I love how they just keep walking forward instead of moving aside. Liars. They actually just want a lil hug from their captain before everything goes downhill.
the great irony of early one piece antagonists believing zoro was the actual captain and using luffy as a puppet ... oda really threw us a bone and curb-stomped it right in our faces. yes, zoro could be a captain in his own right. yes, zoro could match luffy in strength. yes, zoro knows this perfectly well. and you know what? he chose luffy two years ago, and he will continue to choose luffy again and again. roronoa zoro, the pirate hunter, who followed a wannabe pirate with a nonexistent crew on a whim because luffy brought him his swords and made a half-assed attempt at a bargain. zoro, who made a vow to never lose again on both his and luffy's honor. zoro, who told luffy he'd make him commit harakiri if he got in the way of zoro's goal, only to turn around and be willing to sacrifice his dream if it means that luffy reaches his. zoro, who stood in place and took luffy's pain and told a warlord to take his head instead of luffy's, who got down on his knees before his supposed rival and begged mihawk to mentor him so that he could return strong enough to protect his captain. zoro, who has conqueror's haki- a natural born leader- but chooses to stay at the right hand of a man he has deemed greater than himself.
and the thing that luffy fears most? being alone. being rejected. being left behind. and what should have been his foil- the pirate hunter to his pirate king, the nonbeliever to his divine, the king of hell to his sun god- instead becomes his first and most devout follower; the one who demands to follow him to hell and back. oughhhggg i'm sick to my stomach
small aside but y'know how luffy's stupidity is usually met with physical abuse of some kind? anyway. here's law's worst in response to luffy being manipulated by his arch nemesis
Mihawk is such a capricious dude, oh my god. The only dude you know who is always itching for a fight but only ever a specific kind of fight so he goes out of his way to take the path of least resistance for everything else.
Like he would rather leave than fight Don krieg, Sail away than decimate the marines, live in peace instead of challenging the other emperors for the one piece. And when they do he’d rather follow buggy’s idea of just being smarter about how they go about it instead of brute forcing it like the rest. He is constantly leaving fights but then a swordsman of mild repute and an interesting technique engages him in a battle and suddenly you have his whole attention. Like with vista it was obvious that he could have just cleared him like he did everyone else but he’d never seen the flower sword techinque and by god was he going to miss this chance. And so he engages him in what is essentially a spare.
Because Mans isn’t looking for a fight, instead, like a middle aged director of a short indie film, he’s chasing a feeling.
He wants to feel like his 19 year old self did when he was strong but there were people stronger. When there were still obstacles to overcome limits to exceed. When the world was large and exciting and he wasn’t just waiting for it to catch up with him. When he could look at Shanks as the person he is instead of the person he could have been.
He wants to look at Shanks and not see visions of a grinning red haired boy with 2 arms and a strawhat laughing in the dirt and asking for “just one more round Hawky I swear I’ll beat you this time”
But there is nowhere Mihawk can run that that boy won’t haunt him.
Ideal ending to WCI is Luffy seeing Sanji cry and then awakening his devil fruit and unlocking Gear Fifth out of sheer RAGE and saying the classic line of “Who made you cry, Sanji?! I’ll DESTROY THEM!!!” and then proceeding to go on a rampage and fucking absolutely EVERYBODY up including the Vinsmokes, Pudding, AND the Big Mom Pirates. Toss in the trope of came back wrong and Sanji can immediately tell something is not right about this Luffy, whose smile is too wide, whose eyes are too distant, who continues to beat upon his enemies long after they’re down, who seems to take a sick sort of pleasure in hurting others, who grins and giggles and tells Sanji he’ll obliterate anything that makes him cry. Eventually he starts to scare Sanji so bad that even Luffy notices his reaction, and immediately turns on himself because if HE’S the one making Sanji cry then he’ll just have to destroy himself too. And that’s when Sanji finally leaps into action and does whatever he can to reach Luffy—including kissing him. Luckily that was exactly what Luffy needed to snap out of it, and when he comes to the Whole Cake Chateau is in broken pieces, the Big Mom Pirates are battered beyond fighting and the Vinsmokes are nowhere to be seen. And softly, tiredly, he asks if they won, if he can bring Sanji home, and Sanji cries again and says yes, take me home to the Sunny, I want to go home with you.
I was once again thinking about this goofy Luffy moment after his Lucci punch™ and i had to see it frame by frame.
first the force of it throws them both away, and while Lucci is seen on screen tumbling for a long moment, Luffy is just away in a blink of an eye.
and then his funny scene - his legs are like jelly that he tries to get under control,
he stumbles, falls, rolls into a mix of all his limbs and eyes,
and then only the cloud behind him cushions his fall
- which would be interesting if he can subconsciously control that while he tries to regain the control over his movements - that the environment around him still adapts to his awakened Devil Fruit abilities and morphs to help him. Where others would probably fall through that cloud, for Luffy that cloud backs him up like a trampoline.
that thing luffy does when he's shy or too excited about something, pulling the straw hat down to cover his face, but it happens whenever zoro kisses him because it's really overwhelming and he doesn't know what to do with these new feelings that make him so so happy.