like what changes would you make to oda's writing of ace in the manga? i do love reading your op posts xox
Oooh now that’s a loaded question for sure, I gotta try to keep my yapping under some kinda control here so this doesn’t end up a novella of a reply… 🙂↕️🙏 Also I’m glad to hear you’ve enjoyed my posts 🫶 hopefully I manage to post more fic and art stuff as well beside the memes and yapping going forward! xD
Now, if there’s one thing about me it’s that I could go on for hours about Oda’s writing, especially in terms of opportunities missed along the way. It’s pretty clear at this point that Oda’s key strengths as a storyteller and worldbuilder are his creativity and his ability to weave intertextuality, myths, legends and history into a story which feels both unique from other modern writers, but at the same time, is wholly allegorical of the world we currently live in. The big picture and the mythos are Oda’s priorities, and he very much excels at them, but sometimes it’s so painfully obvious what is lacking in One Piece: character writing and development.
I don’t think that Oda’s character development is bad by any means, on the contrary there are plenty of key characters, the straw hats in particular, who feel very developed and real — characters who not only feel like individuals in their own world, but also change and develop in meaningful, believable ways along the journey. My main regret with Ace and the way Oda handled his writing is that his character concept is one of the strongest in the OP world to date; Ace is deeply interwoven into the narrative and myth of One Piece, and he is integral to the very main character of the story and the MC’s character development.
Ace is a very interesting narrative contrast to Luffy: Luffy toils single-mindedly towards his goals while not being all that cognizant of the narrative and events around him (let alone away from him), but Ace, on the other hand, is kind of the opposite. Ace is all too aware of the narrative and his role within it, his position as the pirate king’s son. Ace doesn’t fight for his dreams like Luffy does, nor does he seem to even truly dare dream of his own goals outside of what he simply adopts from the ones he loves (he got the idea of surpassing Roger from Luffy, then decided to make Whitebeard the king of the pirates after he became a father figure to Ace). But with this key contrast in mind, it feels like a waste of potential to throw Ace away as a sort of mirror image, a shadow of Luffy, as though he represents the weakness Luffy must overcome instead of being possibly Luffy’s greatest strength; his brother, his idol, his mirror to reflect upon himself.
Ace had so much potential as a character, and he clearly had potential for growth and healing, because we already saw some of it in the few glimpses we got of Ace throughout the pre-timeskip storyline! I also feel that there is so much more Oda could have done with Luffy and Ace as two sides of the same coin, and that dichotomy could have been made even stronger by omitting Sabo from the story, since as it stands, Sabo does somewhat feel like a replacement for Ace, and adding him also took away from Luffy’s loss of Ace, because hey, at least he still has his other brother, and since Sabo has Ace’s DF, Ace in a way still lives on in Sabo. If Oda was going to go for the tragic wake up call for Luffy in Marineford, he should have gone all the way; no more Ace, no Sabo, and the Flame-Flame fruit ends up in enemy hands to boot. Not only did Oda introduce Ace as one of the most important characters and one of the chars with the most potential for change, growth and adding very different things to the narratice compared to Luffy, only to throw him away with barely any screentime, but he also, frankly, lacked the backbone to make the loss of Ace truly devastating and life-altering to Luffy.
Not only did Ace’s death feel like a waste of potential, it’s also one of the oldest, most tiresome tropes in the book. Let’s introduce a family member or lover of the main character and use their death for the MC’s character development! Let’s also make sure to give the dead loved one as little screentime and character development outside of their relationship to the MC as possible to make this loss feel totally tragic and devastating for the reader as well! Again, maybe Ace’s death would feel more intentional if there was more time in the narrative to actually get to know him, to see him interact with Luffy, with the WB pirates, etc. Sure, it’s Luffy’s story, and sure, Ace’s death is sort of supposed to feel abrupt, unjust and like a waste; but these ideas can still apply while giving Ace a more prominent role in the pre-TS story, tbh!
Some concrete ways of doing this could be to change the backstory from Luffy and Ace’s childhood by either excluding Sabo altogether or by expanding on the periods of time when it was just Ace and Luffy. Also, the backstory shoulda taken place either in Impel Down or even earlier, not in Marineford just as Ace is about to die. That narrative positioning undermines the emotional impact of both the death itself as well as the whole Impel Down and Marineford arc up until that point, because all of that buildup would feel much more emotional if we knew more about Ace and his relationship to Luffy before Luffy even steps foot inside Impel Down, imo.
Another missed opportunity is, of course, Alabasta! Ace was already there, and he already wanted to see and catch up with Luffy, even if it meant falling a bit behind on his chase after BB. Ace was in an emotionally turbulent state due to BB’s betrayal, which could have been a prime opportunity to have more interaction between him and Luffy, possibly the other straw hats, and to see Ace more vulnerable and Luffy more emotionally in-tune. Even if Ace didn’t tag along much longer than that in Alabasta, it’s also possible he could have picked up BB’s trail quickly and ended up in Jaya, meeting the straw hats again along the way.
I’m not sure how many more opportunities for more Ace there are in pre-timeskip considering how hellbent Ace was on finding BB on his own, though perhaps Luffy and the straw hats could have offered to help him, for example. The biggest change I personally would make with Ace would definitely be to not have him die at Marineford, which would open up countless possibilities for his character arc post-TS. Ace being tied to Roger by blood but not by ideals, and Luffy being opposite, would have been such an interesting dynamic as we’ve learned more about the Roger Pirates and as Luffy’s powers have grown. Ace having to contend with Whitebeard’s death and survivor’s guilt from Marineford would also be interesting and poignant; we could see Ace hit rock bottom mentally and claw his way back up, enbodying that superhuman tenacity that Luffy has. I think this would be 100x more engaging and inspiring, especially for the millions and millions of us struggling with mental health issues irl, who see a bit of ourselves in Ace, than what Oda decided to give us. The narrative Oda created around Ace and his death can also be seen to suggest that Ace died in part because of a lack of self-value and tenacity, a lack of dreams and the will to achieve them, a lack of emotional regulation around a traumatic event, all of which are just…. Incredibly dangerous and unempathetic ideas to imply about a traumatized, mentally ill character.
I really could go on and on about Ace, but these are some of the main thoughts I’ve mulled over time and again 😮💨 hopefully this came out at least somewhat concise and clear 😅✌️
