I think powerscaling only really gets toxic when people put it above everything else in the story. I've seen people arguing that "Luffy can't fight Blackbeard, because he already beat Kaido, who is above Blackbeard" or "Luffy won't fight Akainu, because Akainu is only as strong as an Admiral, and Luffy is stronger than an Admiral". Powerscaling is an important element in the story, this is a Battle Shonen after all, but it isn't the only important element. Ignoring stuff like the characters' personal rivalries or the symbolism of the story, which are elements that are just as important, just for the sake of powerscaling really makes no sense to me.
Yeah that's the key issue and what i refer to when i call a power scaler a meathead lol. They aren't thinking story, they're just thinking rankings and matchups but those rankings and matchups are so very influenced by said story. Especially in a series with power systems with so many variables beyond "who can destroy the bigger mountain" or whatever like one piece has
One Piece is flexible with that even: Enel is very strong for the point in the story he appears in but Luffy counters him, Foxy is only able to give Luffy some trouble because Luffy is dumb and gullible. Also yeah with someone like Akainu who is poised to be set and endgame opponent, either the difficulty Luffy would have against him is that either Akainu has an Ace up his sleeve or unlike a battle with Kaido that was more of a team effort, it will be a solo 1v1 for Luffy.
No it doesn’t get toxic till you see ppl saying that Luffy is stronger than other characters that you know he has no business going against. Or when they act like haki is the end all be all
Yea I thought most people felt like this. Powerscaling definitely does matter but there's a Lotta loud people that just bend over backwards to justify or downplay certain feats. Like chill people oda is very much thinking about powerscaling like morj said but not to the needle point degree that some people try and do.
Oda's power scaling is narrative based and fan powerscaling is most often feat/portrayal based. I think the idea that Oda doesn't care about power scaling is mostly from people obsessing over things like not showing Tobi Ropo and commanders using haki, despite it should be narratively obvious they can.
That’s the problem. Commanders and Toppi Ropo should have it, but it’s not shown. You say it’s narratively base which is true, but think about the Kaido fight. It was clear that Luffy couldn’t beat a fully healthy Kaido one on one. That’s why it was multiple fighters against him to take him down
All the tobi roppo have the 2 basic haki types observation and armament. The all stars have it too. This was confirmed in SBS lol and there was 1 panel of Quwen using armament on his arm
@@nicholasalexander9866 You compared 2 completely different things. The tobi roppo can use basic haki that is confirmed. Most people can its not a big deal this late in the story lol
Not everytime are characters drawn using Haki, but they are clearly using it. For example Bastille v Sabo. Bastille is a skilled Vice-- who are all confirmed Haki users. If he wasn’t using Haki, Sabo would simply take the blows, but he doesn’t so we can assume he is. I think OP fans get too bent out of shape over the appearance of Haki.
@@nicholasalexander9866 that's another problem that comes from a narrowminded vision we tend to have. Just because a character has or can use an ability it doesn't mean he will use it like others because he fights and relies on different things. The most common thing I hear is "the rest of the strawhats should have haki or they will fall behind or won't make sense". It's just that they rely on other things and they don't need it. For example, king does not use his hybrid form because as a lunarian he has everything he needs. Big mom, despite having conqueror coating, she barely uses it, zoro as a swordsman relies 100% on armament haki while sanji uses it as a way to just withstand hotter flames, luffy relies on adv armament to do internal damage while jimbei relies more on fishmen karate that also does internal damage, etc... It gives characters variaty and uniqueness imo
In my view, the reason i like how Oda handles it compared to other manga is that he showed us what the top echelon looked like pretty early on and has kept that the level to aspire ever since. The second Whitebeard and Shanks split the sky, he was telling us what it would take and almost a thousand chapters later that is still the case seeing Roger v Whitebeard in that flashback and against Kaido. Just elaborated more on HOW they're performing the feat. Its not a matter of "Luffy gets x power up so every future antagonist strength has to scale" it's "yeah Luffy got a big bounty boost but he's still a wee lad with all these MONSTERS running around, but this'll be what he has to reach eventually" and i like that structure more.
Agreed! Usually in manga they often change the scope until it breaks the logic that was once established. It's consistent. Unlike many shounen who keep moving the goal post. Freiza was the Strongest, at the beginning of Z, and by then end, he's a joke, and not even top 20 in the universe. From very Early on we knew Mihawk was the strongest Swordsman, then we learned Shanks is comparable to that. Then we met Whitebeard and the Aokiji. The rules and power balance of the one piece verse have remained consistent. So each time a character gets stronger it means even more and changes their dynamic.
Heck after 1000 chapters, Luffy still wasn't at that level. It took 15 days training + 30 minutes of Skull dome fighting to get to that level. Oda still had to rush Luffys growth somewhat by craming it into one arc. Therein lies what makes OP great in powerscalling: TIME. Oda never rushed to make Luffy powerful ASAP. That made for a more consistent power scale journey. That allowed for 1 arc where Luffy could be crowned Yonko, once a big chunk of the story had been told. But this 1 arc rushed things, hence why people complain about Wanos bloated nature. Where too many big developments happened at once and some plot points weren't explored fully as a result (Zoro family stuff for example).
@@daddy_1453 yeah can understand that feeling, though despite my gripes with later act 3, Luffy's growth strength wasn't really one for me though i can understand why some are like "slow your roll there toon boi" lol
I think what many mistake for “not caring about powerscaling” is the idea that being stronger or having certain hyped abilities isn’t an insta-win in all cases.
Yeah, and the general idea that powerscalers generalize fucking everything. Its seriously tiring to debate with people about it. What truly is meant by “powerscaling doesnt matter” is that oda can and will (and has) make or made powerscaling irrelevant. “Luffy is ftl because he dodged a laser.” ….no! Shut the fuck up!
@- SageAegis - I mean most people dont fully understand the power system there is more than 1 or 2 power systems in one piece there is like 6 and the main 2 have not even been full explained so yea.
I think what people miss is that powerscaling can also enhance certain character moments. An easy example would be Momo from just last chapter. For it to make sense you have to understand how strong the admirals actually are in comparison to everyone else to show how desperate the situation is. But you also have to understand that Luffy and a few good men could easily deal with the threat. Both of these things come together and makes Momo's dialogue more impactful as he chooses not to take the easy route.
powerscaling is probably one of the most important things to establish in any series, especially a shonen series; yet people still act like the author can freely do what they want with no regards to consistency
Characters are as strong or weak as they need to be in the current story. The only consistency needed is you can't have someone like Nami who all of the sudden can stand up to Greenbull.
@@robertsommers3540 no good writers create clear and precise rules for their fictional worlds that they consistently abide by. Power amongst characters is one of them... Otherwise you get trash like fairy tail
Power scaling isn't the problem it's the parameters that people use to power scale. They believe X beat Y and Y beat Z therefore X can beat Z when fights in OP are a touch more complicated. It's also the terms that people use like Yonko commander 1 2 3 and use that as a pure base
Because I think your mindset is one of reason why powerscalling could be toxic, the fact that people won't accept that yc 1 is stronger than yc 2 & 3 it's quite a trigger for toxicity.
I’d argue fights in OP are pretty simple tbh. There’s barely any strategy or tactics, characters rarely train moves, most moves are just variations of a punch or body slam.
I've been seeing so many people on Reddit and Twitter slating powerscalers lately (saying they ruin the series by match ups between characters and factions). I feel like this video came out at the perfect time. In the same way people compare the likes of Tyson vs Ali, Messi vs Ronaldo, Naruto vs Sasuke etc. the same can be applied with a shonen anime like One Piece. There's no issue in that. It's human nature to compare the best vs the best. I guess the issue lies in how far people take it sometimes and how toxic debates can get.
Messi and Ronaldo aren't a good example. They don't even play the same position. Pure ability doesn't matter in a team game which is why certain players have specific roles for the teams they play. The context of team games cannot be simply power scaled. It can not be so easily translatable to simple power scaling for things such as Naruto vs Sasuke or Tyson v Ali.
@@antonioemilio9932 That doesn't change the fact that people have been comparing them for the past 15 years for the simple reason that they have been the best of our era (and arguably all time). Besides, they both operate as attacking players and goal-wise, are very comparable. Your point on specific roles for the team is valid but at the end of the day, people will compare them anyway, no matter the system. That was my point.
Everyone just brings out the Stan Lee quote about whoever wins is whoever the writer wants, when like... that's obvious? Almost everyone debating which character would win understands that, it's just that it's fun as its own pursuit to consider the hypothetical situation and see what conclusions we can draw based off the evidence in the story.
People who denounce power scaling in OP only do it because it exposes flaws and inconsistencies. If your story resolves problems with physical conflict, then power levels and power systems are a part of your plot structure. A contradiction in the power scale is a contradiction in the story plot; that's why it's important.
I think the issue comes into play when we consider the degrees of power-scaling communicated to us. Keen readers were quick to see that Doflamingo was roughly equivalent to a yonkou commander, he was afraid of being pressed between Kaido and the Admirals yet clearly fought/tested two admirals on two separate occasions. Yet it appears he would have never thought to do the same thing to Kaido. This established a non-confirmed power-scaling of yonkou > admirals > commanders, but Oda didn't out right say "Yonkou > Admirals > Commanders". If someone says "because Oda didn't explicitly say it, therefore it's head cannon" would that be correct? No, its a grey-area in between that is based on observation and interpretation, a good hypothesis. Saying Don Krieg can defeat Mihawk would be bad head cannon as opposed to a good hypothesis, because even assuming Oda didn't directly say that Mihawk will win, the evidence suggests that Mihawk would. Consistency is key with these discussions but these arguments are not just made with logic but with feelings. If I really like Marco for example, do I want to say that he's like trash compared to green bull? Probably not, even if Green Bull in story says the opposite of commanders and quite literally stomps on King and Queen whom Marco had difficulty holding back.
The problem is the majority of people have favorites but cant or try to not connect other dots together..the reason why doflamingo wasnt afraid to go against an admiral is fujitora affiliated with the world government..yeah kaido is also ..but fujitora cant attack him and kill him because it would have been a treachery at that time ..kaido wont show him mercy and can do whatever he wants..that is why he is afraid of him
Oh yeah consistency definitely key. That said, Green Bull likely isn't that much stronger than Marco, if at all, because he was beating up a King and Queen who had recently been severely injured by Zoro and Sanji respectively. At their full strength, I doubt that it would have been that easy.
@@matthewchamberlain2953 marco never damaged a admiral greenbull is a admiral. if greenbull is on the same lvl as kizaru akainu and aokiji then he is way stronger than marco and other first commanders. and greenbull himself said that an admiral should able to beat commanders with ease
@@yamsbeans IDK. You may have an argument about other 1st commanders, but Whitebeard's crew is on another level from the other Yonkou. Marco, as you said before, was able to go toe-to-toe with two other commanders, including another 1st commander, for quite a while. That likely means he's a fair bit stronger than either of them, but not strong enough to beat both at the same time. The reality is that we don't know how strong each admiral is relative to the Yonkou, especially not the new ones, and this isn't a good moment to powerscale Green Bull, since neither King nor Queen were in good condition. King is almost certainly weaker than an admiral, even in good condition, but Marco could be in a similar tier to an admiral.
Pffft, Doffy knew Aokiji and Fujitora aren't aggressive individuals. He had an implicit agreement with Aokiji, and a stated one with Fujitora. The difference with Kaido is that he's a bloodthirsty maniac.
I'm so tired of many people giving bs argument like "you shouldn't have hold any expectations at all" like bruh, expectations is so basic in reading or watching any story. Ofc, some go wild with expectations and get disappointed. But reader does not have to have 0 expectations.
@@nonyabusiness366 What's wrong with being disappointed at something u personally want to see not happening? Ofc people can go too far with it calling Oda a bad writer or whatever but it's just a personal opnion in the end.
@@nonyabusiness366 You are the embodiment of the One Piece fandom's cancer. That comment gives me aids jesus. A disgrace to the craft of narrative writing. Its like a chef feeding you sht and you think its abnormal to complain and moan about the disservice. "Doesn't match-up with their headcanon" more like *Doesn't lived up to the expectations the author established.* Its like headcanon is losing its meaning now with how much its overused in the community. My ghad.
@@Steamedhams578 I think when expectations are set to high when it gets annoying, like Zoro fighting kaido. Like never in the story has oda let Zoro finish the main bad guy, Team ups yes, but never the finishing blow. That could change but it's not now.
I've always thought that those little "inconsistentes" or "plot armors" (more or less) are because Oda is trying to point out that even if some of the characters are not in the same level as an enemy, they can still fight and actually have a chance to win some "seemingly impossible battles" (maybe using other strategies, intelligence, being helped by others, even by luck or whatever it is, as long as it doesn't involve sheer strength alone), kinda like a "David vs Goliat" situation. Crocodile was fairly dangerous when Luffy beat him (he seemed to rely too much on his DF, ok, but still - he had many "plans B" too and those didn't work either...). Lucci WAS stronger than Luffy, but Luffy won thanks to his well-thought gears AND the power of friendship (or his incredible will, you call it -though it required that he became stronger, I know). Usopp didn't really win against Luffy, but HELL, his attacks made him look like he at least had some chance if he worked hard and planed every hit... Zoro was stronger than Buggy, but Zoro didn't know about his ability, so he let his guard down and Buggy stabbed him, etc. There are other examples like those, and I think they're glorious, ad they portray that, no matter how "weak" your enemy is, you should NEVER underestimate them, or else.... Many OP villains also were reaaally mistaken in believing "a weakling/rookie like Luffy" couldn't stand a chance against then, only to be proven wrong... so I always believed Oda wanted to show that even if strengh AND power-scaling are important and well organized in his story, anyone can have a chance if he works hard for it :)
I think it’s better to say that a lot of characters in fiction can be armed with Rocket launchers while being more fragile, while Sabo beat Burgess, I imagine if Burgess got clean hits in, he could easily kill Sabo. It’s not like Dragon Ball were basically you can become so strong you can shrug off hits. Big Mom and Kaido seem to be the exceptions and part of why they are so strong.
Luffy literally surpassed Lucci during their fight. That was the whole point of the fight. Climbing up the powerscale rank through battles for the main character. Luffy vs Ussop is interesting since it refutes the very point you make. Even Luffy states that despite his shiny moves, Ussop should have known that he stood no chance. And while DF mattered a lot during the early stages of one piece, with the introduction of Haki, the powerscale has been set in place and it was ALWAYS meant to head in this direction.
Define stronger in zoro is stronger than buggy. If it means that zoro is more capable than buggy then yea. If you mean that zoro could beat buggy 1v1 then probably not. This is a guy who was turned to actual shreds by mihawk's blacksword and it left nothing. Buggys fruit for swordsmen is an absolute nightmare
I love powerscaling, I absolutely hate talking about powerscaling because everyone thinks there right - whether it's the scaling itself or the pressence of powerscaling or the fact there's a discussion at all - and it ends with debates that just go around in circles
I don't think this was actually the problem. It is perfectly clear that Oda loves power scaling within organizations, the problem is when you compare organization to each other. That's when power scaling gets kind of iffy and it feels most inconsistent. Most obvious example that comes to mind is Crocodile. Beaten by pre Gear 2 Luffy, but then shown to attack Whitebeard head on. That makes it impossible to determine if he is stronger than say Moria, for example. I remember a previous Morj video talking about the Sanji/Zoro comparison, where Oda sometimes presents Zoro as being on par with Sanji, and other times on par with Luffy, even when Sanji and Luffy have never been shown to be close in strength. So I'm not saying power scaling doesn't matter, but we have to admit that it tends to take a back seat to other aspects in the story.
I honestly think that wits, luck, and determination play an important role in One Piece power scaling and battles. Luffy was a BEAST the moment he left Fūsha village. He oneshot a huge sea monster just like that. Imagine what kind of a human you have to be to be able to take MULTIPLE punches like that. Crocodile took many, as did Enel. Luffy's surely grown, but I'd say that if Luffy was like lvl 1 when he was a kid, he jumped to level 1000 when he left Fūsha, and now he is closer to 3000. This means that the initial jump in power from child Luffy to the Luffy who first left Fūsha was huge, and people underestimate it. Pre gear 2 Luffy was far from a joke, he was a damn undefeated monster all the way until, well, Crocodile. Ok, Smoker basically defeated Luffy before that, but Luffy was technically undefeated until Crocodile, who defeated and almost killed Luffy TWICE before being taken down on their third bout. Just because he lost to Luffy does not mean he is weak, it means people underestimate Luffy, just like they did for a long time in the story.
I honestly think Crocodile was weaker in arabasta than impel down because he had his spirit crushed from losing to Whitebeard, same for Moria vs. Kaido. this is an adequate explanation of why they don't use haki, haki is the manifestation of the will, they had no will to be strong by their own means and were looking for other ways to become strong, they also grew up with their encounter with luffy. (whether or not oda planned before introducing haki) About your other point, if oda presents luffy and zoro as almost equal for being captain and vice captain and also sanji and zoro as almost equal for rivalry (zoro is stronger by a bit) that immediately implies that luffy and sanji are almost equal even though they relationship is not about stregth, their relationship has to do with the love for food, also other aspects of sanji are highlighted, like his cunning, (that luffy and zoro don't have) anyway, that's why they are the monstrous trio.
It's just that some inconsistencies r unavoidable when a series goes for over 25 years......then also I'll say Oda does a very good job keeping it together....I mostly take crocodile as that kind of slight inconsistency, but also you can justify crocodile by considering how crafty and well connected he was despite having a situationally working logia, also for the same 'long running' issue we can clearly see that some warlords r different power-level than others. Most of the time it comes to their whole crew than that person.....after all readers has to consider that it's a story, not a math project.
@@Minisynapse Oh, I'm with you: I agree that Luffy was a monster since the very beginning of the story. However, I'm fairly sure we can also agree that he would never have been able to beat something like Mihawk or Doflamingo back then. But he did beat Crocodile. And then in Marineford, Crocodile was seen clashing with Mihawk and Doflamingo. Just to be clear, I don't think admitting these inconsistencies is trashing Oda or something like that; if anything it's amazing that in a 1000+ chapter manga, so few of those inconsistencies occur. But when they do happen, we shouldn't try to bend over backwards trying to find justifications. Crocodile was introduced too early and it created small holes; it's fine.
Honestly this is why i still loved Wano even if it was flawed. It feels so regarding to me to see Luffy and the Straw Hats finally at this stage, fighting yonkos and commanders. We've waited so long for this, it's kinda crazy to think we're at this stage of the story
I don't know if I'm missing something here. I've never been in a power scaling discussion that dismises power hierarchies or states that power hierarchy=power scaling. The discussion is usually about the power creep related to the power scaling. For example, according to what we've seen, crocodile would have been a non threat at marineford since he was beaten by a pre gears luffy, however, narratively it would be fine. Also, being powerful most of the time doesn't give you immunity o lower threats, like a stab wound (kaido and big mom are just freaks like that). What I wouldn't like to see in one piece is that luffy gets so powerful that an event like what happened in logue town couldn't happen again. Most of the cast should be vulnerable when their guard is down even if they're the most powerful person in the planet. I hope my point came across, english isn't my native language and I'm figthing my automatic dictionary and typing on a lousy phone, so I'm done for the moment.
i like how you describe the whole definition of powerscaling cus as we read forward into the story, in the final battle we need to know who would not apt to be in the battle n who will. its a big tournament afterall, n now we are finally going into the route of the final race that will declare the "King" n thats the reason what doflamingo said is important.
Without power levels, your story is basically a Saturday morning cartoon where one episode could have the big bad be the biggest threat imaginable, and the next episode could have him be a man baby sucking on his thumb. So yeah, power levels are good actually if you're trying to tell a story with stakes where there are discrepancies in power.
I guess I never understood what power scaling actually means. Before this video I thought it was the discussion around which character can win in a fight against another character. However it being a narrative tool for world building is definitely awesome.
there are two kinds of powerscaling, you were right about both, th one one piece fans complain about is the discussion around which character win not the narrative tool, something morj didn't understand
That's what it is about. This is from a narrative standpoint and how Oda would use power scaling but when people mention power scaling in general they're talking about feats and statements
In the same vein i think it's ridiculous when people say that bounties aren't an important metric. While they don't reflect actual strength (it's even stated in the series) Oda definetly uses bounties to hype characters up. That's why it was so menacing and exciting when Jack showed up with a 1 Billion bounty
When I think of hyping up and creating excitement with a 1B bounty I think of katakuri personally, but then thinking jack was the weakest of the three commanders and katakuri was the strongest made its own kind of tension
It just doesn’t make sense for an individual yonko to beat an individual admiral. If shanks can beat an admiral and can GET INTO A GOROSEI MEETING why doesn’t he corner a celestial dragon, get them to call an admiral while not telling them he’s there, and- with his entire crew no less- take out 1 out of what, 5 or so (?) people that keep the WG in power? Then systematically repeat until there’s nothing left to take him down. Is there ANYTHING more worthwhile to ANY of the yonko than taking down the world fucking government? Why would he bet his arm on luffy in the East blue if under the right circumstances, his full strength could bring the dawn of the world? Did Roger tell him that whatever was at god valley or laughtale showed him that IM, the gorosei, or fucking Kong were so strong he couldn’t beat them? Do they have the ancient weapon we don’t know about and choose to just send out buster calls? What does the dawn of the world even mean if it’s not the fall of the world government, and what protects the world government if it’s not what they have explicitly refered to- the admirals- for over 600 chapters? Why does big mom care about having the giant army, kaido care about mass producing an army of gifters, or Blackbeard care about stealing powerful devil fruits? Why when big mom and kaido ally do they give a single thought towards ancient weapons when apparently if they and 6 commanders can fly up to marejois before +3 admirals get there can get RID OF THE CELESTIAL DRAGONS! The question is not yonko vs admirals, it’s: does the world government let the yonko exist to crush piracy in the new world, or do the yonko let THE WORLD GOVERNMENT have control over EVERYTHING ELSE! The admirals would have to travel in 2’s in order protect themselves from potential yonko attacks, and the celestial dragons would essentially be imprisoned in marejois. I mean, what are they going to do to protect themselves if they ever want to leave, call an admiral? Not to mention the disinfo around marineford. Here’s a pro analyzation tip: When whitebeard sacrificed a quarter of his head, he got a hit on akainu that made him start bleeding. Whenever akainu hit whitebeard, a hole appeared. When the haki using commander made of DIAMOND hit aokiji, he was startled. When aokiji hit him, his arm fell off. Kizaru not only could’ve ended the war if he aimed his lasers between the eyes of almost everyone he was fighting, but was only ever stalled because there was someone there who could REVIVE HIMSELF! Not take no damage, not fight equally, but continue annoying him even though half of the attacks kizaru landed SHOULD have killed him. It just isn’t close.
@@maicolsebastianengstromele5260 That's obviously not true. The reason shanks can't just roll up on the marines and take out admirals is that it would weaken his crew to much and expose him to counterattacks from the other yonkou and he obviously wouldn't be allowed to just walk in like that after the learned he was a danger, they let him do that because they know he is a chill person. It's very clear from the story that on average the admirals are weaker than yonkou. If the admirals really are stronger than yonkou they would've easily stopped a sick and dying whitebeard instead of struggling like they did.
You didn't think this out at all. You didn't even use any logic feats or even the narrative you made a what if situation to leverage your argument making it look better. If you have to make what if scenarios then your take is wrong to begin with that's what 12 yr olds try to do. One admiral isn't taking on a yonko hate to break it too the whole community laughs at your reasoning. If you reply use your brain next time
The thing about powerscaling is yes it is something that is part of storytelling, especially for the Shonen genre where escalation of strength is a common trope. The issue is when people dissect the story, and comes to their own conclusions on where characters stack up with one another. A good example is with Zoro in general where various groups of fans have him at varying degrees of strength. With the varying degrees comes arguments, and general toxicity. Toxicity is the main thing that makes powerscaling discussions so alienating. Instead of people heading towards a civil discussion that may or may not persuade people, now it just drives people away from this facet of literary analysis. It's in this running away, where either people's beliefs gets reinforced, or they may just view powerscaling as pointless; both degrees are equally as bad. What makes matter worse is that there is no clear solution to solve this dilemma, since fan discussion will always be alienating to at least a fraction of people.
Power scalling is just back and forth argument based on the current evidence. Now those who believed that yonko is always stronger than admirals will be strongly convinced after reading chapter 1055. Maybe in the near future those who believed that they are equal will protest if oda presented an evidence that they are more or less comparable. It's about who gives the impression who is on the stronger or weaker side. What people see is what they believe afterall. When Kizaru looking afraid of Ben Beckman, that is what people see on the surface others will argue that Kizaru is just being sarcastic. It's about who can present the best argument who will win in the power scalling discussion.
Admirals have never been as strong as yonko. Theres a ton of evidence to support this by the fact that the myth was born from how well akainu did against whitebeard. white beard was living on life support and he lacked all 3 types of haki wich i think oda did deliberatly. it was shown he lacked observation haki when he was stabbed through the back by squard, it was shown he lacked armament haki when his attack when right through aokiji without damaging him and it showed that he completely lacked advanced conquerers when the attack from his glaive wasnt a 1 shot kill against blackbeard who was much weaker at the time and also the fact he relied primarily on his devil fruit to do damage. If whitebeard had advanced observation haki and advanced conquerers haki there is not question he would have 1 shotted akainu. This is why the world goverment concidered the alliance between big mom and kaido a huge threat because they know the admirals cant take on 2 yonko at the same time. when it comes to yonko vs admirals I believe it takes 3 admirals to take on a yonko and even then its a coin toss as to who wins.
@@n1h1luss61 what kizaru "straight-up ignored" is the command to kill dragon's son. Kizaru took his time to acknowledge Ben and put his arms up then proceed to attack when Beckmann rejoin his crew down.
@@milordd.7310 didn’t Kizaru attack while Ben was there? Haven’t watched the anime in a while so maybe it’s different but in the manga Ben was still with Kizaru when he went to attack luffy.
@@milordd.7310 Kizaru ignored him and attacked anyway he was trolling. Oda said Akainu could get the one piece in a year in a Q&A so he'd have to be stronger than yonko. Kizaru was also comfortable going to wano knowing who was there. I think people just like the yonko cause the hype has been there from the start
a wonderful breakdown of the balance of powers! you should link your video about the grandline being a survival tournament in the video description as this is the logical extension of this video
It's not necessarily that power scaling is unimportant, I think it's just when it starts dominating the discussion that it becomes annoying. Power scaling is a really small facet of what makes OP amazing and seeing the dialogue just boil down to Character A > Character B just feels very reductive and like it's not appreciating everything OP is achieving narratively. It's honestly why you're one of the only OP channels I follow. But that's less of a critique of OP more on the community. I just try to accept that OP appeals to different people for different reasons and there's nothing wrong with that.
@@16m49x3 its not all about interest tho like even if your interested in one thing more than the other that does not mean you should just disregard the other.
End of the day All battles ends with the best interest of the storyline no matter who’s stronger if the story needs you to lose or win you’ll do so and Oda has the wheel
I never understood that argument either. If it would not be okay with you for Chopper to wipe the floor with Whitebeard in his prime, then you care about power-scaling. If it would not be okay for you for a child in a realistic story with no fighting skill to beat a Navy Seal in his prime, then you care about power-scaling. Now, attempting to reduce it all down to essentially numbers and tiers is a problem, but Power scaling is important. A victory needs to make sense. Which is why Oda said that he couldn’t just have Luffy beat Kaido with a really strong punch (although it could be argued that that’s exactly what he did, but I would argue that it wasn’t just a strong punch, it was the biggest punch in the series combined with the most unique gear form thus far, advanced conqueror’s haki, and armament haki, but I digress lol)
Additional:- Characters that People sleep on : 1. Doffys power level and his capabilities. - Dude literally stoped and control 2nd most powerful Yonku commander Diamond Jozu with ease. This man can throw mountain size ice block towards Sakazuki, this dude can’t free himself. Diamond Jozu > Queen or Rob Lucci. - Literally Cut Ozjr Leg like piece of cake while whole Straw-hats crew were struggling to beat one. Ozjr is definitely vice admiral level characters or around flying six level. Dude can chop off legs and arms. - Controlled whole island; people in it as a puppet to kill each other, use bird cage to trap everyone. - Two of top tier worst generation had to go against him and one even managed to gama knife him completely destroying from inside and yet was fighting with Gear 4th luffy with using awakening DF. This shows his stamina, endurance level is even better than Katakuri. I highly doubt Katakuri would tank gama knife and many more laws attack and yet be able to fight luffy in G4 and using awakening to continue fight. People even say like Doffy is weaker than cracker. Doffy wont be defeated as easy as cracker. - Was ready to go against Fuji and Aokiji. Dude probably wont beat admirals cause they have advanced hakis and awakening. Doffy is borderline Admirals level i.e 1YC level. 2. Jinbei: - Jinbei has literally shown us his feat 5days worth battle experience against 2YC level character. - Was easily oneshoting Vice admiral even before he was warlord. - Has internal body mess up attack works like ryu. His Haki and Raw power: - Survived Sakazuki trade mark make a hole punch, blocked most powerful admiral attack and saved luffy. - Blocked Yonku attack and kicked her out of sunny saving everyone. - Has haki strong enough to overpower WW shigam haki fingers and broken his fingers. - Has karate move to break WW arms. - Can tank top F6 member most powerful attack in face. This dude is beating any 2YC level characters. 3. Zoro: Zoro has been showing top tier feats all over wano and pre timeskip. Sanjitard who doesn’t have such feat for sanji assume,” if zoro has this and that sanji has it too.. bla..bla, if zoro can tank hakai sanji can tank hakai and all. Poor fellows need rest. Oda has always treated Luffy-Zoro separately as compared to other shp or worst gen. With advanced Haki; armament and kings dude is soloing new admirals. 4. Mihawk: Dude is the only person after swordgod ryuma to be able to make sword go permanent black feat jot even roger, oden , shanks has. Shanks might be master of king haki similar mihawk might be master of armament haki. 6. Sakazuki. Oda himself said like Sakazuki if was MC he would fight OP in year. Meanwhile kaido, bm were unable after all this year and shanks just waited perfect timing when kaido and Bm are gone. Yonku might have advanced kings haki advance in fight but Sakazuki DF is krypton for all kind of advanced. Unless they use barto as susano lol. 7. Jack: Dude fought with dog-cat for whole day and night without break and still they didn’t manage to beat him that explains his stamina, endurance, haki, raw power. People sleep on him, i dont know what queen has to be above jack, may be lasser and germa tech. 8. Crocodile: Dude was introduced when op was plan only for 5years? Marineford crocodile shows lots of potential. Dude has awakening DF can suck everyone, survive marineford, he is definitely Yonku commander level. 9. Enel: Just because he doesn’t know haki and has weakass raw power doesn’t make him and his df weak. Dude can solo most of 2YC level characters, if he is not playing around. 10. Pika: Pika is another character who was made weak cause Zoro completely destroyed him. But dude borderline 3YC level. Similar level or above Capon gang beg.
Meanwhile Momo, with minimal training, was able to release an attack that can damage an Admiral + his haki, but also 5 seconds ago he could barely light a stick on fire. Make it make sense
Amazing video as always Morj. People have to accept OP is still an action based manga. Powerscalling will always be a thing. However, some people may go overboard. It’s still fun when done reasonably at the end of the day.
Going to be honest, thought this video was pretty weak and largely based on a false premise. I think most people acknowledge there is some degree of "power scaling" in One Piece. There is (usually) some logical consistency when it comes to character power levels. However, inconsistencies arise both from the fact the story has been going on for a very long time, and sometimes Oda simply throws scaling out the window for to serve the plot. And history has shown us there can be quite a bit of variation within a tier. Hence you can only go so far as a reader when it comes to scaling individual characters and why mini of us are dismissive of the more intense power scaling discussions. Can't say I have every seen someone try to argue Oda literally does not care about power scaling at all.
@@YetiCoolBrother if oda forgoes some aspects of powerscaling, then that does mean he doesn’t care about powerscaling. Powerscaling is about consistency, if he tries in some aspects but completely disregards other aspects of it, then it still means he doesn’t care about powerscaling. Perfect example is the rate of growth for characters in the story. Some just get exponentially stronger in a short time frame, far beyond what others are able to with more training and more fights, without much of a reason why
Often, I have some things I dislike in your videos or disagree is some aspects, or find missing perspectives. But with that video I have no such issues. Great narration, great arguments and examples, great editing, great pacing and etc. I think it's one of your best videos, thx man, GREAT JOB. Keep doing what you doing )
Well put. I’ve been revisiting bleach a lot. And while there is a lot I am retroactively appreciating, it totally puts into perspective how important relatively consistent powerscaling is. When you don’t have it wins and loses don’t mean anything. It’s hard to get excited when the scale is whatever it needs to be. And bleach is far better at it than something like fairy tail where the ceiling resets every arc.
I have a friend that cannot wrap his head around when I point out that haki is more important than devil fruit ability in the endgame. There are exceptions of course, but overall, a person's haki can overpower most any kind of cheap trick. Its function is to do exactly that. One Piece would be *way* different if haki was never a thing and fights played out like how they do in Jojo's, but it's not like that. It's an interesting blend of both traditional power scaling *and* unique abilities that, due to great writing, actually makes sense in the same setting. Hawkins, Law, Sugar, Kuma, etc. would be the strongest characters in the setting if it was designed to be similar to Jojo's, but again, it's not. Haki is what the endgame focuses on, and it makes sense for it to take center stage. It will make the confrontation between Luffy and Teech be even more potent.
I think there are 2 arguments there because in-world Sugar is actually a masive threat but in-story she's just not that important, so Oda will never have say an admiral be touched by Sugar, be forgetten and that's how he resolves the conflict. Even if it's logical it just won't happen in the story. That's why i sometimes roll my eyes when Oda tries to hype up random fodder armies like the Germa or the gifters, because we all know that while in-world they might actually be athreat in-story they'll never be really relevant. The Germa army will never take down an important stablished character
to be fair,, i dont think the story makes a good job explaining what would stop a hax ability in a decently strong person to not be capable of beating yonko level threats. Think abilities like sugars toy making, ms goldenweeks color traps, perona's ghosts and so on, that seem to almost completely bypass ability level and can incapacitate regardless of your opponent strength. What would stop someone thats as strong as say , a speedy swordsman Vice admiral with Sugars fruit from merely tagging kaido and thats it? Now i actually think that Oda likely has something haki related to stop that from happening to some degree (it was somewhat hinted to with Law's fruit limitation in cutting just anyone's body into pieces agaisnt BM i think, although interesting a pirate of Don Chinjao's level equally feel victim to sugars ability) as merely to be able to tag a yonko is too low a bar for an ability to be nearly unbeatable, but he sure as hell has not emphasized this point enough if it is fact some haki related cap that stops this from being a problem. It also doesnt fully solve the problem without making yonko (or some other very high level of strength in OP) to have some arbitrarily high level shield vs hax powers. If the gap between say in my example a vice admiral vs yonkou is too big a haki discrepancy then it can be a speedy shichibukai level opponent with the hax power, or if not something higher so unless the line is something like "equal higher proficiency to work or no sell" (like sure kill moves with low accuracy in pokemon games where they always fail if opponents pokemon is higher leveled) then i dont see how you fully get rid of the problem.
@@jjfresh-qu5nw Powerful devil fruits are more common than powerful haki. A haki technique isn't gonna give you the power to destroy an island, lift up islands, or destroy the whole world lol 😆
The idea that the Yonko and Admirals are comparable seems fair. I think Green Bull was more scared of facing an entire Yonko crew than he was of just Shanks
Or maybe admirals aren’t just yonko level... Don’t know why y’all don’t accept it. At this point just seems admirals aren’t threat to Luffy, they weren’t even scared that green bull was at Wano!
I don't think so because he went to Wano knowing Kaido is gone but his crew and the new Yonko and alliance was there. He was scarred off by the haki which is Shank's.
@@lulu_TheWitchBoy They chose not to interfere because Luffy understands this is a test to see if Wano can defend itself. its unlikely a greater threat than an admiral would be coming to Wano after Greenbull and they passed the test and Luffy didn't need to interfere.
What. The moment he felt the conqueror's haki, he already sht his pants. And the diarrhea goes full blown when he realized it was Shanks. Scared of facing an entire Yonko crew? Yeah right. Going after Luffy in his own territory lols. The copium is real
Actually you missed the fact that the marine had the help of the shishibukai in marineford, that's how they gain an edge. Yonko crew = Marine, Marine + shishibukai > Yonko crew
THANK you for this video, holy shit. Do people obsess over it too much? Absolutely! But that doesn't make it not relevant in OP. If an author just completely ignores the general powerscaling then the entire story becomes unsatisfying. Because that destroys the illusion that the story is really happening and it isn't just about whoever the author wants to win. In the end, it is about what the author wants, but good writing is about making the events believable. Making the events believable means making the levels of power consistent. And making the levels of power consistent means you can infer which characters are stronger than others. Obviously, that doesn't mean that it's universal. Characters have unique powers and can do well in unique matchups. Some characters are exceptions within their general ranks. But people who think it just doesn't matter are actively choosing to ignore one of the best aspects of OP that Oda puts a TON of effort into making consistent and believable. Powerscaling matters in OP because Oda always has believable reasons for why characters win fights and never just bullshits. He might sometimes have asspulls and powerups that weren't set up (cough nika) but those powerups will EXIST and have an understandable reason why they would make the character stronger. It doesn't just make them hit harder because friendship.
I didn’t finish reading the comment but you grabbed me halfway through. Storytelling needs to feel real and characters need to feel like they really won an engagement vs the writer wanting them to win. The best writers can hide their intentions to engage the audience.
I think it should come as a given that authors have some sort of idea of how strong some characters are relative to each other but in general, don’t think Oda has formulated who wins between King and Katakuri despite holding the same position in the same type of crew, because they are characters in different arcs who fought different characters. At most I guess King has a higher bounty than Katakuri. Also not sure how this is different from other manga, like yeah characters usually are said to become stronger because they trained or have an ace up their sleeve to bring a fight to their favor.
Noooooo. The title scares me!!! Okay, Power scaling to me has always been just fans asking each other “will this character beat this character in a fight” and they may not necessarily even be in the same series. What you’re explaining “power scaling” to be is the concrete way a storyteller will establish rules for their world’s “magic system”. Oda’s rules for the One Piece world need to have some scaling so it makes sense. But he often breaks his own rules because Devil Fruits are a wild card. Like Luffy being able to defeat Croc because he found out water is a weakness. I think you’re completely right about Oda wanting to establish who’s stronger and weaker.
I'm glad this issue came up, because I have been thinking about this issue for some time now. I understand and accept that, being a Battle-Focussed Shonen, One Piece obviously has fighters who are on various different levels of strength. Luffy always taken on the biggest bad guy while Sanji, Zoro, et al always take on the subordinates. That's OK, and that's fine, because Oda always does a good job of making those battles still feel significant. A great example is actually the whole battle for Onigashima itself - even with 5,400 samurai, the good guys were heavily outnumbered, and that fact is repeatedly referenced and hammered home as being important. Tama and Chopper converting enemy fighters to their side was presented as something that mattered, because Luffy and co could not simply blow through all of the "fodder" pirates as if they were nothing. Sure, Usopp might not be able to fight Kaido or Doflamingo and he probably never will be, but he can do things Luffy can't do, things that STILL MATTER. One of the biggest reasons why powerscaling was hated in Dragon Ball was because it meant many fan-favorite characters got left completely in the dust with nothing they could meaningfully contribute to solving the current problem (try being a fan of Piccolo, Krillin, or Gohan, lol). Here's one more example, however: Hajrudin vs Machvise (the Ton-Ton Fruit guy) from Dressrosa. Some people get so caught up in powerscaling that they assume that him breaking his arm and leg beating "one of Dofy's mid-tier officers" means that Hajrudin must be weak. But that overlooks the fact that Hajrudin just PUNCHED SOMETHING AS HEAVY AS 30 JUMBO JETS into the stratosphere, an incredible feat! Put it this way - if you took powerscaling way too literally, you would have to come to the bizarre conclusion that Luffy would be fine if 10,000 tons dropped on him, just because the guy who weighs 10,000 tons was "not on his level", which is absurd (yes, of course in reality he would just dodge, but you get my point - it doesn't make sense to assume that you can't be hurt by someone with a "lower power level").
It's probably depends on their fav character, if their fav character is a type that has the aura or image of strength then it's probably fun, but if their fav character doesn't posses that then it's no fun to them.
There is probably also differences in power between the groups too. Like the original three admirals, Kizaru, Akinu, and Akioji are likely much stronger than Fujitora and Greenbull. Two pieces of evidence pointing to this are Doflamingo's interactions with Akioji and Fujitora and how Kizaru was so gung ho about taking on both Big Mom and Kaido while Greenbull was afraid of Kaido.
You can't compare post-timeskip Aokiji to a regular Admiral. During his fight with Akainu they most likely both made incredible progress until one ultimately overcame the other, which got them both to reach a level worthy of the Fleet Admiral position they sought. Or at least it would make sense considering haki blooming as well as the length of their battle. And let me remind you that Doflamingo still tried to kill Smoker in front of Aokiji, and also stated that Fujitora and Ryokugyu were real monsters of power. So we can't know for sure how they would compare to pre-timeskip Admirals 🤷♂️
Doffy knew fujitora coudnt arbitrarily get rid of his status, Aokiji in their encounter was no longer a Marine and had no compunction in killing him to protect smoker. Kizaru mentioned willing to go to Wano but the details of what he would do where never specified, (or what level of force he would take, kizaru with 5 vice admirals working in unison in a buster call like scenario may hold its own vs a yonkou). Idk where people get the idea GB feared kaido at least not any more than the respect you would expect an admiral would give a yonko level opponent.
Shanks is a celestial dragon and the admirals probably know thats why they can't really "touch" Shanks lol he still has some special privilege like Doflamingo
Lol nothing indicates the original 3 admirals are much stronger than the new ones. All the admirals are relative in power even if you have some stronger than some. Plus the new admirals suffer from being debuted in the new world where antagonist are much stronger.
You really left out the pannels and really cherry picked and mispresented the luffy and doffy example lol It was literally about luffy not running away just because its an admiral, and he has to defeat them. And doffy was sh*ting himself about kaido, not admiral. Why do that lol? And yeah luffy and co was recovering, so where king and queen plus we lack all context to gb vs king and queen And since we got to see scabbard holding themselves, and yamato beeing serious challenge etc...how can you seriously think they would perform worse? How can people be so blindly ignoring that? King and queen obviously where not full power and who knows if he sneaked up etc
Well thought out Morj. I always enjoyed Oda's meticulous power scaling and Luffy's creativity (combined with luck) often being the reason he leaps above the next tier. Funny though I never considered that at the end of this story Luffy will probably be the strongest man in the world. Certainly makes sense, as strength pairs quite well with the greatest level of freedom.
Haven't watched yet, but I do feel like there is some equivocation happening in the community. When people complain about powerscalers, what they're imagining are people who hold die hard positions on powerscaling *opinions* rather than those who try to stick to just the objective facts. There are many, many factors that go into deciding the outcome of a fight, and acting like any character no diffs any other character is childish and doesn't take into account those factors. It's important to realize that, especially in a series like One Piece, scale is something that is wildly inconsistent. This makes feats inconsistent as well, which are the measuring stick used very often in these discussions. It's okay to talk about how and to what extent the author has established the relative abilities of characters, of course, and I'd say understanding that is vital to understanding the stakes. But treating subjective takes like objective ones is what gets people riled up.
Yeah I think people aren't understanding eachother, powerscalers hear "powerscaling is ruining one piece" and think that means we shouldn't care about power at all and Woopslap could just as easily beat kaido in a 1v1 as he could lose to him, its just what Oda decides, which I don't think anyone seriously believes.
It’d be interesting if there were nuance within the Admirals like there is for commanders. There’s no way GB can fight evenly with Kaido but I’m not gonna say Akainu or Kuzan cant come close.
i mean the story definitely implies that, seeing as how kizaru wanted to pull up on kaido, while gb didn’t, but i think gb can definitely fight evenly with kaido for a good minute, he won’t get absolutely thrashed, but he would lose
I'd argue Akainu is Yonko level, his devil fruit is the most destructive in the series and his haki abilities are a mystery. Besides it would be no fun if current luffy Is going to fight a opponent weaker than Kaido.
@@miguelfonseca1104 Right that's what I'm saying. Backing out of what he thought was an easy win doesn't imply he couldn't hold his own. I took the Kaido thing as him saying. Himself or the government wouldn't have swooped in because Wano was already occupied and it wouldnt be somewhere he could just stroll into. Not that he's afraid or incapable of fighting Kaido.
Powerscaling isn’t the issue, it’s (some of) the powerscalers imo. I love dream matchups but some people don’t realize the obvious power gaps between certain characters even when implied by Oda himself.
If we compare hierarchies of yonkou crews with the admirals it will look something like this: Younkou = Fleet Admiral Commanders = Admirals Tobi Roppo (just as example) = Vice Admirals And so on, casually there are 3 admirals as there are usually 3 commanders. Is a way to see the stablished hierarchies in the marine end. It does not necessarily mean that Jack = Green Bull, but they share the same level of hierarchy within they group
Agreed. I’ve always thought the commanders as a whole were on the level of all the admirals as a whole. Atleast when comparing the yonko group to the navy. The admirals tend to be stronger as the navy is a bit stronger than a yonko group but I hold the admirals to the mid and upper level commander characters. Like smoothie and king.
Dragonball stopped using the power scaling metric in the sayan saga. The gang already was using power in concentrated ways to overcome the difference in totals. At no point was power levels actually the most important thing. Technique was more important from day 1.
dbz had wack power scaling with a crazy fan base that took the power level numbers given in the frieza saga like mathematical gospel. So people will make the most insane functions and formulas to explain why the 10% difference between dodoria vs vegeta let to one outcome as opposed to a similar gap between max power frieza and ssj goku. Toriyama mostly came up with power levels as a guide to have a way to speak of relative strength without needing to show feats for every little comparison. To think his story for some insane mathematical consistency must follow their ad hoc calculations is bonkers.
@@miguelfonseca1104 I don't like labeling an entire fan base as anything. Morj talks about the negative aspects of one piece power scalers in this video. Fan bases are a diverse group and whatever you don't like about another fan base. Your favorite fan base has some of that too. As to your DBZ analysis. I really think the evidence for power levels being a foolish measurement is there from the start. The heroes willingness to look past it is part of their strength from the beginning. It was more thematic than simple guide.
i felt that the power scaling in one piece was very fluid, like some characters get stronger over time while others stayed the same. unlike dragon ball where they always introduce new characters, we can see others get stronger over time, just by the hints we see in their appearances
This is probably the only Morj video that I actually enjoyed. Him going off on the idiots from Reddit who keep saying power scaling isn’t important and powerscalers are stupid is golden.
@@Sinsmoke_haki blooming in fights was a plot device to make Luffy strong enough to beat katakuri. That concept didn’t apply for law when fighting Doffy but then somehow Doffy is able to go fight big mom and win.
@@Sinsmoke_ he meant law and yea he's clearly right where the fuck was his awakening to defeat doffy who he had history with and pretty much made him who he is too this day. law deserved alot better in dressrosa. one piece powwwer scaling sucks it will vary from arc to arc and it's plot heavy. idk why we waste time
Morj I've always gone by what you say about bounties, that it's done to hype up an event, and this video is a fantastic elaboration on that notion to balance out why people love powerscaling, and shonen as a whole. Thanks man.
I don't have a problem with the idea of powerscaling but with powerscaling discussions in practice. I think we can all agree that One Piece has tiers of power which are clearly seperated from each other BUT with unclear rankings within a tier. So most discussions end up either comparing characters in different tier, in which case the difference is clear ; or comparing two characters in the same tier, in which case the difference is so small that it comes down to interpretation. In both cases, these discussions can't produce anything worth talking about since the conclusion is either obvious are so unclear that it could go either way depending on the needs of the story. Powerscaling is basically headcanon that no amount of pseudo-analysis can ever make relevant to the actual story.
Pretty much I would rank the following characters as “Strong”: King, Katakuri, Law, Jesus Burgess, Rob Lucci, Karasu and Ivankov. Still couldn’t tell you how strong they are besides I guess they wouldn’t beat a Yonkou or an Admiral 1v1.
Exactly there are many many characters that are so close as to be indistinguishable. And really the specific circumstance of when where and how there powers match up would be big factors as well which we wouldn’t know either.
I don't think it's universally headcannon for characters in the same tier. We can at the very least say who'd most likely win based on feats or abilities. But King vs Katakuri is a good example of powerscaling being unknown. Because Katakuri should have no way to harm King's body (which was unharmed by Enma slashes that hurt Kaido, whom Wholecake Luffy couldn't damage), and we have no idea if King can overcome Katakuri's future sight and land hits. Now who'd win a fight like THAT is headcannon.
I think Powerscaling has actually become a bit of a problem for Oda nowadays because it's hard to cut from the rooftop, where the biggest and strongest characters in the series are fighting, to go give Chopper a fight. Chopper will have to fight a character way weaker and it can be hard to make that exciting or at the very least it would take a lot of pages to do so. I think that's why Oda has given less spotlight (and fights) to the SHs since the time-skip, he needs to focus on more "important" characters (to the One Piece world i mean)
I dont think that's an issue at all, if anything giving important battles to those not on the higher tuer of strength would only be a good thing, as it could still keep that level of combat prevalent in the story to characters it would make sense with and not have all fights look the same. It's one of many fans' biggest criticisms of Dragonball and Naruto, that after a certain point characters we loved but weren't "top tier" in strength weren't getting action despite their interesting abilities and the fights we were getting were just explosive slugfests and long abandoned the scale of combat presented in the story before. Hell, ppl spent like, a decade complaining about Robin not getting a 1v1 till Black Maria lol. And there are some that feel that way about Chopper too. And why many felt most the Tobi roppo battles were disappointing cause panel time was jumpy for them.
@@MagillanicaLouM to be clear i'd love for every SH to get a fight but i think in Oda's mind it's hard to give the spotlight to less important fights and not make them feel kinda udnerwhelming
@@dantecrottogini529 i guess, it's all on what he has to juggle i suppose. An alliance with samurai relevant to the specific art, law and kidd, and Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Robin, Franky, Jinbei, a lot are gonna get passed up as they were
@@TwoForFlinchin1 yeah but if he wins a lot of people will complain about plot conviniences or incinsistency in power scaling and if he looses people will say the fight was a waste of pages because it was obious he wouldn't win. Oda is between a rock and a hard place
I Think pre-Germa unlocked genes Sanji was a good measure of other characters' strengths as well. The skirmishes against Vergo, Doflamingo, Oven,Page 1 and King painted a clear picture of how those characters stacked up against each other especially the Vergo and Doffy and Page 1 and King comparisons
Personally, I love how Oda utilizes power scalling in universe, what I dislike is some of the conversations coming out of it. To be more precise, I dislike how many members of the community dismess narrative and thematic point to satisfy the concieved power scale of the world. I feel I am not being clear so let's use an example. In act 2 and early in act 3 of Wano, Luffy set himself the goal to take down Kaido, many dismissed Luffy's own motivation, the personal challenge set by Kaido, and the Straw Hats progression in the New World in favor of the finale being a group battle because the power scalling. Another example is how many people said the story got bad because Luffy got hurt by Apoo to remind him not to get careless, or when the Scabbards got a cut on Kaido, even though it is what we built up for dozens and dozens of chapters. Again, I don't think Power Scalling in itself is bad, nor the discussions about, and I'm aware all sort of conversations can end up in a similar toxic mindset, but I think in the One Piece community there is a recurring tendancy of the narrative and themes of the stories being trivialized in favor of mental gymnastics regarding this one singular aspect of the story.
Ah, i said this in another comment. Kaido could easily speed blitz all the scabbards. He could easily have killed many members of the alliance just by going to his final form. Pointless semantics like this are brought up all the time, ive seen some people use this stuff to say zoro is as fast as kaido when the story simply will not allow that.
I think Yonkos and Admirals are pretty equal with each other. I think people see Yonkos as stronger due to the freedom they have. No rules and are able to have major power in territories due to that freedom. For Admirals they have to follow orders, they can’t just go all out and need to protect the civilians and the World Dragons. They need to do things within the system, as for pirates they can break that system with their beliefs and are able to go all out because of that. Luffy’s fights have mostly been pirates, Pirate King is his goal and he needs to surpass those Warlords, Commanders and the Emperor to have the strength to fight the World Government. When Luffy reaches that level he will then fight against Admirals that doesn’t need to hold back anymore. I’m not saying the Admirals are stronger, I’m saying Luffy will be strong enough to finally fight them by himself. He isn’t strong enough to one on one a Yonko (excluding Buggy) yet so when he does I think it’ll be against an Admiral that has orders to go all out. Greenbull didn’t have orders to go to Wano and he was at a disadvantage with Shanks’ crew and the alliance still their. So I think when the time comes we will see how strong they are.
This narrative that Luffy isn't "Yonko level" yet needs to stop. He is stronger than Kaido. Luffy did 1v1 Kaido and win. If your argument is he wasn't at full health when they fought, guess what Luffy was more hurt than Kaido. Gear 5 Luffy was straight up whopping Kaido. Before gear 5 he was weaker that's why he lost. Rn Luffy is stronger than Kaido and Big mom
admirals can go all out you really think akainu cares about civilians ? also luffy cares about civilians ajd he’s a pirate. did you watch morjs chapter review? Green bull said pirate commanders aren’t worth his time so why was he scared of shanks crew ? he was terrified and frozen by shanks and shanks wasn’t even on the same island. also how can admirals be stronger than yonko when green bull said he would never come if kaido was there and if at a young age big mom was considered for FLEET ADMIRAL position but just admiral but fleet. This was before her df and when she was only a child
Damn bro, on most youtube video I put a commen even before I've watched the video. Then As I get feedback I completly ignore the video and focus on the comments, but Morj you gotta be one of the very few youtubers I listen without pausing a single Time
I love how the grandline is set up. it's a straight line where everyone starts at the same spot. since the goal is at the end of the line, everyone is traveling the same way. it's a giant ranked ladder. you go forward until you can't go anymore. the further you go the stronger the people around you are. it's such a smart way to have natural progression of strength. other manga, the bad guys just show up to fight the hero and they just happen to be stronger than the last bad guy.
There is a huge difference between scales of power in the show and powerscaling in the community. Powerscalers always complain about Oda scaling his characters but tbh, Oda does an excellent job in showing who is stronger and who is weaker. Just don't assume and go overboard. There is a difference between "I think X is stronger than Y" and "omg you are so stupid, y wins against X mid difficulty lololololol"
I think powerscaling only really gets toxic when people put it above everything else in the story. I've seen people arguing that "Luffy can't fight Blackbeard, because he already beat Kaido, who is above Blackbeard" or "Luffy won't fight Akainu, because Akainu is only as strong as an Admiral, and Luffy is stronger than an Admiral". Powerscaling is an important element in the story, this is a Battle Shonen after all, but it isn't the only important element. Ignoring stuff like the characters' personal rivalries or the symbolism of the story, which are elements that are just as important, just for the sake of powerscaling really makes no sense to me.
Yeah that's the key issue and what i refer to when i call a power scaler a meathead lol. They aren't thinking story, they're just thinking rankings and matchups but those rankings and matchups are so very influenced by said story. Especially in a series with power systems with so many variables beyond "who can destroy the bigger mountain" or whatever like one piece has
One Piece is flexible with that even: Enel is very strong for the point in the story he appears in but Luffy counters him, Foxy is only able to give Luffy some trouble because Luffy is dumb and gullible.
Also yeah with someone like Akainu who is poised to be set and endgame opponent, either the difficulty Luffy would have against him is that either Akainu has an Ace up his sleeve or unlike a battle with Kaido that was more of a team effort, it will be a solo 1v1 for Luffy.
No it doesn’t get toxic till you see ppl saying that Luffy is stronger than other characters that you know he has no business going against. Or when they act like haki is the end all be all
I always think like well maybe characters aren’t as strong as you think. Kaido might just be weaker than people think.
Yea I thought most people felt like this. Powerscaling definitely does matter but there's a Lotta loud people that just bend over backwards to justify or downplay certain feats.
Like chill people oda is very much thinking about powerscaling like morj said but not to the needle point degree that some people try and do.
Oda's power scaling is narrative based and fan powerscaling is most often feat/portrayal based. I think the idea that Oda doesn't care about power scaling is mostly from people obsessing over things like not showing Tobi Ropo and commanders using haki, despite it should be narratively obvious they can.
That’s the problem. Commanders and Toppi Ropo should have it, but it’s not shown. You say it’s narratively base which is true, but think about the Kaido fight. It was clear that Luffy couldn’t beat a fully healthy Kaido one on one. That’s why it was multiple fighters against him to take him down
All the tobi roppo have the 2 basic haki types observation and armament. The all stars have it too. This was confirmed in SBS lol and there was 1 panel of Quwen using armament on his arm
@@nicholasalexander9866
You compared 2 completely different things. The tobi roppo can use basic haki that is confirmed. Most people can its not a big deal this late in the story lol
Not everytime are characters drawn using Haki, but they are clearly using it. For example Bastille v Sabo. Bastille is a skilled Vice-- who are all confirmed Haki users. If he wasn’t using Haki, Sabo would simply take the blows, but he doesn’t so we can assume he is. I think OP fans get too bent out of shape over the appearance of Haki.
@@nicholasalexander9866 that's another problem that comes from a narrowminded vision we tend to have. Just because a character has or can use an ability it doesn't mean he will use it like others because he fights and relies on different things. The most common thing I hear is "the rest of the strawhats should have haki or they will fall behind or won't make sense". It's just that they rely on other things and they don't need it. For example, king does not use his hybrid form because as a lunarian he has everything he needs. Big mom, despite having conqueror coating, she barely uses it, zoro as a swordsman relies 100% on armament haki while sanji uses it as a way to just withstand hotter flames, luffy relies on adv armament to do internal damage while jimbei relies more on fishmen karate that also does internal damage, etc... It gives characters variaty and uniqueness imo
In my view, the reason i like how Oda handles it compared to other manga is that he showed us what the top echelon looked like pretty early on and has kept that the level to aspire ever since. The second Whitebeard and Shanks split the sky, he was telling us what it would take and almost a thousand chapters later that is still the case seeing Roger v Whitebeard in that flashback and against Kaido. Just elaborated more on HOW they're performing the feat. Its not a matter of "Luffy gets x power up so every future antagonist strength has to scale" it's "yeah Luffy got a big bounty boost but he's still a wee lad with all these MONSTERS running around, but this'll be what he has to reach eventually" and i like that structure more.
Agreed! Usually in manga they often change the scope until it breaks the logic that was once established. It's consistent. Unlike many shounen who keep moving the goal post. Freiza was the Strongest, at the beginning of Z, and by then end, he's a joke, and not even top 20 in the universe. From very Early on we knew Mihawk was the strongest Swordsman, then we learned Shanks is comparable to that. Then we met Whitebeard and the Aokiji. The rules and power balance of the one piece verse have remained consistent. So each time a character gets stronger it means even more and changes their dynamic.
Heck after 1000 chapters, Luffy still wasn't at that level. It took 15 days training + 30 minutes of Skull dome fighting to get to that level. Oda still had to rush Luffys growth somewhat by craming it into one arc.
Therein lies what makes OP great in powerscalling: TIME. Oda never rushed to make Luffy powerful ASAP. That made for a more consistent power scale journey. That allowed for 1 arc where Luffy could be crowned Yonko, once a big chunk of the story had been told. But this 1 arc rushed things, hence why people complain about Wanos bloated nature. Where too many big developments happened at once and some plot points weren't explored fully as a result (Zoro family stuff for example).
@@daddy_1453 yeah can understand that feeling, though despite my gripes with later act 3, Luffy's growth strength wasn't really one for me though i can understand why some are like "slow your roll there toon boi" lol
@@kidkouga92 exactly
Power scaling in Hunter x Hunter feels better than in OP
I think what many mistake for “not caring about powerscaling” is the idea that being stronger or having certain hyped abilities isn’t an insta-win in all cases.
Yeah, and the general idea that powerscalers generalize fucking everything. Its seriously tiring to debate with people about it. What truly is meant by “powerscaling doesnt matter” is that oda can and will (and has) make or made powerscaling irrelevant. “Luffy is ftl because he dodged a laser.” ….no! Shut the fuck up!
For me is just a way to that Luffy should have lost to Katakuri but won by plot armor.
literally no one thinks that
@- SageAegis - I mean most people dont fully understand the power system there is more than 1 or 2 power systems in one piece there is like 6 and the main 2 have not even been full explained so yea.
That's the best kind of system too. When it comes to that concept jjk and HxH do it the best
I think what people miss is that powerscaling can also enhance certain character moments. An easy example would be Momo from just last chapter. For it to make sense you have to understand how strong the admirals actually are in comparison to everyone else to show how desperate the situation is. But you also have to understand that Luffy and a few good men could easily deal with the threat. Both of these things come together and makes Momo's dialogue more impactful as he chooses not to take the easy route.
powerscaling is probably one of the most important things to establish in any series, especially a shonen series; yet people still act like the author can freely do what they want with no regards to consistency
Characters are as strong or weak as they need to be in the current story.
The only consistency needed is you can't have someone like Nami who all of the sudden can stand up to Greenbull.
@@robertsommers3540 no good writers create clear and precise rules for their fictional worlds that they consistently abide by. Power amongst characters is one of them... Otherwise you get trash like fairy tail
@@georgez2702 agreed, nami or usopp beating Greenbull would be so weird for a writer like oda.
@@georgez2702 this
In a modern Shonen manga first you establish the power scaling and then you later subvert or disregard it for the sake of the story.
Power scaling isn't the problem it's the parameters that people use to power scale. They believe X beat Y and Y beat Z therefore X can beat Z when fights in OP are a touch more complicated.
It's also the terms that people use like Yonko commander 1 2 3 and use that as a pure base
Can you provide an example regarding that people use Yc 1,2,3
Because I think your mindset is one of reason why powerscalling could be toxic, the fact that people won't accept that yc 1 is stronger than yc 2 & 3 it's quite a trigger for toxicity.
“fights in OP are a touch more complicated”=whoever needs to win wins
I’d argue fights in OP are pretty simple tbh.
There’s barely any strategy or tactics, characters rarely train moves, most moves are just variations of a punch or body slam.
@@SamuelChac0n It's not complicated because that applies to all action story not just one piece
I've been seeing so many people on Reddit and Twitter slating powerscalers lately (saying they ruin the series by match ups between characters and factions). I feel like this video came out at the perfect time. In the same way people compare the likes of Tyson vs Ali, Messi vs Ronaldo, Naruto vs Sasuke etc. the same can be applied with a shonen anime like One Piece. There's no issue in that. It's human nature to compare the best vs the best. I guess the issue lies in how far people take it sometimes and how toxic debates can get.
Messi and Ronaldo aren't a good example. They don't even play the same position. Pure ability doesn't matter in a team game which is why certain players have specific roles for the teams they play. The context of team games cannot be simply power scaled. It can not be so easily translatable to simple power scaling for things such as Naruto vs Sasuke or Tyson v Ali.
@@antonioemilio9932 That doesn't change the fact that people have been comparing them for the past 15 years for the simple reason that they have been the best of our era (and arguably all time). Besides, they both operate as attacking players and goal-wise, are very comparable. Your point on specific roles for the team is valid but at the end of the day, people will compare them anyway, no matter the system. That was my point.
Everyone just brings out the Stan Lee quote about whoever wins is whoever the writer wants, when like... that's obvious? Almost everyone debating which character would win understands that, it's just that it's fun as its own pursuit to consider the hypothetical situation and see what conclusions we can draw based off the evidence in the story.
People who denounce power scaling in OP only do it because it exposes flaws and inconsistencies. If your story resolves problems with physical conflict, then power levels and power systems are a part of your plot structure. A contradiction in the power scale is a contradiction in the story plot; that's why it's important.
Messi is the goat, anyone with football knowlege knows that.
I think the issue comes into play when we consider the degrees of power-scaling communicated to us. Keen readers were quick to see that Doflamingo was roughly equivalent to a yonkou commander, he was afraid of being pressed between Kaido and the Admirals yet clearly fought/tested two admirals on two separate occasions. Yet it appears he would have never thought to do the same thing to Kaido. This established a non-confirmed power-scaling of yonkou > admirals > commanders, but Oda didn't out right say "Yonkou > Admirals > Commanders". If someone says "because Oda didn't explicitly say it, therefore it's head cannon" would that be correct? No, its a grey-area in between that is based on observation and interpretation, a good hypothesis. Saying Don Krieg can defeat Mihawk would be bad head cannon as opposed to a good hypothesis, because even assuming Oda didn't directly say that Mihawk will win, the evidence suggests that Mihawk would. Consistency is key with these discussions but these arguments are not just made with logic but with feelings. If I really like Marco for example, do I want to say that he's like trash compared to green bull? Probably not, even if Green Bull in story says the opposite of commanders and quite literally stomps on King and Queen whom Marco had difficulty holding back.
The problem is the majority of people have favorites but cant or try to not connect other dots together..the reason why doflamingo wasnt afraid to go against an admiral is fujitora affiliated with the world government..yeah kaido is also ..but fujitora cant attack him and kill him because it would have been a treachery at that time ..kaido wont show him mercy and can do whatever he wants..that is why he is afraid of him
Oh yeah consistency definitely key.
That said, Green Bull likely isn't that much stronger than Marco, if at all, because he was beating up a King and Queen who had recently been severely injured by Zoro and Sanji respectively. At their full strength, I doubt that it would have been that easy.
@@matthewchamberlain2953 marco never damaged a admiral greenbull is a admiral. if greenbull is on the same lvl as kizaru akainu and aokiji then he is way stronger than marco and other first commanders. and greenbull himself said that an admiral should able to beat commanders with ease
@@yamsbeans IDK. You may have an argument about other 1st commanders, but Whitebeard's crew is on another level from the other Yonkou. Marco, as you said before, was able to go toe-to-toe with two other commanders, including another 1st commander, for quite a while. That likely means he's a fair bit stronger than either of them, but not strong enough to beat both at the same time. The reality is that we don't know how strong each admiral is relative to the Yonkou, especially not the new ones, and this isn't a good moment to powerscale Green Bull, since neither King nor Queen were in good condition.
King is almost certainly weaker than an admiral, even in good condition, but Marco could be in a similar tier to an admiral.
Pffft, Doffy knew Aokiji and Fujitora aren't aggressive individuals. He had an implicit agreement with Aokiji, and a stated one with Fujitora. The difference with Kaido is that he's a bloodthirsty maniac.
I'm so tired of many people giving bs argument like "you shouldn't have hold any expectations at all" like bruh, expectations is so basic in reading or watching any story.
Ofc, some go wild with expectations and get disappointed. But reader does not have to have 0 expectations.
The problem is when they get disappointed they moan and complain about Oda because the authors reality doesn't match up with their head canon
@@nonyabusiness366 thats bs
@@nonyabusiness366 What's wrong with being disappointed at something u personally want to see not happening? Ofc people can go too far with it calling Oda a bad writer or whatever but it's just a personal opnion in the end.
@@nonyabusiness366 You are the embodiment of the One Piece fandom's cancer. That comment gives me aids jesus. A disgrace to the craft of narrative writing. Its like a chef feeding you sht and you think its abnormal to complain and moan about the disservice. "Doesn't match-up with their headcanon" more like *Doesn't lived up to the expectations the author established.* Its like headcanon is losing its meaning now with how much its overused in the community. My ghad.
@@Steamedhams578 I think when expectations are set to high when it gets annoying, like Zoro fighting kaido. Like never in the story has oda let Zoro finish the main bad guy, Team ups yes, but never the finishing blow. That could change but it's not now.
I've always thought that those little "inconsistentes" or "plot armors" (more or less) are because Oda is trying to point out that even if some of the characters are not in the same level as an enemy, they can still fight and actually have a chance to win some "seemingly impossible battles" (maybe using other strategies, intelligence, being helped by others, even by luck or whatever it is, as long as it doesn't involve sheer strength alone), kinda like a "David vs Goliat" situation. Crocodile was fairly dangerous when Luffy beat him (he seemed to rely too much on his DF, ok, but still - he had many "plans B" too and those didn't work either...).
Lucci WAS stronger than Luffy, but Luffy won thanks to his well-thought gears AND the power of friendship (or his incredible will, you call it -though it required that he became stronger, I know).
Usopp didn't really win against Luffy, but HELL, his attacks made him look like he at least had some chance if he worked hard and planed every hit...
Zoro was stronger than Buggy, but Zoro didn't know about his ability, so he let his guard down and Buggy stabbed him, etc.
There are other examples like those, and I think they're glorious, ad they portray that, no matter how "weak" your enemy is, you should NEVER underestimate them, or else.... Many OP villains also were reaaally mistaken in believing "a weakling/rookie like Luffy" couldn't stand a chance against then, only to be proven wrong... so I always believed Oda wanted to show that even if strengh AND power-scaling are important and well organized in his story, anyone can have a chance if he works hard for it :)
I think it’s better to say that a lot of characters in fiction can be armed with Rocket launchers while being more fragile, while Sabo beat Burgess, I imagine if Burgess got clean hits in, he could easily kill Sabo. It’s not like Dragon Ball were basically you can become so strong you can shrug off hits. Big Mom and Kaido seem to be the exceptions and part of why they are so strong.
Luffy literally surpassed Lucci during their fight. That was the whole point of the fight. Climbing up the powerscale rank through battles for the main character. Luffy vs Ussop is interesting since it refutes the very point you make. Even Luffy states that despite his shiny moves, Ussop should have known that he stood no chance. And while DF mattered a lot during the early stages of one piece, with the introduction of Haki, the powerscale has been set in place and it was ALWAYS meant to head in this direction.
Define stronger in zoro is stronger than buggy.
If it means that zoro is more capable than buggy then yea. If you mean that zoro could beat buggy 1v1 then probably not. This is a guy who was turned to actual shreds by mihawk's blacksword and it left nothing.
Buggys fruit for swordsmen is an absolute nightmare
@@ew275x Even the strongest DB character can be fragile if they let their KI or guard down. Except mutants, cyborgs or demons.
I love powerscaling, I absolutely hate talking about powerscaling because everyone thinks there right - whether it's the scaling itself or the pressence of powerscaling or the fact there's a discussion at all - and it ends with debates that just go around in circles
The fact that the Shichibukai almost exactly scale to the level of one Yonko crew just blew my mind
Boa, mihawk, dolfy and kuma can compete against any emperor.
Thats why the seraphim are another massive buff for the marines
Dunno how you're only at 170k subscribers, you have some of the most thought-out and articulate One Piece content on CZcams. Keep up the good work.
It's because he took a long break
ong my favorite one piece youtuber
I don't think this was actually the problem. It is perfectly clear that Oda loves power scaling within organizations, the problem is when you compare organization to each other. That's when power scaling gets kind of iffy and it feels most inconsistent.
Most obvious example that comes to mind is Crocodile. Beaten by pre Gear 2 Luffy, but then shown to attack Whitebeard head on. That makes it impossible to determine if he is stronger than say Moria, for example.
I remember a previous Morj video talking about the Sanji/Zoro comparison, where Oda sometimes presents Zoro as being on par with Sanji, and other times on par with Luffy, even when Sanji and Luffy have never been shown to be close in strength. So I'm not saying power scaling doesn't matter, but we have to admit that it tends to take a back seat to other aspects in the story.
I honestly think that wits, luck, and determination play an important role in One Piece power scaling and battles.
Luffy was a BEAST the moment he left Fūsha village. He oneshot a huge sea monster just like that. Imagine what kind of a human you have to be to be able to take MULTIPLE punches like that. Crocodile took many, as did Enel. Luffy's surely grown, but I'd say that if Luffy was like lvl 1 when he was a kid, he jumped to level 1000 when he left Fūsha, and now he is closer to 3000. This means that the initial jump in power from child Luffy to the Luffy who first left Fūsha was huge, and people underestimate it.
Pre gear 2 Luffy was far from a joke, he was a damn undefeated monster all the way until, well, Crocodile. Ok, Smoker basically defeated Luffy before that, but Luffy was technically undefeated until Crocodile, who defeated and almost killed Luffy TWICE before being taken down on their third bout. Just because he lost to Luffy does not mean he is weak, it means people underestimate Luffy, just like they did for a long time in the story.
Morj just needed the clicks. The video was not needed and honestly bordered on straw-manning and patronizing.
I honestly think Crocodile was weaker in arabasta than impel down because he had his spirit crushed from losing to Whitebeard, same for Moria vs. Kaido. this is an adequate explanation of why they don't use haki, haki is the manifestation of the will, they had no will to be strong by their own means and were looking for other ways to become strong, they also grew up with their encounter with luffy. (whether or not oda planned before introducing haki)
About your other point, if oda presents luffy and zoro as almost equal for being captain and vice captain and also sanji and zoro as almost equal for rivalry (zoro is stronger by a bit) that immediately implies that luffy and sanji are almost equal even though they relationship is not about stregth, their relationship has to do with the love for food, also other aspects of sanji are highlighted, like his cunning, (that luffy and zoro don't have) anyway, that's why they are the monstrous trio.
It's just that some inconsistencies r unavoidable when a series goes for over 25 years......then also I'll say Oda does a very good job keeping it together....I mostly take crocodile as that kind of slight inconsistency, but also you can justify crocodile by considering how crafty and well connected he was despite having a situationally working logia, also for the same 'long running' issue we can clearly see that some warlords r different power-level than others. Most of the time it comes to their whole crew than that person.....after all readers has to consider that it's a story, not a math project.
@@Minisynapse Oh, I'm with you: I agree that Luffy was a monster since the very beginning of the story. However, I'm fairly sure we can also agree that he would never have been able to beat something like Mihawk or Doflamingo back then. But he did beat Crocodile. And then in Marineford, Crocodile was seen clashing with Mihawk and Doflamingo.
Just to be clear, I don't think admitting these inconsistencies is trashing Oda or something like that; if anything it's amazing that in a 1000+ chapter manga, so few of those inconsistencies occur. But when they do happen, we shouldn't try to bend over backwards trying to find justifications. Crocodile was introduced too early and it created small holes; it's fine.
Honestly this is why i still loved Wano even if it was flawed. It feels so regarding to me to see Luffy and the Straw Hats finally at this stage, fighting yonkos and commanders. We've waited so long for this, it's kinda crazy to think we're at this stage of the story
I don't know if I'm missing something here. I've never been in a power scaling discussion that dismises power hierarchies or states that power hierarchy=power scaling. The discussion is usually about the power creep related to the power scaling. For example, according to what we've seen, crocodile would have been a non threat at marineford since he was beaten by a pre gears luffy, however, narratively it would be fine. Also, being powerful most of the time doesn't give you immunity o lower threats, like a stab wound (kaido and big mom are just freaks like that). What I wouldn't like to see in one piece is that luffy gets so powerful that an event like what happened in logue town couldn't happen again. Most of the cast should be vulnerable when their guard is down even if they're the most powerful person in the planet. I hope my point came across, english isn't my native language and I'm figthing my automatic dictionary and typing on a lousy phone, so I'm done for the moment.
You were spot on. Some of the strawhats are now (in egghead, spoilers ahead) getting turned into stone.
The way Oda handles power scaling is what keeps One Piece interesting even after 1000+ chapters.
Couldnt agree more. Its more balanced than several shonen.
lol yep it's beautiful. Feats from marineford still hold up to this day. That's unprecedented
HxH better
Great video, I'm really happy to see you tackle this topic in depth after years of stream rants on the topic.
i like how you describe the whole definition of powerscaling cus as we read forward into the story, in the final battle we need to know who would not apt to be in the battle n who will. its a big tournament afterall, n now we are finally going into the route of the final race that will declare the "King" n thats the reason what doflamingo said is important.
Without power levels, your story is basically a Saturday morning cartoon where one episode could have the big bad be the biggest threat imaginable, and the next episode could have him be a man baby sucking on his thumb. So yeah, power levels are good actually if you're trying to tell a story with stakes where there are discrepancies in power.
I guess I never understood what power scaling actually means. Before this video I thought it was the discussion around which character can win in a fight against another character. However it being a narrative tool for world building is definitely awesome.
there are two kinds of powerscaling, you were right about both, th one one piece fans complain about is the discussion around which character win not the narrative tool, something morj didn't understand
That's what it is about. This is from a narrative standpoint and how Oda would use power scaling but when people mention power scaling in general they're talking about feats and statements
The mark of a great video essay is the ability to convince people who initially disagreed with the thesis. Congratulations Morj, you've convinced me.
Easily my favorite morj video unrelated to the raid failing. Really helps contextualize a lot of what happened in the story for me. Good shit
In the same vein i think it's ridiculous when people say that bounties aren't an important metric. While they don't reflect actual strength (it's even stated in the series) Oda definetly uses bounties to hype characters up. That's why it was so menacing and exciting when Jack showed up with a 1 Billion bounty
When I think of hyping up and creating excitement with a 1B bounty I think of katakuri personally, but then thinking jack was the weakest of the three commanders and katakuri was the strongest made its own kind of tension
The jack completely proceeded to get shit on in every one of his confrontations
@@Chillaxorita Wano is not a joke go hate somewhere else.
It just doesn’t make sense for an individual yonko to beat an individual admiral.
If shanks can beat an admiral and can GET INTO A GOROSEI MEETING why doesn’t he corner a celestial dragon, get them to call an admiral while not telling them he’s there, and- with his entire crew no less- take out 1 out of what, 5 or so (?) people that keep the WG in power? Then systematically repeat until there’s nothing left to take him down. Is there ANYTHING more worthwhile to ANY of the yonko than taking down the world fucking government? Why would he bet his arm on luffy in the East blue if under the right circumstances, his full strength could bring the dawn of the world? Did Roger tell him that whatever was at god valley or laughtale showed him that IM, the gorosei, or fucking Kong were so strong he couldn’t beat them? Do they have the ancient weapon we don’t know about and choose to just send out buster calls? What does the dawn of the world even mean if it’s not the fall of the world government, and what protects the world government if it’s not what they have explicitly refered to- the admirals- for over 600 chapters? Why does big mom care about having the giant army, kaido care about mass producing an army of gifters, or Blackbeard care about stealing powerful devil fruits? Why when big mom and kaido ally do they give a single thought towards ancient weapons when apparently if they and 6 commanders can fly up to marejois before +3 admirals get there can get RID OF THE CELESTIAL DRAGONS!
The question is not yonko vs admirals, it’s: does the world government let the yonko exist to crush piracy in the new world, or do the yonko let THE WORLD GOVERNMENT have control over EVERYTHING ELSE! The admirals would have to travel in 2’s in order protect themselves from potential yonko attacks, and the celestial dragons would essentially be imprisoned in marejois. I mean, what are they going to do to protect themselves if they ever want to leave, call an admiral?
Not to mention the disinfo around marineford. Here’s a pro analyzation tip: When whitebeard sacrificed a quarter of his head, he got a hit on akainu that made him start bleeding. Whenever akainu hit whitebeard, a hole appeared. When the haki using commander made of DIAMOND hit aokiji, he was startled. When aokiji hit him, his arm fell off. Kizaru not only could’ve ended the war if he aimed his lasers between the eyes of almost everyone he was fighting, but was only ever stalled because there was someone there who could REVIVE HIMSELF! Not take no damage, not fight equally, but continue annoying him even though half of the attacks kizaru landed SHOULD have killed him.
It just isn’t close.
@@maicolsebastianengstromele5260 That's obviously not true. The reason shanks can't just roll up on the marines and take out admirals is that it would weaken his crew to much and expose him to counterattacks from the other yonkou and he obviously wouldn't be allowed to just walk in like that after the learned he was a danger, they let him do that because they know he is a chill person. It's very clear from the story that on average the admirals are weaker than yonkou. If the admirals really are stronger than yonkou they would've easily stopped a sick and dying whitebeard instead of struggling like they did.
You didn't think this out at all. You didn't even use any logic feats or even the narrative you made a what if situation to leverage your argument making it look better. If you have to make what if scenarios then your take is wrong to begin with that's what 12 yr olds try to do. One admiral isn't taking on a yonko hate to break it too the whole community laughs at your reasoning. If you reply use your brain next time
You literally put all of my thoughts in video format. Thanks for doing this Mr. Morj!!!
The rare Morj f-bomb is so funny to me lmao. Great video, dude
The thing about powerscaling is yes it is something that is part of storytelling, especially for the Shonen genre where escalation of strength is a common trope. The issue is when people dissect the story, and comes to their own conclusions on where characters stack up with one another. A good example is with Zoro in general where various groups of fans have him at varying degrees of strength. With the varying degrees comes arguments, and general toxicity.
Toxicity is the main thing that makes powerscaling discussions so alienating. Instead of people heading towards a civil discussion that may or may not persuade people, now it just drives people away from this facet of literary analysis. It's in this running away, where either people's beliefs gets reinforced, or they may just view powerscaling as pointless; both degrees are equally as bad.
What makes matter worse is that there is no clear solution to solve this dilemma, since fan discussion will always be alienating to at least a fraction of people.
Power scalling is just back and forth argument based on the current evidence. Now those who believed that yonko is always stronger than admirals will be strongly convinced after reading chapter 1055. Maybe in the near future those who believed that they are equal will protest if oda presented an evidence that they are more or less comparable. It's about who gives the impression who is on the stronger or weaker side. What people see is what they believe afterall. When Kizaru looking afraid of Ben Beckman, that is what people see on the surface others will argue that Kizaru is just being sarcastic. It's about who can present the best argument who will win in the power scalling discussion.
Admirals have never been as strong as yonko. Theres a ton of evidence to support this by the fact that the myth was born from how well akainu did against whitebeard. white beard was living on life support and he lacked all 3 types of haki wich i think oda did deliberatly. it was shown he lacked observation haki when he was stabbed through the back by squard, it was shown he lacked armament haki when his attack when right through aokiji without damaging him and it showed that he completely lacked advanced conquerers when the attack from his glaive wasnt a 1 shot kill against blackbeard who was much weaker at the time and also the fact he relied primarily on his devil fruit to do damage.
If whitebeard had advanced observation haki and advanced conquerers haki there is not question he would have 1 shotted akainu. This is why the world goverment concidered the alliance between big mom and kaido a huge threat because they know the admirals cant take on 2 yonko at the same time.
when it comes to yonko vs admirals I believe it takes 3 admirals to take on a yonko and even then its a coin toss as to who wins.
Kizaru was never scared he straight up ignored Ben beckman right after and attack luffy
@@n1h1luss61 what kizaru "straight-up ignored" is the command to kill dragon's son. Kizaru took his time to acknowledge Ben and put his arms up then proceed to attack when Beckmann rejoin his crew down.
@@milordd.7310 didn’t Kizaru attack while Ben was there? Haven’t watched the anime in a while so maybe it’s different but in the manga Ben was still with Kizaru when he went to attack luffy.
@@milordd.7310 Kizaru ignored him and attacked anyway he was trolling. Oda said Akainu could get the one piece in a year in a Q&A so he'd have to be stronger than yonko. Kizaru was also comfortable going to wano knowing who was there. I think people just like the yonko cause the hype has been there from the start
Great video Morj, I like this approach, and you brought up great points
a wonderful breakdown of the balance of powers! you should link your video about the grandline being a survival tournament in the video description as this is the logical extension of this video
It's not necessarily that power scaling is unimportant, I think it's just when it starts dominating the discussion that it becomes annoying. Power scaling is a really small facet of what makes OP amazing and seeing the dialogue just boil down to Character A > Character B just feels very reductive and like it's not appreciating everything OP is achieving narratively. It's honestly why you're one of the only OP channels I follow.
But that's less of a critique of OP more on the community. I just try to accept that OP appeals to different people for different reasons and there's nothing wrong with that.
What if everywhere you went people complained that what you found important and interesting in the story was annoying and reductive?
@@16m49x3 then that your problem, like grow up
@@RealAgon no.
You being so mad that someone have a different interest than you is your problem. Jeez lol
@@16m49x3 its not all about interest tho like even if your interested in one thing more than the other that does not mean you should just disregard the other.
End of the day All battles ends with the best interest of the storyline no matter who’s stronger if the story needs you to lose or win you’ll do so and Oda has the wheel
Banger vid, been feeling like this for a while and glad someone large in the community finally said something about it
Love you bro and this video was needed
I never understood that argument either. If it would not be okay with you for Chopper to wipe the floor with Whitebeard in his prime, then you care about power-scaling. If it would not be okay for you for a child in a realistic story with no fighting skill to beat a Navy Seal in his prime, then you care about power-scaling. Now, attempting to reduce it all down to essentially numbers and tiers is a problem, but Power scaling is important. A victory needs to make sense. Which is why Oda said that he couldn’t just have Luffy beat Kaido with a really strong punch (although it could be argued that that’s exactly what he did, but I would argue that it wasn’t just a strong punch, it was the biggest punch in the series combined with the most unique gear form thus far, advanced conqueror’s haki, and armament haki, but I digress lol)
Still wanted more of a reaction from Kaido, losing I didn’t mind the punch.
Kaido was also worn down by the scabbards and zoro
I still have high hopes for the admirals
GB situation changed nothing at all
Green bull seems just to be the weakest admiral that doesn’t mean every admiral is.
greenbull only looks bad if you blatantly ignore context and have poor comprehension. its still admirals>yonko
Prime Admirals lose to prime yonko...other than akainu, everyone else getting mid diff. Also akainu is still loosing just high diff.
@@hassy4969 stated og admirals>garp, therefore og admirals>garp=roger≥kaido
Fantastic well thought through video as always Mr Morj
Excellent presentation Morj.
Power-scale as per feats and how manga treats some characters be like:-
1. Yonku level characters:-
Kaido>Sakazuki>Shanks||Mihawk>Luffy||Teach>BM.
2. Ft. Admirals level characters:-
Kizaru || Aokiji.
3. Admirals level characters:-
Zoro> Beck||Marco> GB||Fuji>Yamato||Sabo>Kidd||Law.
4. 1YC level characters:-
King>Magellan>Katakuri> Doffy>Shiryu|| Sanji|| Killer> Boa > Cp0 boss.
5. 2YC level characters:-
Enel>Jinbei>Roux>Diamond Jozu>
Rob Lucci || Crocodile >Queen>Weevil.
6. 3YC level characters:-
Vista||Yasup>S.Dog||S.Cat>
Jack>Ivankov>Vergo>Cracker||Denjiro>Urouge.
7. 4YC or F6 level characters:-
Smoker|| Apoo> Moriah|| Perospero > Capon||Pika >WW|| Kinemon|| Cavendish> XDrake||Kaku||Kawamastu>Ichiji||Niji||Coby>Franky||Yonji>Nami||Robin||Kiku.
Additional:-
Characters that People sleep on :
1. Doffys power level and his capabilities.
- Dude literally stoped and control 2nd most powerful Yonku commander Diamond Jozu with ease. This man can throw mountain size ice block towards Sakazuki, this dude can’t free himself. Diamond Jozu > Queen or Rob Lucci.
- Literally Cut Ozjr Leg like piece of cake while whole Straw-hats crew were struggling to beat one. Ozjr is definitely vice admiral level characters or around flying six level. Dude can chop off legs and arms.
- Controlled whole island; people in it as a puppet to kill each other, use bird cage to trap everyone.
- Two of top tier worst generation had to go against him and one even managed to gama knife him completely destroying from inside and yet was fighting with Gear 4th luffy with using awakening DF.
This shows his stamina, endurance level is even better than Katakuri. I highly doubt Katakuri would tank gama knife and many more laws attack and yet be able to fight luffy in G4 and using awakening to continue fight. People even say like Doffy is weaker than cracker. Doffy wont be defeated as easy as cracker.
- Was ready to go against Fuji and Aokiji.
Dude probably wont beat admirals cause they have advanced hakis and awakening.
Doffy is borderline Admirals level i.e 1YC level.
2. Jinbei:
- Jinbei has literally shown us his feat 5days worth battle experience against 2YC level character.
- Was easily oneshoting Vice admiral even before he was warlord.
- Has internal body mess up attack works like ryu.
His Haki and Raw power:
- Survived Sakazuki trade mark make a hole punch, blocked most powerful admiral attack and saved luffy.
- Blocked Yonku attack and kicked her out of sunny saving everyone.
- Has haki strong enough to overpower WW shigam haki fingers and broken his fingers.
- Has karate move to break WW arms.
- Can tank top F6 member most powerful attack in face.
This dude is beating any 2YC level characters.
3. Zoro:
Zoro has been showing top tier feats all over wano and pre timeskip. Sanjitard who doesn’t have such feat for sanji assume,” if zoro has this and that sanji has it too.. bla..bla, if zoro can tank hakai sanji can tank hakai and all. Poor fellows need rest.
Oda has always treated Luffy-Zoro separately as compared to other shp or worst gen.
With advanced Haki; armament and kings dude is soloing new admirals.
4. Mihawk:
Dude is the only person after swordgod ryuma to be able to make sword go permanent black feat jot even roger, oden , shanks has. Shanks might be master of king haki similar mihawk might be master of armament haki.
6. Sakazuki.
Oda himself said like Sakazuki if was MC he would fight OP in year. Meanwhile kaido, bm were unable after all this year and shanks just waited perfect timing when kaido and Bm are gone. Yonku might have advanced kings haki advance in fight but Sakazuki DF is krypton for all kind of advanced. Unless they use barto as susano lol.
7. Jack:
Dude fought with dog-cat for whole day and night without break and still they didn’t manage to beat him that explains his stamina, endurance, haki, raw power. People sleep on him, i dont know what queen has to be above jack, may be lasser and germa tech.
8. Crocodile:
Dude was introduced when op was plan only for 5years? Marineford crocodile shows lots of potential.
Dude has awakening DF can suck everyone, survive marineford, he is definitely Yonku commander level.
9. Enel:
Just because he doesn’t know haki and has weakass raw power doesn’t make him and his df weak. Dude can solo most of 2YC level characters, if he is not playing around.
10. Pika:
Pika is another character who was made weak cause Zoro completely destroyed him. But dude borderline 3YC level. Similar level or above Capon gang beg.
Meanwhile Momo, with minimal training, was able to release an attack that can damage an Admiral + his haki, but also 5 seconds ago he could barely light a stick on fire.
Make it make sense
That shit is not consistent lmao morj capping with saying oda cares about power scaling more than most mangaka
At this point, haki prowess is the power scale that will dictate the story
Props to whoever finds panels for morj for this video... this could not have been easy 🤣
Amazing video as always Morj. People have to accept OP is still an action based manga. Powerscalling will always be a thing. However, some people may go overboard. It’s still fun when done reasonably at the end of the day.
Going to be honest, thought this video was pretty weak and largely based on a false premise. I think most people acknowledge there is some degree of "power scaling" in One Piece. There is (usually) some logical consistency when it comes to character power levels. However, inconsistencies arise both from the fact the story has been going on for a very long time, and sometimes Oda simply throws scaling out the window for to serve the plot. And history has shown us there can be quite a bit of variation within a tier. Hence you can only go so far as a reader when it comes to scaling individual characters and why mini of us are dismissive of the more intense power scaling discussions. Can't say I have every seen someone try to argue Oda literally does not care about power scaling at all.
True
Exactly
I have definitely seen people say that Oda doesn't care about power scale at all and dismiss it entirely on premise. It's a thing.
@@YetiCoolBrother if oda forgoes some aspects of powerscaling, then that does mean he doesn’t care about powerscaling. Powerscaling is about consistency, if he tries in some aspects but completely disregards other aspects of it, then it still means he doesn’t care about powerscaling. Perfect example is the rate of growth for characters in the story. Some just get exponentially stronger in a short time frame, far beyond what others are able to with more training and more fights, without much of a reason why
The nut vs joyboy and morj arc about to hit
Often, I have some things I dislike in your videos or disagree is some aspects, or find missing perspectives. But with that video I have no such issues. Great narration, great arguments and examples, great editing, great pacing and etc. I think it's one of your best videos, thx man, GREAT JOB. Keep doing what you doing )
Well put. I’ve been revisiting bleach a lot. And while there is a lot I am retroactively appreciating, it totally puts into perspective how important relatively consistent powerscaling is. When you don’t have it wins and loses don’t mean anything. It’s hard to get excited when the scale is whatever it needs to be. And bleach is far better at it than something like fairy tail where the ceiling resets every arc.
I have a friend that cannot wrap his head around when I point out that haki is more important than devil fruit ability in the endgame.
There are exceptions of course, but overall, a person's haki can overpower most any kind of cheap trick. Its function is to do exactly that. One Piece would be *way* different if haki was never a thing and fights played out like how they do in Jojo's, but it's not like that. It's an interesting blend of both traditional power scaling *and* unique abilities that, due to great writing, actually makes sense in the same setting.
Hawkins, Law, Sugar, Kuma, etc. would be the strongest characters in the setting if it was designed to be similar to Jojo's, but again, it's not. Haki is what the endgame focuses on, and it makes sense for it to take center stage. It will make the confrontation between Luffy and Teech be even more potent.
How is your friend confused? You explained it pretty well here lol
I think there are 2 arguments there because in-world Sugar is actually a masive threat but in-story she's just not that important, so Oda will never have say an admiral be touched by Sugar, be forgetten and that's how he resolves the conflict. Even if it's logical it just won't happen in the story.
That's why i sometimes roll my eyes when Oda tries to hype up random fodder armies like the Germa or the gifters, because we all know that while in-world they might actually be athreat in-story they'll never be really relevant. The Germa army will never take down an important stablished character
to be fair,, i dont think the story makes a good job explaining what would stop a hax ability in a decently strong person to not be capable of beating yonko level threats. Think abilities like sugars toy making, ms goldenweeks color traps, perona's ghosts and so on, that seem to almost completely bypass ability level and can incapacitate regardless of your opponent strength.
What would stop someone thats as strong as say , a speedy swordsman Vice admiral with Sugars fruit from merely tagging kaido and thats it?
Now i actually think that Oda likely has something haki related to stop that from happening to some degree (it was somewhat hinted to with Law's fruit limitation in cutting just anyone's body into pieces agaisnt BM i think, although interesting a pirate of Don Chinjao's level equally feel victim to sugars ability) as merely to be able to tag a yonko is too low a bar for an ability to be nearly unbeatable, but he sure as hell has not emphasized this point enough if it is fact some haki related cap that stops this from being a problem.
It also doesnt fully solve the problem without making yonko (or some other very high level of strength in OP) to have some arbitrarily high level shield vs hax powers. If the gap between say in my example a vice admiral vs yonkou is too big a haki discrepancy then it can be a speedy shichibukai level opponent with the hax power, or if not something higher so unless the line is something like "equal higher proficiency to work or no sell" (like sure kill moves with low accuracy in pokemon games where they always fail if opponents pokemon is higher leveled) then i dont see how you fully get rid of the problem.
@@dantecrottogini529 do u realize hax powers like sugar's df power doesn't work on people with much stronger haki than themselves
@@jjfresh-qu5nw
Powerful devil fruits are more common than powerful haki. A haki technique isn't gonna give you the power to destroy an island, lift up islands, or destroy the whole world lol 😆
Morj said that he doesn't talk about Power scaling. New morj is obsessed with power scaling. True nature shines.
Never thought I’d see this video title from Morj of all youtubers
The idea that the Yonko and Admirals are comparable seems fair. I think Green Bull was more scared of facing an entire Yonko crew than he was of just Shanks
Facts
Or maybe admirals aren’t just yonko level... Don’t know why y’all don’t accept it. At this point just seems admirals aren’t threat to Luffy, they weren’t even scared that green bull was at Wano!
I don't think so because he went to Wano knowing Kaido is gone but his crew and the new Yonko and alliance was there. He was scarred off by the haki which is Shank's.
@@lulu_TheWitchBoy They chose not to interfere because Luffy understands this is a test to see if Wano can defend itself. its unlikely a greater threat than an admiral would be coming to Wano after Greenbull and they passed the test and Luffy didn't need to interfere.
What. The moment he felt the conqueror's haki, he already sht his pants. And the diarrhea goes full blown when he realized it was Shanks. Scared of facing an entire Yonko crew? Yeah right. Going after Luffy in his own territory lols. The copium is real
Actually you missed the fact that the marine had the help of the shishibukai in marineford, that's how they gain an edge. Yonko crew = Marine, Marine + shishibukai > Yonko crew
And you missed that luffy and the impel down prisonners cancel perfectly the shishibukai
@@idriss3823 so who cancels Mihawk in the escapes of impel down ?
@@Darrky65 the warlords werent even helping the marines.
Amazing thumbnail as always, Morj
Yo hahaha brilliant video needed this big time 🤣🤣
THANK you for this video, holy shit. Do people obsess over it too much? Absolutely! But that doesn't make it not relevant in OP. If an author just completely ignores the general powerscaling then the entire story becomes unsatisfying. Because that destroys the illusion that the story is really happening and it isn't just about whoever the author wants to win. In the end, it is about what the author wants, but good writing is about making the events believable. Making the events believable means making the levels of power consistent. And making the levels of power consistent means you can infer which characters are stronger than others.
Obviously, that doesn't mean that it's universal. Characters have unique powers and can do well in unique matchups. Some characters are exceptions within their general ranks. But people who think it just doesn't matter are actively choosing to ignore one of the best aspects of OP that Oda puts a TON of effort into making consistent and believable. Powerscaling matters in OP because Oda always has believable reasons for why characters win fights and never just bullshits. He might sometimes have asspulls and powerups that weren't set up (cough nika) but those powerups will EXIST and have an understandable reason why they would make the character stronger. It doesn't just make them hit harder because friendship.
I didn’t finish reading the comment but you grabbed me halfway through. Storytelling needs to feel real and characters need to feel like they really won an engagement vs the writer wanting them to win. The best writers can hide their intentions to engage the audience.
Why would an awakening be set up he just died then awakened, but I agree
Tldr
@@MarcoDToon Cope
I think it should come as a given that authors have some sort of idea of how strong some characters are relative to each other but in general, don’t think Oda has formulated who wins between King and Katakuri despite holding the same position in the same type of crew, because they are characters in different arcs who fought different characters. At most I guess King has a higher bounty than Katakuri.
Also not sure how this is different from other manga, like yeah characters usually are said to become stronger because they trained or have an ace up their sleeve to bring a fight to their favor.
It doesnt matter a lot or a too little it matters just right. As does all power scaling in everything with powers.
I like how Morj clearly removed that bit of fluff from his mic mid-recording.
This is crazy good stuff!
Noooooo. The title scares me!!!
Okay, Power scaling to me has always been just fans asking each other “will this character beat this character in a fight” and they may not necessarily even be in the same series.
What you’re explaining “power scaling” to be is the concrete way a storyteller will establish rules for their world’s “magic system”. Oda’s rules for the One Piece world need to have some scaling so it makes sense. But he often breaks his own rules because Devil Fruits are a wild card. Like Luffy being able to defeat Croc because he found out water is a weakness.
I think you’re completely right about Oda wanting to establish who’s stronger and weaker.
I'm glad this issue came up, because I have been thinking about this issue for some time now. I understand and accept that, being a Battle-Focussed Shonen, One Piece obviously has fighters who are on various different levels of strength. Luffy always taken on the biggest bad guy while Sanji, Zoro, et al always take on the subordinates. That's OK, and that's fine, because Oda always does a good job of making those battles still feel significant. A great example is actually the whole battle for Onigashima itself - even with 5,400 samurai, the good guys were heavily outnumbered, and that fact is repeatedly referenced and hammered home as being important. Tama and Chopper converting enemy fighters to their side was presented as something that mattered, because Luffy and co could not simply blow through all of the "fodder" pirates as if they were nothing. Sure, Usopp might not be able to fight Kaido or Doflamingo and he probably never will be, but he can do things Luffy can't do, things that STILL MATTER. One of the biggest reasons why powerscaling was hated in Dragon Ball was because it meant many fan-favorite characters got left completely in the dust with nothing they could meaningfully contribute to solving the current problem (try being a fan of Piccolo, Krillin, or Gohan, lol).
Here's one more example, however: Hajrudin vs Machvise (the Ton-Ton Fruit guy) from Dressrosa. Some people get so caught up in powerscaling that they assume that him breaking his arm and leg beating "one of Dofy's mid-tier officers" means that Hajrudin must be weak. But that overlooks the fact that Hajrudin just PUNCHED SOMETHING AS HEAVY AS 30 JUMBO JETS into the stratosphere, an incredible feat! Put it this way - if you took powerscaling way too literally, you would have to come to the bizarre conclusion that Luffy would be fine if 10,000 tons dropped on him, just because the guy who weighs 10,000 tons was "not on his level", which is absurd (yes, of course in reality he would just dodge, but you get my point - it doesn't make sense to assume that you can't be hurt by someone with a "lower power level").
I don’t know why some people don’t like powerscaling it’s fun heated debates with your boys on who can beat who.
It's probably depends on their fav character, if their fav character is a type that has the aura or image of strength then it's probably fun, but if their fav character doesn't posses that then it's no fun to them.
Thank you Morj, this is how I've always felt
There is probably also differences in power between the groups too. Like the original three admirals, Kizaru, Akinu, and Akioji are likely much stronger than Fujitora and Greenbull. Two pieces of evidence pointing to this are Doflamingo's interactions with Akioji and Fujitora and how Kizaru was so gung ho about taking on both Big Mom and Kaido while Greenbull was afraid of Kaido.
You can't compare post-timeskip Aokiji to a regular Admiral.
During his fight with Akainu they most likely both made incredible progress until one ultimately overcame the other, which got them both to reach a level worthy of the Fleet Admiral position they sought.
Or at least it would make sense considering haki blooming as well as the length of their battle.
And let me remind you that Doflamingo still tried to kill Smoker in front of Aokiji, and also stated that Fujitora and Ryokugyu were real monsters of power.
So we can't know for sure how they would compare to pre-timeskip Admirals 🤷♂️
Doffy knew fujitora coudnt arbitrarily get rid of his status, Aokiji in their encounter was no longer a Marine and had no compunction in killing him to protect smoker. Kizaru mentioned willing to go to Wano but the details of what he would do where never specified, (or what level of force he would take, kizaru with 5 vice admirals working in unison in a buster call like scenario may hold its own vs a yonkou). Idk where people get the idea GB feared kaido at least not any more than the respect you would expect an admiral would give a yonko level opponent.
Shanks is a celestial dragon and the admirals probably know thats why they can't really "touch" Shanks lol he still has some special privilege like Doflamingo
Kizaru was ready to go stop Kaido and Big Mom from meeting but doesn't wanna "touch" Shanks. Like Sengoku said "only cuz it's you Red Hair"
Lol nothing indicates the original 3 admirals are much stronger than the new ones. All the admirals are relative in power even if you have some stronger than some. Plus the new admirals suffer from being debuted in the new world where antagonist are much stronger.
You really left out the pannels and really cherry picked and mispresented the luffy and doffy example lol
It was literally about luffy not running away just because its an admiral, and he has to defeat them.
And doffy was sh*ting himself about kaido, not admiral.
Why do that lol?
And yeah luffy and co was recovering, so where king and queen plus we lack all context to gb vs king and queen
And since we got to see scabbard holding themselves, and yamato beeing serious challenge etc...how can you seriously think they would perform worse?
How can people be so blindly ignoring that? King and queen obviously where not full power and who knows if he sneaked up etc
yamato literally said that they needed luffy's help.
One of your best videos, very well explained.
Damn Morj, those gains are showing
Well thought out Morj. I always enjoyed Oda's meticulous power scaling and Luffy's creativity (combined with luck) often being the reason he leaps above the next tier. Funny though I never considered that at the end of this story Luffy will probably be the strongest man in the world. Certainly makes sense, as strength pairs quite well with the greatest level of freedom.
Haven't watched yet, but I do feel like there is some equivocation happening in the community. When people complain about powerscalers, what they're imagining are people who hold die hard positions on powerscaling *opinions* rather than those who try to stick to just the objective facts. There are many, many factors that go into deciding the outcome of a fight, and acting like any character no diffs any other character is childish and doesn't take into account those factors. It's important to realize that, especially in a series like One Piece, scale is something that is wildly inconsistent. This makes feats inconsistent as well, which are the measuring stick used very often in these discussions. It's okay to talk about how and to what extent the author has established the relative abilities of characters, of course, and I'd say understanding that is vital to understanding the stakes. But treating subjective takes like objective ones is what gets people riled up.
Yeah I think people aren't understanding eachother, powerscalers hear "powerscaling is ruining one piece" and think that means we shouldn't care about power at all and Woopslap could just as easily beat kaido in a 1v1 as he could lose to him, its just what Oda decides, which I don't think anyone seriously believes.
The feats arent inconsistent people just have poor interpretation skills and don't understand what a sliding scale is.
@@idiatico ok but Whoopslap could, you don't have "whoop" AND "slap" make up your name without being able to throw some hands 😤😤😤
@@rpgtimefire This is actual cope - It's okay to admit when there is a clear flaw in the story, christ.
@AndrewWithEase11 11 then please point out the inconsistencies?
Morj finally making a powerscaling video. It's about time.
Imo hierarchy is:
1 Yonko & fleet admiral
2 Admirals
3 Yonko top commanders & warlords
4 Vice Admirals & mid fighters in a pirate crew
It’d be interesting if there were nuance within the Admirals like there is for commanders. There’s no way GB can fight evenly with Kaido but I’m not gonna say Akainu or Kuzan cant come close.
Why can't he?
i mean the story definitely implies that, seeing as how kizaru wanted to pull up on kaido, while gb didn’t, but i think gb can definitely fight evenly with kaido for a good minute, he won’t get absolutely thrashed, but he would lose
what makes you so sure GB cant ? because he backed away from fighting Shanks with his crew?
I'd argue Akainu is Yonko level, his devil fruit is the most destructive in the series and his haki abilities are a mystery. Besides it would be no fun if current luffy Is going to fight a opponent weaker than Kaido.
@@miguelfonseca1104 Right that's what I'm saying. Backing out of what he thought was an easy win doesn't imply he couldn't hold his own.
I took the Kaido thing as him saying. Himself or the government wouldn't have swooped in because Wano was already occupied and it wouldnt be somewhere he could just stroll into. Not that he's afraid or incapable of fighting Kaido.
Powerscaling isn’t the issue, it’s (some of) the powerscalers imo.
I love dream matchups but some people don’t realize the obvious power gaps between certain characters even when implied by Oda himself.
Can state example based on the 'some of' because it question how much is 'some of', because if its not a lot then its not that bad all.
Another W video i didn't know i wanted. Morj aways coming with good video topics
Dude are you odas PA?
Thanks for the great content.
Keep up the great work.
If we compare hierarchies of yonkou crews with the admirals it will look something like this:
Younkou = Fleet Admiral
Commanders = Admirals
Tobi Roppo (just as example) = Vice Admirals
And so on, casually there are 3 admirals as there are usually 3 commanders. Is a way to see the stablished hierarchies in the marine end. It does not necessarily mean that Jack = Green Bull, but they share the same level of hierarchy within they group
I think I agree
no. admirals would obliterate any commanders, except for maybe ben beckman. so admirals are in between below yonko and above commanders
Green Bull literally beat Queen and King with minimal effort. Admirals are a cut above Yonko Commanders, no matter how you spin it.
Yonko>>> admirals
Admirals>commanders
Vice admirals and warlords= tobi ropo and executives
Agreed. I’ve always thought the commanders as a whole were on the level of all the admirals as a whole. Atleast when comparing the yonko group to the navy. The admirals tend to be stronger as the navy is a bit stronger than a yonko group but I hold the admirals to the mid and upper level commander characters. Like smoothie and king.
Dragonball stopped using the power scaling metric in the sayan saga. The gang already was using power in concentrated ways to overcome the difference in totals. At no point was power levels actually the most important thing. Technique was more important from day 1.
dbz had wack power scaling with a crazy fan base that took the power level numbers given in the frieza saga like mathematical gospel. So people will make the most insane functions and formulas to explain why the 10% difference between dodoria vs vegeta let to one outcome as opposed to a similar gap between max power frieza and ssj goku. Toriyama mostly came up with power levels as a guide to have a way to speak of relative strength without needing to show feats for every little comparison. To think his story for some insane mathematical consistency must follow their ad hoc calculations is bonkers.
@@miguelfonseca1104 I don't like labeling an entire fan base as anything. Morj talks about the negative aspects of one piece power scalers in this video. Fan bases are a diverse group and whatever you don't like about another fan base. Your favorite fan base has some of that too.
As to your DBZ analysis. I really think the evidence for power levels being a foolish measurement is there from the start. The heroes willingness to look past it is part of their strength from the beginning. It was more thematic than simple guide.
i felt that the power scaling in one piece was very fluid, like some characters get stronger over time while others stayed the same. unlike dragon ball where they always introduce new characters, we can see others get stronger over time, just by the hints we see in their appearances
This is probably the only Morj video that I actually enjoyed. Him going off on the idiots from Reddit who keep saying power scaling isn’t important and powerscalers are stupid is golden.
The only thing about one piece power scaling is it’s legit SO inconsistent
Example?
@@Sinsmoke_haki blooming in fights was a plot device to make Luffy strong enough to beat katakuri. That concept didn’t apply for law when fighting Doffy but then somehow Doffy is able to go fight big mom and win.
@@jayloncollins9681 when did doffy beat big mom?
@@Sinsmoke_ he meant law and yea he's clearly right where the fuck was his awakening to defeat doffy who he had history with and pretty much made him who he is too this day. law deserved alot better in dressrosa. one piece powwwer scaling sucks it will vary from arc to arc and it's plot heavy. idk why we waste time
Morj I've always gone by what you say about bounties, that it's done to hype up an event, and this video is a fantastic elaboration on that notion to balance out why people love powerscaling, and shonen as a whole. Thanks man.
The biggest exception to powerscaling in One Piece is Buggy-sama becoming Yonko & having Mihawk & Croco boy as his minions
This is why Mr Morj is the best CZcamsr he provides analyses with the realest view (most often) and a diplomatic delivery (always)
I feel HxH is an amazing example of trashing powerscaling & giving more substance to creative battles.
One piece can never do that lol
I don't have a problem with the idea of powerscaling but with powerscaling discussions in practice. I think we can all agree that One Piece has tiers of power which are clearly seperated from each other BUT with unclear rankings within a tier. So most discussions end up either comparing characters in different tier, in which case the difference is clear ; or comparing two characters in the same tier, in which case the difference is so small that it comes down to interpretation. In both cases, these discussions can't produce anything worth talking about since the conclusion is either obvious are so unclear that it could go either way depending on the needs of the story. Powerscaling is basically headcanon that no amount of pseudo-analysis can ever make relevant to the actual story.
Pretty much I would rank the following characters as “Strong”: King, Katakuri, Law, Jesus Burgess, Rob Lucci, Karasu and Ivankov. Still couldn’t tell you how strong they are besides I guess they wouldn’t beat a Yonkou or an Admiral 1v1.
Exactly there are many many characters that are so close as to be indistinguishable. And really the specific circumstance of when where and how there powers match up would be big factors as well which we wouldn’t know either.
SPITTING HARD CORE FACTS
I don't think it's universally headcannon for characters in the same tier. We can at the very least say who'd most likely win based on feats or abilities.
But King vs Katakuri is a good example of powerscaling being unknown. Because Katakuri should have no way to harm King's body (which was unharmed by Enma slashes that hurt Kaido, whom Wholecake Luffy couldn't damage), and we have no idea if King can overcome Katakuri's future sight and land hits. Now who'd win a fight like THAT is headcannon.
Peak Morj Analysis. He explained the system we all vaguely understand in depth and comprehensible in und 20 Minutes. Chapeau
This kind of content I subscribed for.
I think Powerscaling has actually become a bit of a problem for Oda nowadays because it's hard to cut from the rooftop, where the biggest and strongest characters in the series are fighting, to go give Chopper a fight. Chopper will have to fight a character way weaker and it can be hard to make that exciting or at the very least it would take a lot of pages to do so. I think that's why Oda has given less spotlight (and fights) to the SHs since the time-skip, he needs to focus on more "important" characters (to the One Piece world i mean)
I dont think that's an issue at all, if anything giving important battles to those not on the higher tuer of strength would only be a good thing, as it could still keep that level of combat prevalent in the story to characters it would make sense with and not have all fights look the same. It's one of many fans' biggest criticisms of Dragonball and Naruto, that after a certain point characters we loved but weren't "top tier" in strength weren't getting action despite their interesting abilities and the fights we were getting were just explosive slugfests and long abandoned the scale of combat presented in the story before. Hell, ppl spent like, a decade complaining about Robin not getting a 1v1 till Black Maria lol. And there are some that feel that way about Chopper too. And why many felt most the Tobi roppo battles were disappointing cause panel time was jumpy for them.
@@MagillanicaLouM to be clear i'd love for every SH to get a fight but i think in Oda's mind it's hard to give the spotlight to less important fights and not make them feel kinda udnerwhelming
So now Chopper has to fight characters way above our expectations. That sounds like set up for a dope Chopper fight
@@dantecrottogini529 i guess, it's all on what he has to juggle i suppose. An alliance with samurai relevant to the specific art, law and kidd, and Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Robin, Franky, Jinbei, a lot are gonna get passed up as they were
@@TwoForFlinchin1 yeah but if he wins a lot of people will complain about plot conviniences or incinsistency in power scaling and if he looses people will say the fight was a waste of pages because it was obious he wouldn't win. Oda is between a rock and a hard place
I Think pre-Germa unlocked genes Sanji was a good measure of other characters' strengths as well. The skirmishes against Vergo, Doflamingo, Oven,Page 1 and King painted a clear picture of how those characters stacked up against each other especially the Vergo and Doffy and Page 1 and King comparisons
Insane video!
Personally, I love how Oda utilizes power scalling in universe, what I dislike is some of the conversations coming out of it. To be more precise, I dislike how many members of the community dismess narrative and thematic point to satisfy the concieved power scale of the world. I feel I am not being clear so let's use an example. In act 2 and early in act 3 of Wano, Luffy set himself the goal to take down Kaido, many dismissed Luffy's own motivation, the personal challenge set by Kaido, and the Straw Hats progression in the New World in favor of the finale being a group battle because the power scalling. Another example is how many people said the story got bad because Luffy got hurt by Apoo to remind him not to get careless, or when the Scabbards got a cut on Kaido, even though it is what we built up for dozens and dozens of chapters.
Again, I don't think Power Scalling in itself is bad, nor the discussions about, and I'm aware all sort of conversations can end up in a similar toxic mindset, but I think in the One Piece community there is a recurring tendancy of the narrative and themes of the stories being trivialized in favor of mental gymnastics regarding this one singular aspect of the story.
Ah, i said this in another comment. Kaido could easily speed blitz all the scabbards. He could easily have killed many members of the alliance just by going to his final form. Pointless semantics like this are brought up all the time, ive seen some people use this stuff to say zoro is as fast as kaido when the story simply will not allow that.
Narrative > scaling
Always has been.
I think Yonkos and Admirals are pretty equal with each other. I think people see Yonkos as stronger due to the freedom they have. No rules and are able to have major power in territories due to that freedom. For Admirals they have to follow orders, they can’t just go all out and need to protect the civilians and the World Dragons. They need to do things within the system, as for pirates they can break that system with their beliefs and are able to go all out because of that. Luffy’s fights have mostly been pirates, Pirate King is his goal and he needs to surpass those Warlords, Commanders and the Emperor to have the strength to fight the World Government. When Luffy reaches that level he will then fight against Admirals that doesn’t need to hold back anymore. I’m not saying the Admirals are stronger, I’m saying Luffy will be strong enough to finally fight them by himself. He isn’t strong enough to one on one a Yonko (excluding Buggy) yet so when he does I think it’ll be against an Admiral that has orders to go all out. Greenbull didn’t have orders to go to Wano and he was at a disadvantage with Shanks’ crew and the alliance still their. So I think when the time comes we will see how strong they are.
W
L
Yeahhhh no, Luffy aint winning against Buggy. Plain delusional
This narrative that Luffy isn't "Yonko level" yet needs to stop. He is stronger than Kaido. Luffy did 1v1 Kaido and win. If your argument is he wasn't at full health when they fought, guess what Luffy was more hurt than Kaido. Gear 5 Luffy was straight up whopping Kaido. Before gear 5 he was weaker that's why he lost. Rn Luffy is stronger than Kaido and Big mom
admirals can go all out you really think akainu cares about civilians ? also luffy cares about civilians ajd he’s a pirate. did you watch morjs chapter review? Green bull said pirate commanders aren’t worth his time so why was he scared of shanks crew ? he was terrified and frozen by shanks and shanks wasn’t even on the same island. also how can admirals be stronger than yonko when green bull said he would never come if kaido was there and if at a young age big mom was considered for FLEET ADMIRAL position but just admiral but fleet. This was before her df and when she was only a child
Damn bro, on most youtube video I put a commen even before I've watched the video. Then As I get feedback I completly ignore the video and focus on the comments, but Morj you gotta be one of the very few youtubers I listen without pausing a single Time
I love how the grandline is set up. it's a straight line where everyone starts at the same spot. since the goal is at the end of the line, everyone is traveling the same way. it's a giant ranked ladder. you go forward until you can't go anymore. the further you go the stronger the people around you are. it's such a smart way to have natural progression of strength. other manga, the bad guys just show up to fight the hero and they just happen to be stronger than the last bad guy.
Your content is fire man. No akainu
There is a huge difference between scales of power in the show and powerscaling in the community.
Powerscalers always complain about Oda scaling his characters but tbh, Oda does an excellent job in showing who is stronger and who is weaker. Just don't assume and go overboard.
There is a difference between "I think X is stronger than Y" and "omg you are so stupid, y wins against X mid difficulty lololololol"
Morj spittin’ facts, yet again 🔥
This actually made me see powerscaling diff.. great job Morj
I feel like Morj was taking shots at KOL with that power scaling toxicity talk lmao.