#a flashback from Laboon’s pov
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readwing · 2 months ago
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Absolutely sobbing in the club at the idea that season two of the One Piece live action will have Laboon
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pushovermediacritic · 11 months ago
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One Piece's New vs Old Flashback Style
This is not an argument about which style is better, just a discussion and analysis on how Oda's writing has changed.
Almost all One Piece flashbacks focus on a Mentor/Mentee relationship. The Mentor dies or something else bad happens to them and the Mentee lives to modern-day, inheriting the Mentor's Will. The main difference between the Old Style and New Style is which one is the Point-Of-View character. In the Old Style, the Mentee is the POV character. In the New Style, the Mentor is the POV character.
You can see a gradual transition away from the Old Style to the New Style.
Luffy: Old Style. Luffy is the Mentee POV, Shanks is the Mentor.
Zoro: Old Style. Zoro is the Mentee POV, Kuina is the Mentor.
Usopp: Old Style. Usopp is the Mentee POV, Banchina is the Mentor (even as short as this one is, it still fits the pattern).
Sanji: Old Style. Sanji is the Mentee POV, Zeff is the Mentor.
Nami: Old Style. Nami is the Mentee POV, Bellemere is the Mentor.
Chopper: Old Style. Chopper is the Mentee POV, Hiriluk is the Mentor.
Vivi: Old Style. Vivi is the Mentee POV, Koza is the Mentor (he teaches her to be bold and have friends, and the bad thing that happens to him is the reveal that he's the leader of the rebels in modern-day).
Skypiea. Old Style. Kalgara is the Mentee POV, Noland is the Mentor (the flashback is a story told to Wyper and begins and ends on Kalgara, he's the main character and Noland teaches him about modern medicine).
Franky: Old Style. Franky is the Mentee POV, Tom is the Mentor.
Robin: Old Style. Robin is the Mentee POV, Saul/Clover are the Mentors.
Brook: Old Style (though I think this is where the New Style starts, since Yorky isn't much of a mentor but Brook serves as a mentor of sorts to Laboon, and it does end with Brook's death).
Ace/Sabo/Luffy: Arguable. If it's Old Style, the mentee POV is Luffy. If it's New Style, though, the mentor POV is Ace. I'm honestly not sure which is more accurate.
Fishman Island: The first half is Old Style. Jimbei is the Mentee POV and Fisher Tiger is the Mentor. The second half is New Style. Otohime is the Mentor POV and Shirahoshi is the Mentee.
Rebecca/Kyros. Rebecca is the Mentee, Kyros is the Mentor. We see this flashback twice, once in the Old Style where Rebecca is the POV and then again in the New Style where Kyros is the POV.
Law/Doflamingo. Law is the Mentee, Corazon is the Mentor. Law's segment is Old Style from his POV, but Doflamingo's segment twists the story into also being New Style from Corazon's POV.
Sanji and Germa: Old Style. Sanji is the Mentee POV, Sora is the Mentor.
Pedro: New Style. Pedro is the Mentor POV, Carrot is the Mentee.
Big Mom: Old Style. Linlin is the Mentee POV, Mother Carmel is the Mentor.
Oden: New Style. Oden is the Mentor POV, Kin'emon is the Mentee.
Yamato: Old Style. Yamato is the Mentee POV, Ushimaru is the Mentor.
Kuma: New Style. Kuma is the Mentor POV, Bonney is the Mentee.
The rare flashbacks that don't fit in either style tend to be really short (Senor Pink, Katakuri, and Kaido), or the Zou Battle, which is more of a recap.
It's also interesting to think about how certain flashbacks would be portrayed differently if they were told in the other style.
Old style flashbacks in the New Style would be like: we see Shanks' life story before he met Luffy, Zeff's life before meeting Sanji, Bellemere's life before adopting Nami, Hiriluk's life before meeting Chopper, Tom's life before adopting Franky, or Fisher Tiger's life before forming the Sun Pirates.
New style flashbacks in the Old Style would be like: we see from Kin'emon's POV and only hear about Oden's pirate adventures, or we see from Bonney's POV and only hear about Kuma's past and Ginny.
I think a lot of this style transition has to do with Oda growing older and identifying more with mentor characters than mentee characters, but also the New Style allows him to cover a much longer period of time, adding in more lore and story. As the story grows bigger and reaches its climax, it necessitates more exposition, and it's easier to do that by telling the life story of an older person meeting a young one rather than the story of a young person meeting an older one.
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