#dude just GIVE HIM A ROBIN you have the winning formula RIGHT THERE

[brionysea]

turns out if you love a superhero story that found its origins in subverting an overdone trope (spider-man as a young character being his own hero instead of a sidekick) then trying to enjoy the stories it was trying to subvert in the first place is an effort in frustration (whatever the hell batman media is doing with all those robins)

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE SERIES: My Favorite One Piece Arc with Maffew

  I love One Piece and I love talking to people who love One Piece. And with the series going on 23 years now, there is a whole lot to talk about. As the series is about to publish its 1000th chapter, a true feat in and of itself, we thought we should reflect upon the high-seas adventure and sit down with some notable names in the One Piece fan community and chat about the arcs they found to be especially important, or just ones they really, really liked.

  Welcome to the next article in the series "My Favorite One Piece Arc!"

  My next guest in this series is Maffew, creator of the popular pro wrestling web series Botchamania. For my chat with him, he chose the Alabasta Arc, in which Luffy and his crew not only have to save a desert kingdom but also topple Baroque Works and its powerful leader Crocodile.

  A note on spoilers: If you haven't seen the Alabasta arc yet, this interview does contain major plot points. Watch the Alabasta arc starting RIGHT HERE if you'd like to catch up or rewatch!

    Dan Dockery: So I guess my first basic question is, let’s say for some reason, I got to the end of Drum Island and I said “Well, One Piece ends here for me. This seems like a good finale.” What would you tell me to keep me going into the Alabasta Arc in one sentence?

  Maffew: Well, after Chopper has made all the kids cry, you’ll need pickin’ up.

  That’s pretty good! What was the impetus for you getting into One Piece? What made you want to jump into an anime that’s nearly one thousand episodes long at this point?

  I think I tried watching it on YouTube back in 2009, and I just couldn’t get into it. At that point in my life, I wasn’t ready for a character like Luffy and his adventures, and I couldn’t wait for the villains he fought to kill him. So I dropped it. A year later, I’m in Germany and this wrestler ACH was doing a Q&A panel for this German wrestling organization called WXW. And ACH is a REALLY big One Piece fan, and even dresses up as Luffy in New Japan and Ring of Honor. And I was like “Hey, you watching JoJo?” because that was my thing at the time, and he was like “No, no. Just One Piece.” I said, “What else are you watching?” “Just One Piece.” And I’m like “Wait, what? Just the one?” But he was sellin’ it to me like he was a One Piece ad on QVC. And guys like Steve Yurko are so passionate about it, and if one person tells ya to watch something, you’re like “Eh, whatever,” but if five people tell you, you start to pay attention. So I’m gonna blame ACH and my good friend Steve Yurko for this.

    What do you like about this arc in particular?

  You get so much wonderful worldbuilding. They go to Alabasta, meet up with Mr. 2, and it’s one of those cool interactions where they’re meeting, but they don’t know who they are meeting exactly, like when they meet Blackbeard in Jaya. So later on, they’re like “Oh, it’s THEM!” There’s a real sense of everything not being really pre-determined at this point. It’s building everything through a bunch of pirates just doing stuff. Ace shows up, knocks out some assassins so he can get his royalty checks.

  That’s such a funny way to put it.

  Then we get Kung-Fu Dugongs, and they’re a pretty pure expression of One Piece. They’re all synchronized, they’re adorable, they play their part amid all the serious stuff, and they’re completely ridiculous, but they work anyway. And it’s with Alabasta that Eiichiro Oda starts to perfect the tropes that he puts into place throughout, with the new islands, the new leader who everyone loves but is actually a bad person, the crew having to deal with him and the Navy, them having to help put someone back in their position, etc. And even though, on paper, it reads like “Well, he’s gotta beat this dude and this dude and this dude,” it’s so much more chaotic and less formulaic than you’d expect. It keeps things interesting. 

  I agree. I like how he takes all of these pieces and he’s consistent with them, but Oda always plays around with how he sets them up.

    But it’s all a foot massage before the real reason to watch Alabasta: Sir Croc. 

  Are you a big fan of him? That dude is so cool, conniving and powerful. He’s kinda the perfect villain. 

  Back when I was being miserable and first watching One Piece, I really liked him. I like the design, the sand powers that could actually pose a threat. I always appreciate it when a villain provides actual tension. It’s like why I think Goldeneye is still the best James Bond film. Because Alec Trevelyan is constantly reminding Bond “Remember, I could kill you. I’m from the same place as you. I can take your exploding watch and just, eh, I’ll stop that then. Thank you.” And Luffy loses twice to him in the three-match structure that really works here as it did for wrestling in the 70s.

  How so?

  So you’d have somebody like champion Bruno Sammartino and someone like Ivan Koloff or one of the Wild Samoans or Stan Stasiak. They’d have one match where the hero would beat Bruno by disqualification. Bruno’s still around to fight, but he’s lost. Luffy survives being thrown in the sand, but he’s been beaten. Then they have the second match, where Bruno would win because the villain would just give up and leave and get counted out. Luffy attacks Crocodile with water, but it’s not enough, and Crocodile just kinda leaves Luffy thinking it’s all done. And then Bruno would be like “Oh no ya don’t. Next time, you won’t be able to escape, because we’re gonna be in a cage match.” And then Bruno wins, just like Luffy wins by punching Crocodile up through that giant enclosed space. He escapes the cage.

      It’s just so satisfying and that’s a great way to describe it. So, villains in the series have had extensive crew members before, but they haven’t been as recognizable and colorful as Croc’s crew, Baroque Works. Do you have a favorite member?

  They’re all good in their own way, but at this point, I’m gonna go with Mr. 2. Eh, that’s probably too obvious an answer…

  Mr. 2 is a lot of people’s favorite member. 

  Oh, who cares. I’ll go with Mr. 2. I like how Mr. 2 interacts with everyone, having fun with the boys and fighting Sanji with kicks but respecting him. 

  So, in this arc, there’s a lot of government intrigue and a revolution is about to happen, and everyone’s dissatisfied with their perception of the monarchy. How did you react to all of this political drama in One Piece? 

  Well, it’s great because you have Vivi, and you get to learn her motivations and because she’s on the crew, it gives you a reason to care for the crew and how all of the political intrigue affects them. Without her, you’d just hear about a war and say “Oh, sorry about that. Hope it goes well.” And with all this lore being thrown at you because you have Vivi and that connection, it’s adding to the main conflict, rather than distracting.

  Yeah, Vivi really grounds it all with a personal attachment. Because otherwise it’s just savin’ the kingdom, which is cool and they’re good for it, but it doesn’t have the same impact. So, they did this back in the Arlong Park arc, but what returns here is the kind of 1 vs 1 match structure, where a member or members of the enemy crew are matched up against a Straw Hat or Hats. Mr. 1 has knife body parts, so he’s obviously gonna fight Zoro. Mr. 2 kicks and Sanji kicks, etc. What do you think about that kind of matchmaking, because it’s also a little wrestling-esque.

    Yeah, right, like if you have D-Generation X fighting the Nation of Domination, you can’t just have The Rock fighting Triple H. Ya gotta have D’Lo Brown vs X-Pac and The Godfather vs Billy Gunn. I like it because the characters feel like they have to prove themselves, like Zoro’s a swordsman, and he’s gotta test himself against another swordsman. And Usopp does it when he fights Mr. 4 and Miss Merry Christmas with Chopper, because they have a weird dynamic and they’re fighting two people and they have no clue what they’re up against. 

  So, at the end of the arc, they do the iconic “We can’t let Vivi become associated with pirates so we’ll hold up the X symbols on our arms in solidarity” pose. What did you think about that? Because it’s one of the most famous images in One Piece, and it’s hard to avoid it, even if you’ve never watched the series. Was that your first time seeing it?

  It actually was. And I’m glad you brought this up because I was watching it and I thought “Wait, they’re just going? They’re not even keeping the duck?” And then they do that with the X and the original opening starts playing and I get goosebumps just remembering it. That really hit me. Because it finally got me really emotionally invested in the series. Made me feel a bit cheeky. 

      ONE PIECE LIGHTNING ROUND!

  So, considering you’re such a huge pro wrestling fan, your lightning round is gonna be a bit different. I’m gonna say a Straw Hat that’s in the crew at this point and you tell me which wrestler they’re the most like. You can also tell me what time period they’d fit the most in, since wrestler personalities tend to change. So, Luffy?

  Gotta be Cena. Specifically? With Luffy’s attitude? Probably 2015 defending-the-United States-Championship John Cena.

  Zoro?

  He’s all business, he likes to fight. So I gotta go with Cesaro.

  Sanji?

  Going with Eddie Guerrero.

  Usopp?

  That character is all over wrestling - the underdog who isn’t very good and uses every trick in the book to win. Gonna go with MJF. He had one of my favorite matches of this year against Cody Rhodes and he just had to use EVERYTHING to beat him - brass knuckles, distraction, chairs, everything he could to get that win. But he could be MJF, could be The Miz, could be Mikey Whipwreck from ECW, take your pick.

  Nami?

  Hmmm. Becky Lynch. 

  Chopper?

  KeMonito 

  Robin?

  Oh, she shows up after being booed for ages and you’re supposed to like her, so 2019 Charlotte Flair.

      Stay tuned for the next installment of "My Favorite One Piece Arc" as we speak with One Piece's official English manga translator Stephen Paul on his favorite One Piece arc: Skypiea!!

      Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Daniel Dockery

[buttdawg]

Think I'm caught up on the World Tag League now. Some observations:

It doesn't look like Dangerous Tekkers is doing so hot in this thing. I forget how many matches they have to wrestle, but I think they're 2-3 so far, which doesn't sound great. I think Juice and David Finlay are in the lead with 8 points. DT only has four.

Then again, the lesson I learned watching the G1 was that these round robins are almost impossible to call this early in. I thought Jon Moxley was in good shape to win B-block because he got five straight wins to start off, while big stars like Jay White and Naito were having really lackluster runs. But White managed to build a winning streak of his own, and Mox couldn't score that much-needed sixth victory. So it's likely that Juice/Finlay are only winning big now because they're due to hit a rough patch later.

I think that's the formula with these tournaments. A few entrants flame out early on, so by the halfway point, you already know they're mathematically eliminated. The you have guys who sort of win every other match. Some of them manage to stay in contention to the end, and they're kind of the dark horses in the tournament. Ibushi was a dark horse, at least to my way of thinking. He lost to KENTA and EVIL pretty early on, so I was convinced he couldn't pull this off, since Okada was on such a roll. Maybe everyone else knew Ibushi would win the G1, but I was somewhat surprised to see him win A Block.

Anyway, it feels like Juice/Finlay are in the Okada or Moxley role right now, building an early lead before the others start to catch up. The Tekkers can still win this thing, especially since they hold a win over Juice/Finlay. But I feel like they're just sort of there to be there. Zach Sabre Junior seems confident about winning, but I don't see it yet.

G.O.D. looks more solid on points. I think they're 3-1 so far, but that could just be designed to make them look strong in the tournament. They're the champions, so they ought to beat most of the other teams. I guess there's not much point to having them win the tournament, since the whole point is to establish a #1 contender, but they should probably be one of the top scoring teams.

Mostly, these matches I've watched have been pretty low-key affairs. Both teams had really standout performances against Suzuki & Archer, and against each other, but the other matches have just been pretty good. I like the relaxed feel to it, honestly, where these guys are mostly just mixing it up in a small venue with no commentary and minimal camera work. But I'm not expecting bigger and better matches against some of the upcoming teams. Honma and Makabe, Goto and Fredericks, these seem like ad hoc teams set up to fill out the tournament. The matches should he enjoyable, but I saw a lot of these dudes in tag matches on G1 Climax undercards, so I don't expect much more than that.

I guess the big team to look forward to is SANADA and EVIL, since they won this tourney in 2017 and 2018. I get the sense that they're the only "proper" team in this thing besides the G.O.D. Maybe I'm wrong, but the rest look like a bunch of singles wrestlers who paired off. I think Dangerous Tekkers might become a full-on thing, but it doesn't have to. Ishii and YOSHI-HASHI have chased the tag titles before, so maybe this tournament is about getting some of these guys to bond into a more permanent unit. I hope so. We need more of that in wrestling.

I've been thinking about tag team wrestling a lot, since AEW has really been pushing to make it important again. WWE has tried to revitalize their tag division several times over the years, but it never sticks, and I think I've finally figured out why. Every time I watch a tag match in AEW or New Japan, I keep instinctively expecting teammates to turn on each other. Heel team loses a match? One of them should blame the other and attack them. Face team loses a match? One guy should attack the other and turn heel to set up a singles fued. Scorpio Sky gets a title shot against Jericho? The other two guys in SCU should betray him out of jealousy.

And it never happens, which is a good thing, because if they did it every time I expected it, then they'd run out of tag teams. The problem WWE has always had is that they pull that trick way too often, which is why I've been conditioned to expect it. It's like they don't know any other way to book a tag team except to split them up. And usually, neither guy gets over. Yeah, Shawn Michaels turned into a big deal when he turned on Marty Janetty, but Enzo and Big Cass tanked hard. Their teamwork may have been the best thing those two had, and they destroyed it on a whim.

What I like about the World Tag League is how the Dangerous Tekkers support each other, win or lose. They seem to really enjoy working together, and they don't point fingers when they lose. When they beat Suzuki and Archer, there was a moment where it looked like the whole Suzuki-gun stable might collapse, but instead they all did fist bumps and congratulated Zach for the win. I've been watching backstage comments where it's clear that Goto and Fredericks aren't doing well, and Fredericks blames himself because he's a rookie, but Goto's chill about it, and seems to take this whole tournament as a way to mentor Karl Fredericks. He's not going to turn on Karl because this story is about camraderie and teamwork. They'll probably win matches late in the tournament once Karl gets more acclimated to it.

Same thing with SCU in AEW. SCU is a three-man unit, but Scorpion Sky and Frankie Kazarian won the tag title tournament, and Christopher Daniels made it clear that those two are the champions, and he's content to be the third guy in the group who currently doesn't have a title. I dig that a lot. the Freebird Rule is fine and all, but it's already being done elsewhere, and it's refreshing to see a team willing to set aside egos for the sake of the group. Sky and Kaz give Daniels a ton of credit, and Daniels supports them as the champions. In another era, it might sound hokey or commonplace, but after years of watching WWE's constant backstabbing angles, it's really comforting and reassuring.

I've always believed that conflict is the essence of drama, so I can understand the WWE philosophy of everyone being at each other's throats, but if you play that to the hilt, 24-7, never relenting, then how can you expect any tag team to matter in the long term? And without proper tag teams, how can you expect anyone to care about the division?

[torontoarenas]

2018-19 NHL Predictions, Revisited

It looks like I didn’t whiff as badly on my predictions this time around as in years past. At least, as far as the standings are concerned. My individual award predictions, on the other hand...

Five Teams I Most Overrated

Columbus. Whereas I had them winning their division, in reality they finished in fifth in the Metro, taking the second wildcard spot. I still don’t think I was terribly off-base to put them where I did. It turns out that Bobrovsky having a down year (going from a .921 SV% to .913) will hurt a team’s position in the standings. Probably not enough to make up the difference between my prediction and the reality, though, so that’s not entirely it. Who knows with these things?

Los Angeles. I figured they’d miss the playoffs, sure, but I didn’t foresee them being “30th place” bad. And to think this was the team Ilya Kovalchuk came out of NHL retirement to play for! He legitimately thought he stood a chance of winning the Cup with them! Shoulda just signed with Boston, pal.

Anaheim. Another team I thought would miss the playoffs, but badly underestimated by how much. The fact that they were in a playoff spot for as long as they were early on is a testament to John Gibson and John Gibson alone. If he hadn’t fallen apart about halfway through the season, he’d deserve a Hart nomination for his efforts. Hell, come up with a new award just to give to him. Call it “The John Gibson Memorial Trophy for Sisyphean Tasks.”

Florida and Philadelphia. Just kinda the opposite of Anaheim’s situation: they’re both OK teams who were undone by poor goaltending. Guess that sort of thing is liable to happen when your starting goalie’s either a million years old (Florida) or a horrifying rat king of eight dudes, only one of whom is approximately good (Philadelphia). Not enough separation between the two for me to be able to tell which I overrated more, so I’m taking the coward’s way out and including both of them in the same entry.

Minnesota. You have to be a really bad team to miss the playoffs in the West, and I suppose the Wild are one of them now. Good to know for future reference.

Oh yeah, and I also definitely overrated the Maple Leafs, but not to the extent that they’d be in my top five. I’ll just skip right past ’em, so I don’t have to reflect on that fact more than I already have.

Five Teams I Most Underrated

NY Islanders. Despite finishing second in the Metro, I still don’t think they’re good. They were 26th in 5v5 CF% (with a quite bad 47.8%) and were around 20th in 5v5 shots-for percentage and 16th in scoring chances. Better, but still not great. Some of their outperforming expectations can arguably be attributed to new coach Barry Trotz. But more importantly, wouldn’t you know it, they had the highest all-situations save percentage in the league. With a tandem of Robin Lehner and Thomas Greiss, two guys who are historically pretty good but not world-beaters by any means. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but “crummy shot metrics plus a high PDO” isn’t necessarily the most repeatable formula for winning hockey games. Don’t be shocked if they miss the 2020 playoffs, is all I’m saying. For this year, though, they’re easily the team I got the most wrong.

Arizona. Fuck me for not realizing that Darcy Kuemper would turn into a .933 goalie in 2019, I guess. Incredibly, they still managed to miss the playoffs. Although, now that I think about it, maybe it’s not that incredible. I mean, have you seen the rest of their roster???

Calgary. It was the easiest call in the world to predict they’d bounce back from their surprisingly poor 2017-18 campaign, but to imagine they’d finish second in the league? Wild stuff.

Colorado. Sure, I had them finishing last in the Central, which they managed to avoid doing, but also, they qualified for the playoffs despite finishing 17th in the league and having six more losses than wins. This is now the second season in a row in which they’ve made the playoffs with fewer points than the ninth-place team in the East. Folks, they’re not very good. I don’t know what to tell ya.

Carolina. I left them just on-the-outside-looking-in after they disappointed me by missing the playoffs last year when I predicted they’d make ’em. I’d have looked so smart if I had just stayed the course!! Dang it! Ah well. Can’t be too upset about it.

Awards Predictions

Hart: I said Alex Barkov. My choice was predicated upon Florida making the playoffs and the PHWA deciding again to give the award to the best player on a fringe playoff team. Barkov is one of the best centres in the sport, but in retrospect, this was a real Galaxy Brain prediction and I should’ve picked someone more obvious.

Art Ross: I said Connor McDavid. Not unreasonable, given that he won the last two. I just didn’t anticipate Nikita Kucherov going all the way off and setting the record for most points in the salary cap era.

Norris: I said Erik Karlsson. That’s not gonna happen, but hey, remember when he got off to that slow start and a bunch of people started saying shit like “maybe San Jose made a mistake in trading for him”? Those people are dumb and shouldn’t be listened to. Unfortunately, many of them also vote for these awards. Anyway, Mark Giordano’s probably going to win this thing, as well he should.

Rocket Richard: I said Connor McDavid, but Alex Ovechkin, the Absolute Boy, went and did it once again. I’ve really gotta stop talking myself out of the obvious choice. Even as I acknowledge this, I’m still not certain he can repeat. Stay tuned.

Vezina: I said Andrei Vasilevskiy, and I was probably right. So that’s one-for-eight. I’m batting a whopping .125 over here!!

Selke: I said Sean Couturier. I feel like I should’ve gone with Patrice Bergeron yet again, but we’ll see. I could also see Mark Stone winning it now that he’s been traded to a good team.

Calder: I said Andrei Svechnikov. Wrong. It’s definitely going to be Elias Pettersson.

Jack Adams: I said Bob Boughner, for the same reason I predicted Alex Barkov for the Hart. Which is hilarious to think about now. Maybe if Florida had made the playoffs, he’d have been in consideration, but that’s obviously not what happened.

[multi-fandomtrashtm]

Time to compare Big 3 and FT!Part 1

Now that FT has ended, I can do a full(er) evaluation of this. Yay. 

As you know, the big 3 are One Piece, Bleach and Naruto. 

FT is like..a rank or two below them in terms of popularity and sales except Bleach. Anyway, it’s still up there so time to compare and contrast. Characters, fights, story are all being judged. This post is all about characters.

Obvious spoilers for all series mentioned above. Because One Piece isn’t even close to being done yet, I’m only evaluating up until Dressrosa arc.

Character Basics Designwise:

I’d say that FT falls behind in this department, but isn’t last. In terms of design, One Piece wins by leaps and bounds in term of design diversity. Oda has made literally hundreds of characters and has interesting designs and personalities for each of them. He gives a lot of them good backstories and relationships with other characters. 

Bleach has some interesting characters as well. Most of them have interesting abilities and cool designs, but not to the degree of the sheer outlandishness of Oda’s designs. The hollows look very good, though.

The designs in Naruto are kind of plain even for the villains. It’s understandable for the less fantastical setting I suppose, but it really feels like the designs could be spiced up a little at times. However, most characters have some kind of depth to them and decent backstories. 

Fairy Tail has decent designs,kind of like Bleach in terms of creativity/complexity. It’s kind of odd at times because you’ll have human people wearing normal things then there’s just that one guy with the bizarre design. With such a fantastical setting, you’d think you’d see a lot more wild designs but nah. Unfortunately, FT has a bad streak of following basic tropes when it comes to villians. Later in the series, it’s the Psycho Lesbian(?), the battle enthusiast(s), that one cool intelligent guy and/or an Ice Guy/muscle dude. Earlier on, there was more variety in types. Backstories are alright. 

Main Characters:

Seeing as how they’re all following the Jump formula, let’s just get it out of the way. 

Orihime/Lucy/Nami/Sakura: Main-ish girl character who can technically fight but almost never does (if she does, she rarely wins).

Robin/Rukia?/Erza: Typically more mature mentor-like character who engages in some of the main group’s hyjinx anyway.

Uryuu/Zoro/Gray/Sasuke: Somewhat angsty/edgy main character’s best friend/rival (Zoro is the only exception to the angst/edge and rival). Typically smarter than the main character and more cool headed except when they’re not. 

Happy/Kon/Chopper: Cute animal sidekick for plushies.

Natsu/Luffy/Ichigo/Naruto: The main character who is basically a child in a teenager’s body with an insatiable hunger, no intelligence except in battle and little to no sex drive despite all of the beautiful (mostly half naked) women constantly around them. So basically Goku clones. Ichigo and Naruto thankfully dodged this or, in Naruto’s case, grew out of it. 

In terms of development of the main characters, I’d say Naruto absolutely wins this. Naruto and Sakura grew into great young adults and developed pleasantly along the way. Naruto stopped being so reckless and kind of a mess. We got some great looks into his psych with the whole Kuruma issue and dead parents thing.

Sakura eventually stopped being such a damsel and got the powers that she really needed. Although, I really did appreciate when she cut her hair and tries to protect her friends even though she was really weak. Listen, I don’t give a damn what you say, Sakura accomplished great things in Shippuden and does not deserve even half of the hate she gets from the fandom. Now I’m fully wiling to acknowledge that her persistent love for Sasuke got pretty ridiculous. But the same could be said for Naruto’s persistence, so I think that’s on the writer. I don’t think that it’s too much of a problem, though. 

Sasuke..is an odd case. I don’t think he really developed that much in Shippuden until near the end-ish. It was more like he had a breakdown in slow motion? Idk, the whole thing was really strange. Him being stoic or batshit crazy for most of it made it hard to tell. If anyone has some solid evidence of development I’ll take it, but his case is just really strange. 

Bleach is also an odd case. I’m certain that the main cast changed, I’m just not sure how. It was quite subtle. I suppose Orihime got a bit more confident in her abilities and Ichigo, Uryuu and Chad got stronger. Again, I’m open to some enlightenment on this. 

One of the most glaring problems is how the human characters tend to get sidelined quite a bit. Orihime is especially bad about this because of how she’s written. Her powers are the most game breaking ones in story-she’s basically a God and she does almost nothing when it comes to battles. At best, she’s defense and a medic. Her main ability is essentially to “reject” parts of reality i.e rather than healing someone’s arm, she just “rejects” that it got injured in the first place. There’s no known limit to her abilities except that if she doesn’t believe that can do it,then she can’t. It’s the worst restriction possible because she doesn’t have cripplingly low self esteem or anything. That kind of restriction is just begging for her to be hated. 

Chad just kind of faded into the background as time went on. It’d be really easy to forget who he is if you hadn’t read Bleach in a while.

In One Piece, I feel like the crew was pretty static outside of their individual character arcs except maybe Chopper. I’m very, very glad that Chopper is presented as more of a part of the group than a cute mascot. All of them got stronger after the timeskip and Sanji got a new gag. And I’m certain that Usopp got more competent and manly?/confident, too. Luffy definitely matured at least a little because of a certain incident with Ace. As sad as it was, it was kind of neat to see Luffy at his lowest point. 

But, because grouping (The Coward Trio, the Power Trio,etc.) Nami especially got shafted after the arc right after the timeskip. It’s like...she showed off her abilities then and it was cool, then she got moved to the backseat by just about everyone else on the crew and barely seems to use them anymore. Anyway, all of the crew have good backstories despite like half of them making me cry like a bitch. Brook’s backstory is both depressing and horrifying. 

I wish that the groups would be mixed up more often, though. 

Fairy Tail has the absolute minimum amount of character development for the main characters. Out of all of them, Wendy is the most developed. She grew more confident and powerful over time. Lucy has stayed just about the same over the entire series. Well, I guess she got less vain and more confident, I suppose. With Erza, it was a combo of character depths and development that got her to show her goofy self after the Tower of Heaven. After that, her characterization just got strange because of the romance subplot with Jellal. She just grew more and more into being just a love interest around him rather than being a character who happens to be in love.  

Gray did develop a bit, although its kind of hard to tell most of the time. By the time Tartaros hits, he’s learned his lesson about trying to whip out Iced Shell when things get tough. At least, that’s what I thought he learned until he decided that it’s better to kill yourself and erase your existence while trying to be a hero rather than just getting strong enough to have to drop to that point and wanting to live the very next big arc. 

Natsu has not changed at all. He is the exact same guy he was at chapter 545 and at chapter 1. Despite his dad dying, his very existence being a lie AND his family history being shoved in his face, he has not changed at all. 

Happy, for the most part, is a cute mascot character. He had his character depth/development in Edolas arc, but it vanished right after. He is occasionally shown to be Natsu’s support, but that’s about it. 

It’s a real problem when almost all of your main characters have barely changed outside of their respective character arcs. What’s equally irritating is that their character designs have not changed except for Lucy’s and Wendy’s. After two timeskips! Natsu, Gray and Erza all look exactly the same as when they started. Outfits don’t count with this series because the characters frequently change their attire anyway except Erza. Erza has had the same outfit for 500 chapters except the GMG. 

I think that’s it for this post. It’s gotten quite long. Next time I’ll do side characters and villains.