one actually stays dead. Should you guess incorrectly, then your punishment will be to subscribe to the Grand Line Review, also resulting consistent injections of One Piece culture administered directly into your YouTube feed. And if you are correct, then your real life death will be written by Etcher Oda himself, essentially guaranteeing you some sort of immortality. So who will it be, A, B, or the third one? Choose your unfortunate character now and we shall reveal the answer in three, two, one, and bam, it's none of them. None of them are staying dead because Oda can't help himself. So if you guessed incorrectly, and at this point I would say roughly 100% of you did, then you know things to do and please do say hi in the comments below if you are a new member of the Grand Fleet, welcome. To really get into things though, I do want to back up slightly because a lot of what I've said so far can be leveled as a general criticism of Oda's abilities. But on the contrary, as with most aspects of storytelling, Oda is a certified master of how to wield death as an effective concept, which is actually one of those things that makes this issue ever, ever so much more frustrating, but think of some of the most memorable scenes in One Piece. Chances are a lot of them are going to come from flashbacks and there'll be stuff along the lines of Belmere sacrificing herself for Namia Nojiko, Dr. Hira looks heartwarming last moments or even very recently, my name is Oden and I was born to boil. These scenes are extraordinarily powerful and they're not exclusive to flashbacks either. I mean, if I were to mention characters like Whitebeard, Ace, Pedro or even the Going Mary, just name dropping them will generally conjure this mixture of great respect and somberness because they all involve examples of how to use death to its best possible effect. So it's not that Oda is in any way some sort of inferior author thing who is incapable of handling the concept. It's more that there are several select occasions, a lot of select occasions, where he chooses to shoot himself in the foot by giving characters heartbreaking death scenes only to later negate their entire effect by revealing that this character is in fact alive. To put it in terms of fine art, it would be kind of like if Vermeer decided to paint girl with a pearl earring, except instead of using the face we know today, Vermeer said, eff it and drew a smiley face with a crayon. In this case, Vermeer did know how to paint. He knew how to paint very well. He just chose not to do it for reasons, reasons that will be hotly debated by frustrated future historians. That is us with one piece. A lot of the time Oda's use of death can be just like utterly baffling. And even worse than that, it can actively harm the series going forward. Because Oda is an incredibly greedy man. He likes to have his cake and eat it too. And then he likes to have your cake and eat it too. And at that point, you'll just find any old randoms cake to just have and eat as well. So to recap, Oda is now three kegs that Etchera Oda simultaneously has and is eating. And at this point, Oda has a big problem and it's not diabetes. The problem is that he is completely addicted to keeping non-flashback characters alive. However, he is also simultaneously addicted to writing death scenes for dramatic impact. And these two addictions, they do not interact well together. We're talking situations like Pell, Pagaya, Pound, Diggaran, Bonkley, Gecko, Moria and more ever so many more, including some spoilery manga characters. Each of these examples were given an overly dramatic death scene only to not actually follow through with that whole concept. And thus I suppose kind of ruin everything. Now, before we move on to ruining everything, let's ask ourselves, what is a death scene? Exact definitions can differ, but death scenes are essentially a full stop on a character. Something that succinctly wraps up their involvement in a story generally accompanied by some kind of grand action or offering of last words. They do vary quite greatly but that is your stereotypical death scene. And to examine this with an actual death, let's take Dr. Hiraluk. His death scene featured a grand action by exploding himself and offering of last words with the whole, when does a man die speech? And the whole event was a full stop on everything that was Hiraluk. His story was done and beautifully so. Now, weirdly enough, if we examine Pell, we also hit each and every single one of those beats. His grand action was to save Alibana from Crocodile's bomb. His last words were about being the guardian spirit of Alabasta and he even told Vivi that serving the Nefertari family had been the greatest honor of his life. Then the Falcon heroically exploded, putting a full stop on everything that is Pell. His story was done and beautifully so, except no. That wasn't at all, at all. Because for no justifiable or at least viewable reason, Pell survived this impossible explosion and is alive and well to this very day. And before people do the inevitable, like the common thing, no, it was not because of 9-11. That is an urban legend that has never been proven, but it doesn't really matter because even if it was true, that was not the reason for every other character. Pagaya, his death scene was crowned by the grand action of pushing his daughter out of the way of Enel's deadly strike, an absolutely beautiful display of parental love that ended up amounting to nothing because he survived this death scene as well. Bound, his death scene had the grand action of stopping Charlotte Oven from killing Chiffon and Pez. Bound then had quite an extensive monologue offering both first and last words to Chiffon for the speech that included the following. Let me just say one thing at the end. Congratulations on your wedding. After which point he was struck by Oven and that was the beautiful end of Pound, except, no, no, it wasn't, because he somehow lived and escaped Whole Cake Island all on his own. Bon Clay, of course, had a very similar experience. His death scene also had the grand action of allowing Luffy and the other Impeldown prisoners to escape. In this case, Magellan also invited Bon Clay to quite literally state his last words. After which Bon Clay met his heroic end to the tears of readers and characters alike. Except, not, because that also didn't happen. As in an event that can only be described as somehow, he escaped Magellan and is now the new queen of level 5.5. And that aspect is the most infuriating thing of all. The fact that Oda puts these characters in completely inescapable situations only to reveal that they have miraculously escaped but without an explanation as to how. I think I'm just gonna say it. It's greedy, it's greedy, it's harmful to the experience of the narrative and worst of all, for one of the greatest authors of our generation, it's kinda lazy. Because just as with satisfying death scenes, we also know that Oda is capable of writing great fake death scenes as well. Think of stuff like Nami killing Usopp during Arlong Park or Kiyoshiro killing Komorasaki on Wano. Those fake deaths were wonderfully done and not only do they serve a purpose but they have satisfying explanations for survival. In this case being that the killers were both in on the fake out. Whereas the really frustrating ones like Bon Clay, they are real deaths that sort of end up being fake in retrospect with no explanation whatsoever. And when we encounter this as Cindy Lauper would say, time after time again, we get to a point where we're 1000 chapters into one piece, characters appear to die and it's just completely impossible to believe because Oda has a history of creating gut-wrenching emotional death scenes only to I suppose forget that he's actually killed the character. What's worse though is that in the large majority of cases there's also no real reason to keep the character alive. I like Pel, I like him a lot but he serves no purpose being alive except that to consistently remind us that he should be dead. Why did Oda keep the guy alive? He is like the sideist of the side characters who has no grand purpose going forward. And apart from a kind of fun cover story why did he keep Pound alive? Nothing that happened in that story was worth robbing the character of their crowning moment in the series. Should any one of them had actually died we would remember and treasure them in the same way that we treasure the aces, the Pedro's, the white beards and the going Mary's. And when rereading or rewatching the series we would appreciate the Pel's, the Pagans and the Pagans oh my God, the Pound's and the Pagaias. Whatever they are we would appreciate them more because we know our time with them is limited. Instead of going back on the series encountering them and remembering that any and all drama around them is entirely hollow. This isn't just restricted to general good guys either plenty of villains get these death scenes as well like Bellamy. You may not remember this but there was a scene in chapter 303 where it was heavily implied that Dolph Lamingo used Sarkis to kill Bellamy which at the time was quite a shocking and brutal ending. It really said a lot about Dolph Lamingo that he would kill Bellamy in this public and brutal way except it doesn't because he didn't and he is Bellamy, here he is, very, very alive. Or Dr. Hogback who was supposedly crushed to death by the foot of Oz. There's also Gekko Moria being assassinated by Dolph Lamingo after the paramount war. Or one of my personal favorites, Moscato who was actually killed on Holkeek Island and then I kid you not, literally resurrected. In chapter 829 a rampaging big mother takes Moscato's lifespan resulting in his death. Then in chapter 830 upon examining the body it is literally confirmed that Moscato is indeed dead. After which point Charlotte Bookman wanders over to the like the sole tax collectors and assumedly demands that every last second Moscato's lifespan is returned which apparently works because Moscato returns gloriously in chapter 901 to do nothing, nothing at all. He just stands there. He doesn't even get his own panel and thus ends Moscato's involvement in the series. And I just don't understand why we needed to go that far for a character like Moscato. I remember reading his death and thinking that there could not have been a more perfect introduction to big mom. This was the new world. This was an emperor of the sea. Someone to be deathly afraid of and this was just generally serious business. All of which was immediately like washed away because this is one piece and in one piece even when characters die, they don't die. Oh, and you know who we haven't touched on yet? Igram. This is one of the very first false deaths in the series where he disguises himself hilariously mind you as Princess Vivi, setting out to see only to be blown up. But Igram of course inexplicably survives and not only that, but even without a ship he manages to make Twyla Basta alive and well before the straw hats do. Now, in this particular instance, an argument can be made that Missal Sunday engineered the explosion in a very convoluted way. So it was not to kill Igram because she was secretly working against Crocodile, but that's not the point. The point is that to the readers and watchers this was played as a dramatic death scene that had an impact. And seeing Igram alive goes on to lessen if not outright to completely negate the effect of that scene because it teaches us at a very early stage in the series that there are no consequences. We can quite literally watch a character get blown to pieces and not feel anything because in the end there will be no actual loss. That character, no matter how guaranteed their death may seem, will in fact be fine. And just on that, one of my favorite things ever is that Igram showed up to Alabasta with a single band-aid on his face. So that's all the explosion managed to do to him. One band-aid's worth of damage. And look, it's a personal and stylistic choice by Oda, but in my opinion, it does make his job of conjuring drama and tension so, so much more difficult because it now takes something even greater than the mere threat or even the actual action of death for us to feel anything. Luckily for us, Oda is an extraordinary author and he does make it work regardless. However, with that said, I'm really sick of seeing death scenes for anyone in one piece because they're mostly empty experiences. Whatever feeling they're trying to convey be it fear, sadness, heroism, it doesn't matter. It never matters because it falls flat in the grander context of the series. And to expand upon that a bit further, let's imagine that we're not talking about death scenes for a second because we can apply what Oda does to just about anything like, say, a romance scene. Let's say we have two characters who give in to their passions, we see their relationship take a heated step forward and we experience a good dose of story and character progression. However, if this encounter was treated in the same way that Etcher or Oda treats death, then the very next day, these two characters would act like they've never even met. And we, the audience, would never be given an explanation as to why that relationship doesn't exist anymore. It would be treated as if it never happened and thus negate the entire purpose of having the romance scene to begin with. It would be confusing, annoying, and if it happened more than once, then it would make you skeptical of all romance scenes going forward in the series. Almost as if they only existed as a cheap way to briefly tap into your emotions without having any lasting effect on the story. And that is exactly how I feel about death in one piece. It's not as if I'm some sort of brutal ghoul who just demands more carnage and bloodshed in my fun cartoony pirate manga. I just don't wanna be repeatedly lied to. If you're writing a romance scene, I expect relationship development. If you're writing an exposition scene, then I expect information, information that will be important for the future. And if you're writing a death scene, then I expect, well, I expect some death. It really is kind of the bare minimum that a death scene should provide. And yeah, it might be fun to subvert that expectation every once in a while, but at this point in one piece, my expectations are subverted if a death scene actually ends in someone dying. But what continues to embaffle me is Oda's inconsistency on this matter. Because as much as we like to joke about him being unwilling to kill anyone outside of a flashback, that's also not true. There are plenty of secondary characters like Monet, Virgo, and Absalom who are almost startlingly casually killed. And going right back to the beginning of one piece, Hikama the Bear was very deadified, as was the random bandit who got shot in the head by Lucky Roo. So whether we're talking about the dawn of the series or late stage one piece, Oda has never been afraid to pull the trigger. In fact, I'd say he's quite trigger happy. It's just that a lot of the time he ends up regretting that decision and ends up narratively reviving certain characters, pretending that, oh, they never died. No, that death scene didn't happen. If I had to make a solid argument as to why Oda does the thing that it is Oda does, I'd say it's because he wants to convey a strong message of hope. Within flashbacks, anything goes because tragedy is something that we need to live with. But in the modern day, we need things to shine brightly. So no matter how ridiculous it may seem, our good characters will remain alive sometimes. But I can't help but feel used every time Oda does this. If you don't want these miscellaneous secondary and sometimes even tertiary characters to die, then I have this amazing solution. It's called, don't kill them. Don't give them death scenes and that way they don't have to die. Find another way to generate drama. You are legitimately one of this world's greatest storytellers, you can do it. Because I'm genuinely at the point where I read any death scene outside of a flashback in one piece and I feel nothing, absolutely nothing. I am completely numb no matter what is playing out in front of my eyes because I cannot trust my eyes. Because you see my eyes are really sneaky and they will tell me that X character is dying or dead. But then my mind interjects and goes, yeah, the eyes do have a point. It does indeed look that way. However chances are that character is going to be fine. And so I just ought to awkwardly move on without really taking in or experiencing the intended feeling of the scene. I'm just gonna quickly dip into some manga spoilers here so that I can find, I guess, vent at modern events. So please just skip to this time if you don't want spoilers we will be back shortly with your regularly scheduled whatever this is. But for everyone else, here we go. So the thing that prompted this whole video was chapter 1014 and 1015. Featuring what looks like the deaths of Kandro and Kiku. Kandro in particular annoys me because this isn't even the first time that we've seen him allegedly dead. He was pronounced dead by the scabbards earlier in the raid only to come back. So even ignoring Oda's history of atrocious character revivals, why should any of us believe that he in particular is dead this time either? To be fair, he may very well be. But here's the really bitter aspect of this situation. Even if Kandro and Kiku are dead, they've both been robbed of that impact. Because instead of being in the moment and feeling that loss, we're just sort of sitting here being skeptical and expecting Oda to do what Oda more often than not does. So it's a complete lose-lose situation. Either they are dead and we couldn't truly feel the impact of that moment with them or they're alive and Oda has once again kind of wasted all of our time with false drama. Back out of spoiler land now to put all of this into perspective, I don't know how many of you have been reading or watching long enough to remember the exact week where Ace died. But let me tell you how things went down online. No one believed it. A hole was put in Ace's stomach by Akainu, Ace gave his last words and collapsed on the ground. The chapter was even literally titled The Death of Port Garcia's and still no one believed it. Could not have been a clearer death scene. However, due to our experience with death scenes in one piece, the fan base was extremely cynical. There was even a popular theory that because this chapter was titled The Death of Port Garcia's, then the next one would be titled something along the lines of the birth of Goldie Ace because even that, even that was a more reasonable thought than Oda actually killing someone. And I think to this day, that's why I don't really feel the death of Ace as much as others do because by the time it was confirmed to me, the moment was well and truly gone. It was more of a shock curiosity, like, oh, Oda actually did it rather than a gasp, Ace, he's dead, sort of reaction, you know? And that is the danger of constantly crying wolf with all of these fake out deaths. When you get to a real death, something you want your audience to properly, properly feel, they're just gonna remember the last hundred times you said there was a wolf and its impact will be diminished minimal and in my case, almost entirely retrospective. I will say that when I reread Marineford, I had an entirely different perspective because I knew what was going to happen to Ace. And so I ended up appreciating his scenes a lot more as well as that moment of his death. I just really wish I could have done that when I was reading it week to week as well. The most hilarious of things, however, is that Oda knows this. He understands exactly what he is doing and according to all reports, he's not exactly a fan of it either. For example, in an interview conducted in Shueisha Weekly Playboy in 2007, Oda said the following, revival of a human isn't natural, right? If a mangaka ends up reviving the dead, he shouldn't have killed that character in the first place. I have hated the revival of dead characters ever since I was a kid. It made me doubt a mangaka and I could not agree more with this. If an author kills someone, then they should generally stay dead and if they get revived, then it does make me doubt them. However, Oda then went on to offer his solution to this problem in the exact same interview. My characters don't die even if they are thrown into a desperate situation and by desperate situation, I guess Oda means anything that could cause death, like say a city destroying bomb, maybe just off the top of my head. But honestly, this line basically translates to, my characters don't die even if they die, which I will remind you, we have quite literally seen in one case with the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Charlotte Moscato, minister of Gelato. But here is another insane thing. It's not as if resurrection can't be used well either and Oda knows how to use it well. In one piece, there are very select moments of this, such as the entire concept of Brooke's devil fruit and existence. That is resurrection used amazingly. Or for a less profound example, there was that time on Sky Pier where Enel restarted his own heart. That was really cool and it heightened the terror of facing off against him because this was a man who defied the very idea of death just simply via his devil fruit. Compare that to saying Moscato's resurrection and all of that really does is reinforce the idea that even if you are facing off against the full wrath of an emperor of the sea, there will still be no enduring consequences. And this is in danger of becoming a slight tangent, but just quickly when loud people on the internet claim that Big Mom is something of a joke, I think this act is an underrated contributing factor to that. If Big Mom had permanently killed her own son during this introduction, Charlotte Linlin would probably command a lot more respect than she does. Because I love her, but at times it can seem like Big Mom has all of the power in the world, but her actions never seem to leave any form of lasting impact, which is a very strange dichotomy. Not too dissimilar from this death discussion in general. The death scenes we've spoken about during this video hold a lot of power in the moment, but no lasting impact. And on some level, yes, you do need to respect that. Oda has his own philosophy that he usually sticks to and far be it from some guy thing in Australia to tell him that he's wrong. But in my personal experience, this has done a lot more harm to One Piece than it has good. Just as Oda's thoughts on revival make him doubt the mangaka before him he utilized it, his refusal to kill characters despite giving them highly, highly dramatic death scenes makes me doubt him. I still have overwhelming faith in his, frankly, inhuman ability to create the best story ever told, but it is not 100% faith because each and every time Oda offers me a somber yet delicious tray of death, I just don't believe him. There's only so many times you can give me a bland sour apple and pretend it's a juicy, juicy orange. And there is nothing more immersion breaking than actively refusing what an author is serving you. Thankfully, it doesn't happen often in One Piece. Almost every other area of storytelling is superb and beyond my expectations, but please, please, please stop giving me this one specific horrible, horrible dish. But if you'd like another deliciously prepared video, then do check out this one, examining some of the worst fan takes in One Piece. Very fun, so I look forward to seeing you there.