#big shout out to luffy and law in the rooftop fight

[nururu]

oh also???? law protecting Zoro????? throwing away the "plan" (which he has been being SOOOOOO annoying about) just to make sure Zoro doesn't die? during thriller bark and sabaody and Zoro's time at mihawks I was SOOOOO upset that no one was recognizing how sacrificial he was being and how he was on his last leg, and no one was stepping in for him until it was too late. I owe my life to perona for taking care of him.

[hyperbolicreverie]

I think there’s an interesting observation to be made about how there appears to be a narrative pattern ongoing in One Piece about how the rising stars of the new generation of pirates also seem to be the ones who genuinely care about the people close to them.

Luffy’s a given here. All of the Straw Hats are, really. The entire crew is fantastically devoted to each other and their dreams. Multiple times one of them has been willing to sacrifice a lot to protect the rest of the crew from whatever adversary has reared its ugly head. They’ve fought governments and Emperors over it, and Luffy will never accept a world in which his crew or anyone else he cares about is allowed to hurt.

But let’s look at the two other boys out here beating an Emperor:

Law literally sent his crew away rather than risk them getting hurt in his crusade against Doflamingo. He was absolutely incensed at the suggestion Bepo, Shachi and Penguin could have ever betrayed them, and then willingly offered himself up to Hawkins' torture to rescue them when the only other suggestion was to kill them. He was also just straight-up willing to die if that ended up being the price for dragging Luffy into the fight on Dressrosa.

Kid is pretty consistently depicted as an angry, murderous bastard, but from day one in Sabaody it was clear that even he has his lines in the sand. We’ve spent less time with him than Law or Luffy, but he’s received some lovely, if subtle characterization in Wano, and part of that was showing how incredibly protective he is of Killer. For Kid, it’s clear that if you hurt someone he cares about, the price is to be paid in blood.

And let’s actually single out Zoro and Killer here too: Zoro, of course, has his famous “nothing happened” moment–among several other examples of protectiveness throughout the series–and, though the exact details are a bit hazy, Killer willingly ate a SMILE fruit for the chance to save his captain and crew.

(You can also look at Bege for this tendency. He’s definitely not the nicest guy, but this man loves his family and his crew and literally uses his body to protect them. And even if his plans against Big Mom failed, I don’t think she’s forgetting his attempt any time soon).

I think it’s also interesting to note that Hawkins and Apoo, who have both received beatdowns to a degree in Wano, are the captain who literally uses his subordinates as sacrifices, and the one whose entire modus operandi seems to be “betray your current allies as soon as that status becomes mildly inconvenient,” respectively. The narrative has explicitly made them pay for these tendencies: Hawkins tried to take Law’s crew and Killer’s captain hostage and both times ended up at the wrong end of a furious man with a sharp blade, and Apoo will probably survive Onigashima like the cockroach that he is, but he was betrayed by Queen in a wonderful example of karma, and got smacked around a bit by both Zoro and Kid.

The jury is out on the rest of the Worst Generation, just because we haven’t seen much of them. Drake could be an interesting case–he definitely had to be willing to do some terrible things while undercover, and we don’t know if his crew are actually pirates or if he dragged a bunch of marines out with him to play pirate with him. But I think we need more information on him before the jury can rule for or against him, and as he’s not really a pirate, he might not count towards this theme anyway.

But I think it’s a really interesting bit of flavor to add to the ongoing theme of a new generation being ascendant–a theme that’s been in the background since the parallel speeches from Whitebeard and Law we got that alluded to the ending of an era and the start of a new one at Marineford and Punk Hazard. Except the further we’ve gotten into the New World, the more and more that theme has been moving into prominence, to the point that Wano is practically shouting it from the rooftops.

And these tendencies stand in stark contrast to how Kaido and especially Big Mom have been portrayed. These are people who have held on to their empires by sacrificing and subjugating the people they should have protected, and now they're facing off against opponents who have all demonstrated that, even if it is not the crux of why they are fighting the Emperors--because let's be real, Kid has no reason to actually care about the people of Wano--they choose to allow themselves to care. Messily and selfishly and not universally, sure: but they care.

Now, none of the people I’ve mentioned are saints; they’re pirates, not heroes. But they’re pirates that given the choice between someone they care for hurting and material benefits to themselves will pick their people every damn time. 

And those are the people who have started upsetting the foundations of how the world has worked thus far.

TLDR: The rooftop battle on Onigashima is literally the five most ride or die people in the Worst Generation versus two people who have been serially abusing their family and others for years.