Friday, September 25, 2020

One Piece: One Piece: 10 Things That Make No Sense About The Wano Country Arc

Delivering in almost every way as one of the best arcs in the series to date, One Piece's Wano Country Arc has offered everything between tears, surprises, and laughs. Wano Country has built so well on the groundwork made before it while continuing to expand on One Piece's already large and wondrous world building.

As grand as the arc has been, fans would be lying to themselves if they called it perfect. Eiichiro Oda has far from batted 1000; and within this arc alone, there have been pacing issues, cringey characters, and loads of deus ex machina. Taking a little objectivity to an arc about dinosaurs, pirates, and feudal Japan, there are a few glaring, logistic issues with the Wano Country Arc.

10 Big Mom Getting Amnesia

As soon as Big Mom got into Wano to exact her revenge on the Straw Hats, she gets into a major accident and suddenly finds herself with amnesia. This not only makes her confused within her strange surroundings but has her revert back to her childhood naivete. This twist was incredibly unnecessary.

It didn't do much besides have Big Mom run through Wano and have the Straw Hats freak out about being next to her. What makes this even more baffling is how quickly her amnesia gets resolved. Taking a page straight out of Tom and Jerry, Queen bonks Big Mom in the head, and she instantly goes back to normal.

9 Onimura Going Unnoticed

Onimura the komagitsune is just another one of Wano's characters that was heavily inspired by Japanese mythology. The faithful companion to one of Wano's fallen daimyo, Onimura has been helping the Nine Red Scabbards by stealing and collecting weapons for decades, often doing so transformed as the massive thief, Gyukimaru.

While exploring Onimura's history and motivations was a fun detour, one has to wonder how he went unnoticed for so long. Onimura has not only been stealing weapons for about as long as Oden's been gone but has also been doing so at the same location, Oihagi Bridge, during that entire time. How did Orochi become aware of an underground rebellion but not what appears to be a frequent assault issue at a high traffic area?

8 Denjiro's Redesign

Denjiro revealing to be one of the Nine Red Scabbards was a massive surprise in more ways than one. It was incredible on his part to have infiltrated Orochi's inner circle as long as he did. However, he was mostly able to do so because of his drastically transformed look, a transformation that can only occur within the mind of someone who doesn't fully understand how human development works.

Somewhere along the line, Denjiro not only changed his hair style and hair color (dying methods aside, this is arguably plausible) but also somehow changed the shape of his eyes. Denjiro is not a master of disguise. Oda just lied to everyone and called it a twist.

7 Kin'emon's Raid Disguises

While Denjiro's redesign has a variety of logistic issues, his fashion issues don't even compare to Kin'emon's. Kin'emon has one of the series' least explained Devil Fruits. By using any small object, such as a rock, leaf, or general paper weight, he is able to temporarily generate new attire. This has typically meant manifesting new clothes in their entirety, such as jackets or suits. His power, however, has taken a wide leap within recent chapters.

Not only can he suddenly use his power via a cheap archway, he was able to disguise the entire allied army within the Animal Kingdom Pirate's gear. Kaido's crew actually doesn't wear much armor and clothing, so the allied army actually lost clothes during the transformation. This is not leaves and rocks shapeshifting into new clothes. This is clothes being taken off of people. Where they went, nobody will ever know.

6 Kin'emon's "Master Plan"

Kin'emon has been one of the most fun, new entries to the story as of late. However, it does seem like he's been getting a much larger role in the series than his character probably deserves. Case in point: Kin'emon is "responsible" for generating the master plan that tricked Orochi and Kaido into sabotaging the wrong raid crew.

This allowed Denjiro and the actual Wano rebels to appear somewhere else. As fortunate as this was, however, this only happened because of how stupid (and lucky) Kin'emon is. Orochi's forces didn't sabotage the wrong forces because Kin'emon tricked them. Kin'emon genuinely misread the raid plans, simultaneously misinforming himself and Orochi.

5 Kanjuro Betraying People Now

Kanjuro revealing to be the traitor was one of the least surprising fan theories to ever be confirmed. Ever since Oden's formative years, he's stuck by the Scabbards as a seemingly loyal companion while feeding Orochi intel the entire time.

While convenient in some cases, it's a little strange seeing Kanjuro just now betraying the allies given that he had plenty of other golden opportunities to sabotage the Scabbards and the Straw Hats. He could've revealed the location of the Straw Hats in Wano, dropped everybody to their deaths during their ascent on Zou, and, perhaps most necessarily, helped the Donquixote Family, Kaido's chief suppliers and brokers, when they were losing their factory and territory.

4 Kozuki Toki

There's still a lot of mystery surrounding Kozuki Toki to this day. Fans still don't know where she came from (though we do know "when" she came from), why she was looking for Wano, and how she ended up drowning in the sea when Oden found her. The fact that she's a time traveler only adds more questions. For this entry, one of those questions regards her family's sake.

Given that she eventually saved the Scabbard's lives by sending them to the future, why didn't she try to do so earlier when Oden was in danger? Not only is that her husband but a pivotal leader for Wano. Honor aside, Wano Country was already deep in Orochi's grasps, and Oden could've done more by being alive than sacrificing himself.

3 Sasaki Getting Captured

This was a strange scene that recently got an even less satisfying explanation. Sasaki is one of Kaido's Flying Six, the elite members of his crew just short of being an All Star. While Sasaki's team was searching for Yamato, Sasaki just happened to be floating around one of Onigashima's gates when Denjiro's band appeared.

Seeing an old friend, Sasaki apparently dropped his guard, allowing Denjiro and his team to capture him and chain him to a tree. While Sasaki's abilities still remain a mystery, how exactly did Denjiro still manage to tie up one of Kaido's strongest members with trickery alone? Did Sasaki just sit there while they menacingly grabbed chains?

2 Anything With Zoro

Zoro's entire involvement in Wano has been some of his best work in the entire series. His stoic manliness is turned up to 11, and he's having sword fights left and right with anyone that happens to have a weapon. The thing that doesn't make sense, though, was his lack of direction during the entire arc.

While the rest of the Straw Hats spent days trying to gather information and supplies, Zoro was apparently just wandering around picking fights with people. Why did the Straw Hats even leave alone this human occupational hazard during one of their most critical infiltration missions?

1 Trusting Luffy

Last but not least, this list reaches the iconic question that will appear in every One Piece arc until the series ends: Why do people trust Luffy? This isn't to say that Luffy is a bad guy or that he hasn't earned his crew's respect. It's just that, as stated above, he has very poor follow through when it comes to plans.

Given that the main mission in Wano required a lot of careful, complex planning, one has to wonder why the allies even bothered telling Luffy the plan. They seemingly planned for him to go off the rails; but when he inevitably did, things still went awry. Several chapters worth of planning and intrigue collapsed in the few seconds it took Luffy to get slightly mad.

About The Author
Share: