One Piece General Discussion: Elbaph

[SlendVeny]

Well, we have to agree to disagree then. I have the impression that Bleach defends thoroughly evil and corrupt institutions and values being maintained and nurtured, and that it wants to state that nothing can ever be greatly changed for the better.

They literally do change things for the better on multiple occasions.

However, I obviously do agree about Caesar Clown being a thoroughly evil bastard, and that it is disturbing that his crimes are not treated more seriously,

I would disagree. I think, like other characters, Caesar has done some messed-up, genuinely awful stuff, but he is, in fact, a fictional character, and thus is capable of redemption or atonement until the narrative says he isn't.

but unlike Mayuri, who is likely considerably worse, he is never treated as one of the protagonists, and allowed to freely perform experiments on a level with or exceeding doctor Mengele while working for the designated "good guys".

Mayuri's pretty consistently treated as a shit dude though. It's made pretty clear by the narrative that the dude has zero empathy, and you're not supposed to like him. Kenpachi Zaraki, whose primary motivation is to kill strong dudes like a hyper-violent Goku, is portrayed in a more sympathetic light. There's probably one point in the series where you're actually meant to feel for Mayuri, and it's when he shows empathy for the one and only time in his life because his daughter is sacrificing herself. He's a character, and characters develop, he just happened to start at rock bottom.

The dude blows up his own subordinates, wears face paint on the inside of his nose, and dresses like a beetle, he is not well adjusted.

So yes, I still have a very strong impression that Bleach is an pro-fascist work with strong ideological roots in Japan's old alliance with Nazi Germany

The last arc is basically about the Shinigami teaming up with other races to kill a bunch of magic Nazis.

 

[SlendVeny]

That dude was really comparing the smaller panels to the double spreads and thought he was actually making a good point. I swear...

I have now zoomed in on the corner of a painting, then shown the Sistine Chapel in another image. Art is COOKED.

 

[Antvasima]

They literally do change things for the better on multiple occasions.

Not in any significant way as I see it. The entire cosmology is even narratively structured in a mostly hopeless manner.

I would disagree. I think, like other characters, Caesar has done some messed-up, genuinely awful stuff, but he is, in fact, a fictional character, and thus is capable of redemption or atonement until the narrative says he isn't.

That is a practice in fictional stories that I heavily disagree with, given that, medically speaking, psychopaths, extreme narcissists, and most people with antisocial personality disorder, which together might constitute up to 9% or so of humanity, will always completely lack all traces of conscience and empathy no matter what, and are inherently completely shallow people only interested in sex, wealth, power, status, and tyrannical control, achieved through any available means whatsoever, so with a small percentage of exceptions they genuinely can never ever be redeemed or reformed, and it is extremely misleading to spread the myth that they can.

It simply makes it much easier for evil people to manipulate good people into becoming gullible victims for their depraved appetites.

Mayuri's pretty consistently treated as a shit dude though. It's made pretty clear by the narrative that the dude has zero empathy, and you're not supposed to like him. Kenpachi Zaraki, whose primary motivation is to kill strong dudes like a hyper-violent Goku, is portrayed in a more sympathetic light. There's probably one point in the series where you're actually meant to feel for Mayuri, and it's when he shows empathy for the one and only time in his life because his daughter is sacrificing herself. He's a character, and characters develop, he just happened to start at rock bottom.

The dude blows up his own subordinates, wears face paint on the inside of his nose, and dresses like a beetle, he is not well adjusted.

If he is considered that badly by the narrative, why is he allowed to freely perform his atrocities over and over for purely tribalist reasons, rather than being systematically wiped from existence to a degreee that is impossible to recover from in order to protect all of his many future victims?

The last arc is basically about the Shinigami teaming up with other races to kill a bunch of magic Nazis.

And I could barely notice any moral differences between them, beyond that one side outwardly merged Christian and Nazi symbols, and one side adhered more to traditional Japanese fascism combined with nihilism. As was even stated once within the story, it was evil versus evil. Two tribalist factions of amoral and mirthless power-, tyranny-, barbarism-, and social Darwinism-obsessed fascists waging war against each other.

So again, we have to agree to disagree here.

 

[Antvasima]

I have now zoomed in on the corner of a painting, then shown the Sistine Chapel in another image. Art is COOKED.

Strongly agreed. One Piece has fantastically beautiful and imaginative environmental art designs.

 

[SlendVeny]

Not in any significant way as I see it. The entire cosmology is even narratively structured in a mostly hopeless manner.

Yeah, a group of world-ruling founding families killed and tortured an immensely powerful man-god so that they might restructure the world to their whim. The people also live in a world divided into 4 sections, with some areas between that. That happened in One Piece.

Idk if you mean the soul cycle? That only leads to negative outcomes if a large group of people are erased from existence. I guess becoming too strong while having a job in the Gotei 13 does kinda mean you could end up being condemned to Hell after death for the protection of the innocent, but I don't think anyone knew that, and the elite Shinigami in Hell do seem to be having a good time, so I think they're as strong in Hell as they were outside of Hell.

That is a practice in fictional stories that I heavily disagree with, given that, medically speaking, psychopaths, extreme narcissists, and most people with antisocial personality disorder, which together might constitute up to 9% or so of humanity, will always completely lack all traces of conscience and empathy no matter what, and are inherently completely shallow people only interested in sex, wealth, power, status, and tyrannical control, achieved through any available means whatsoever, so with a small percentage of exceptions they genuinely can never ever be redeemed or reformed, and it is extremely misleading to spread the myth that they can.

This just literally isn't true, and the idea lends itself to a eugenicist viewpoint.

If he is considered that badly by the narrative, why is he allowed to freely perform his atrocities over and over for purely tribalist reasons, rather than being systematically wiped from existence to a degreee that is impossible to recover from in order to protect all of his many future victims?

Because the narrative itself isn't the same as the personal decisions of individual characters.

He was, however, in prison, before he was let out by Urahara, who was attempting to channel his abilities to something more positive. However, before Urahara could do that, he was exiled, and the higer-ups kinda just gave him free rein, and people can't really kill him legally, especially because killing a captain and messing around with the Reiatsu cycle kinda messes things up, and if there's an invasion, not having a captain-class fighter on hand would be entirely negative.

Furthermore, if I recall, by the end of the series, most of his experiments on other sapient entities are on the dead, and out of eyesight, and he does do pretty much every "villainous action" for what he sees as the greater good of everyone. A mercy killing kind of deal.

And again, this is fiction. Imagine Dragon Ball if they'd just let Krillin kill Vegeta.

And I could barely notice any moral differences between them, beyond that one side outwardly merged Christian and Nazi symbols, and one side adhered more to traditional Japanese fascism combined with nihilism. As was even stated once within the story, it was evil versus evil. Two tribalist factions of amoral and mirthless power-, tyranny-, barbarism-, and social Darwinism-obsessed fascists waging war against each other.

None of them are nihilistic, life inherently does have a provable physical meaning in their universe.

Since the One Piece analogies have been pretty consistent, imagine it as the God Valley incident. Who's in the wrong there, Garp and Roger or Rocks? Technically, Garp and Roger protected the Celestial Dragons. However, they also protected the innocent slaves and former denizens of that island. Now imagine that instead of a single island, everyone in multiple dimensions was being threatened, and rather than preserving the reign of a group of slaveholders, they were protecting every society on all worlds.

So again, we have to agree to disagree here.

I can agree to disagree, but I see many flaws with this interpretation.

 

[SlendVeny]

Strongly agreed. One Piece has fantastically beautiful and imaginative environmental art designs.

I love the fun little shapes Oda does, like all the twisty buildings and hills and stuffs.

 

[Antvasima]

Yeah, a group of world-ruling founding families killed and tortured an immensely powerful man-god so that they might restructure the world to their whim. The people also live in a world divided into 4 sections, with some areas between that. That happened in One Piece.

One Piece is not narratively structured in a genuinely hopeless manner though, and it is only the physical rather than the greater metaphysical world that seems messed up, due to the actions of utterly corrupt humans, allegorically mirroring our real world.

Idk if you mean the soul cycle? That only leads to negative outcomes if a large group of people are erased from existence. I guess becoming too strong while having a job in the Gotei 13 does kinda mean you could end up being condemned to Hell after death for the protection of the innocent, but I don't think anyone knew that, and the elite Shinigami in Hell do seem to be having a good time, so I think they're as strong in Hell as they were outside of Hell.

I mainly mean the unrestrained might makes right system where innocent souls are systematically preyed upon to absolute degrees and live in dystopian tyrannical settings, with no greater good or genuine justice within the metaphysical order.

This just literally isn't true, and the idea lends itself to a eugenicist viewpoint.

I am a spiritual humanist pro-human and animal rights democratic socialist, not remotely a eugenicist, but according to my extensive personal experiences and available information, including from a 25 to 30 years researcher in this area that I know personally, it requires absolutely enormous amounts of works for "sociopaths" (people with antisocial personality disorder) to develop even tiny degrees of conscience and empathy, and with only small success rates for even that, whereas it is completely hopeless for psychopaths and extreme narcissists.

You seem to think of the roughly 81% or so of humanity who are not inherently leaning towards either good or evil, and can go either way depending on their environments and available information and impressions. They are redeemable, yes. The inherently evil part of humanity are almost always not, and again, tricking good or neutral people into believing that psychopaths are just misunderstood and had a bad childhood, will only turn them into much easier victims.

Because the narrative itself isn't the same as the personal decisions of individual characters.

He was, however, in prison, before he was let out by Urahara, who was attempting to channel his abilities to something more positive. However, before Urahara could do that, he was exiled, and the higer-ups kinda just gave him free rein, and people can't really kill him legally, especially because killing a captain and messing around with the Reiatsu cycle kinda messes things up, and if there's an invasion, not having a captain-class fighter on hand would be entirely negative.

Furthermore, if I recall, by the end of the series, most of his experiments on other sapient entities are on the dead, and out of eyesight, and he does do pretty much every "villainous action" for what he sees as the greater good of everyone. A mercy killing kind of deal.

Well, my impression is that the designated protagonists act as voices of the author's personal values in this case, and letting somebody morally equivalent to the most satanically evil real world Nazis run rampant with absolutely atrocious human experiments simply due to tribalist allegiances does not remotely sit right with my sense of morality.

And again, this is fiction. Imagine Dragon Ball if they'd just let Krillin kill Vegeta.

Vegeta is an absolutely power-mad narcissist who has casually committed genocide on innocent planetary populations. Some crimes are too severe to ever be forgiven no matter what, so making him one of the designated "good guys" doesn't remotely sit well with me either.

Fiction, among other things, represents memetic information, ideological values, and personal self-perception/identification narratives. It has massive real world consequences on the people who consume it to sufficient degrees, just like all other media propaganda.

None of them are nihilistic, life inherently does have a provable physical meaning in their universe.

Well, it is certainly extremely focused on might makes right amoral tyrannical systems of social Darwinism, absolutely ruthless tribalism, and obsessions with death, including making all of it arbitrary and hopeless. Which is a form of moral nihilism.

Since the One Piece analogies have been pretty consistent, imagine it as the God Valley incident. Who's in the wrong there, Garp and Roger or Rocks? Technically, Garp and Roger protected the Celestial Dragons. However, they also protected the innocent slaves and former denizens of that island. Now imagine that instead of a single island, everyone in multiple dimensions was being threatened, and rather than preserving the reign of a group of slaveholders, they were protecting every society on all worlds.

Upholding and defending a genocidal supremacist system of tyranny and slavery is evil no matter how you justify it, so although you can rationalise Garp as being internally morally broken in this specific area, due to the overwhelming nature of fighting against said system, and instead attempting to do what little good he can to protect regular people from pirates, while shutting his eyes for all the evidence regarding that he is still acting as an enforcer and bodyguard for a satanic system, the people in the moral right who truly saved innocent people from being massacred for sport were mainly Kuma, Ivankov, and Ginny.

I can agree to disagree, but I see many flaws with this interpretation.

And I see many flaws with yours. So again...

 

[SlendVeny]

One Piece is not narratively structured in a genuinely hopeless manner though, and it is only the physical rather than the greater metaphysical world that seems messed up, due to the actions of utterly corrupt humans, allegorically mirroring our real world.

I mainly mean the unrestrained might makes right system where innocent souls are systematically preyed upon to absolute degrees and live in dystopian tyrannical settings, with no greater good or genuine justice within the metaphysical order.

Good and evil aren't necessarily inherent things, I would say. And again:

-Tyrranical Dystopia: Gray Terminal, Marie Geoise, Wano, etc.
-Systematically preyed upon: God Valley, D. family, the Kurozumi, etc.
-No genuine justice, might makes right: "Justice will always prevail, because the victor is justice!"

You seem to think of the roughly 81% or so of humanity who are not inherently leaning towards either good or evil, and can go either way depending on their environments and available information and impressions. They are redeemable, yes. The inherently evil part of humanity are almost always not, and again, tricking good or neutral people into believing that psychopaths are just misunderstood and had a bad childhood, will only turn them into much easier victims.

I don't believe morality is baked into anyone's genes.

Well, my impression is that the designated protagonists act as voices of the author's personal values in this case, and letting somebody morally equivalent to the most satanically evil real world Nazis run rampant with absolutely atrocious human experiments simply due to tribalist allegiances does not remotely sit right with my sense of morality.

Not everything in every narrative is going to end well. Sometimes things are good enough when they are better than before.

And again, I do not believe he is still doing that.

But really, it's like having 10 Oppenheimers on hand. The dude's a walking nuclear explosive, and you can either try to jump him and end up with multiple dead captains and lieutenants, then have every subsequent Captain suspicious that they could be killed at any moment, or you can make him toe the line and channel his energy toward something positive to be more prepared for a future invasion. Basically, if he isn't there, billions of people could die, and taking that risk instead of just keeping him in check so he doesn't defy orders to go that far again is probably not the proper decision.

You'll also note, of course, that the protagonist is a high-schooler from the human world who wants to lead a happy life with his friends and family, and not the group of bureaucrats running the Soul Society or the bald little man who controls the concepts of all things.

Upholding and defending a genocidal supremacist system of tyranny and slavery is evil no matter how you justify it, so although you can rationalise Garp as being internally morally broken in this specific area, due to the overwhelming nature of fighting against said system and attempting to do what good he can to protect regular people from pirates, while shutting his eyes for all the evidence regarding that he is still acting as an enforcer and bodyguard for a satanic system, the people in the moral right who truly saved innocent people from being massacred for sport were mainly Kuma and Ivankov.

Yes, but which is worse, Rocks or Garp? I would argue it is easily Rocks.

And I see many flaws with yours. So again...

Perhaps it is so. Maybe I just like to argue. We are pretty off-topic though.

 

[Antvasima]

Good and evil aren't necessarily inherent things, I would say. And again:

-Tyrranical Dystopia: Gray Terminal, Marie Geoise, Wano, etc.
-Systematically preyed upon: God Valley, D. family, the Kurozumi, etc.
-No genuine justice, might makes right: "Justice will always prevail, because the victor is justice!"

Yes, and that is clearly fiercely fought against within the One Piece story, not embraced.

I don't believe morality is baked into anyone's genes.

Genetic (and spiritual) capacity for conscience, empathy, and compassion certainly differ to extremes between different people. This is a scientific fact as far as I am aware. Belief does not factor into it.

(And no, it does not matter what "ethnicity", nationality, or culture somebody is born into. There are inherently good, evil, and neutral people born into all of them.)

Not everything in every narrative is going to end well. Sometimes things are good enough when they are better than before.

And again, I do not believe he is still doing that.

But really, it's like having 10 Oppenheimers on hand. The dude's a walking nuclear explosive, and you can either try to jump him and end up with multiple dead captains and lieutenants, then have every subsequent Captain suspicious that they could be killed at any moment, or you can make him toe the line and channel his energy toward something positive to be more prepared for a future invasion. Basically, if he isn't there, billions of people could die, and taking that risk instead of just keeping him in check so he doesn't defy orders to go that far again is probably not the proper decision.

I think that you greatly misrepresent the necessity of Mayuri performing absolutely gruesome torture and experiments on sentient souls.

You'll also note, of course, that the protagonist is a high-schooler from the human world who wants to lead a happy life with his friends and family, and not the group of bureaucrats running the Soul Society or the bald little man who controls the concepts of all things.

Yes, but he is just a comparatively bland standard shounen protagonist that is intended to act as the entryway perspective for youths reading the story to be exposed to and indoctrinated into accepting an enormously more corrupt system propagated by the author.

Yes, but which is worse, Rocks or Garp? I would argue it is easily Rocks.

Well, I would argue that the morally right thing would have been to let Rocks slaughter the entitled genocidal supremacist slavemongering tyrants while focusing on getting all innocent people out of the way, and then deal with the threat that he constituted to the world at large.

Perhaps it is so. Maybe I just like to argue. We are pretty off-topic though.

Yes. It seems best to stop here. I do not have the time to continue anyway.

 

[SlendVeny]

Now that that rather long conversation is out of the way, what are we thinking about Loki now?

I can't tell if he's an enemy or not.

 

[SlendVeny]

Now that that rather long conversation is out of the way, what are we thinking about Loki now?

I can't tell if he's an enemy or not.

Like, I've said it before, but the fact that he admitted he wants to betray Luffy makes me think he won't.

 

[Antvasima]

Now that that rather long conversation is out of the way, what are we thinking about Loki now?

I can't tell if he's an enemy or not.

He certainly seems like an evil person from what he is saying and from what others are saying about him, but Oda recurrently likes to throw curveballs to not trust first impressions, so who knows?

 

[SlendVeny]

He certainly seems like an evil person from what he is saying and from what others are saying about him, but Oda recurrently likes to throw curveballs to not trust first impressions, so who knows?

He reminds me a bit of Kid. And not just because Shanks beat him.

 

[Deceived3596]

Ant engaging with anything Bleach related is always a treat to read.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, Bleach isn't nearly as morally vile, twisted, morbid, poisonous, amoral, reprehensible, and creatively sadistic as, for example, something like "Rick & Morty", "Über", "Lady Death", "The Cthulhu Mythos", "God is Dead", or almost anything ever written by Garth Ennis, but it is bad enough for me to consider it in a very negative light, and since it is a part of the HST, some people here seem to react badly to my disapproval of it.

However, it isn't like I am treating our wiki pages for the Bleach verse any worse than our other verses. I am taking my job here seriously and trying to handle it as professionally as possible, and if I had let my biases rule my decisions, and if this was not a collaborative environment, just an idiotic personal power trip for myself, we would likely had wiped out a very large chunk of all the verses in our wiki, due to that I find them, and recurrently their authors, thoroughly malevolent and destructive influences for society.

That doesn't change my personal opinions about those verses though.

 

[Antvasima]

Anyway, enough off-topic ranting from me. Please return to your regular lighthearted One Piece discussion.

 

[MonkeyOfLife]

Ant engaging with anything Bleach related is always a treat to read.

opm art >

 

[Deceived3596]

opm art >

 

[SlendVeny]

Me when I'm trying to make a deal with Nurgle but the watermarks keep following me.

 

[MonkeyOfLife]

I'm not the one who's deceived in life

 

[Quantu]

 

[MonkeyOfLife]

bro if we had an official strength tier list, it would be SOO much easier to create op profile pages fr

... Like I don't think it's actually announced? I think pew is assuming/getting it from Oda's comment here?


But I mean I heavily expected op movies in the future

Nah man... Like every time I think of the future/op ending I'm like... What else will there be like it in fiction? the OP world is insane and should be like batman and superman with the way they are like ongoing forever

 

[Imaginym]

But I mean I heavily expected op movies in the future

Nah man... Like every time I think of the future/op ending I'm like... What else will there be like it in fiction? the OP world is insane and should be like batman and superman with the way they are like ongoing forever

At times, I wonder.

Log poses are like, semi-random, right? Magnetism based on islands & whatnot?

The log pose you get will take you on 1 of several converging or diverging paths between islands.
Meaning for every island the Straw Hats went to, there's probably at least 2 they didn't go to, right?

I'd be surpised if they've experienced more than like, IDK, 25% of The Grand Line, if THAT.

 

[MonkeyOfLife]

At times, I wonder.

Log poses are like, semi-random, right? Magnetism based on islands & whatnot?

The log pose you get will take you on 1 of several converging or diverging paths between islands.
Meaning for every island the Straw Hats went to, there's probably at least 2 they didn't go to, right?

I'd be surpised if they've experienced more than like, IDK, 25% of The Grand Line, if THAT.

I mean I'd say like Max 5% lowkey, even lower if over 20 million islands refers also to the grand line

 

[Apotheosis69]

Hey guys, I was wondering if you guys are fine with me changing One Piece pages. Like Luffy (Emperor)

Primarily adding Border templates for their P&A sections. And also changin their Technique to their English localization versions (BUT I will add their actual japanese names, both Kanji and Romaji). Because the English localization is farr more available and known. That way outside audiences heading to this wiki can not be confused.

I won't do anythin for Statistics Values, cus calcs are being revised right?

 

[Antvasima]

Hey guys, I was wondering if you guys are fine with me changing One Piece pages. Like Luffy (Emperor)

Primarily adding Border templates for their P&A sections. And also changin their Technique to their English localization versions (BUT I will add their actual japanese names, both Kanji and Romaji). Because the English localization is farr more available and known. That way outside audiences heading to this wiki can not be confused.

I won't do anythin for Statistics Values, cus calcs are being revised right?

I personally think that this seems useful and acceptable.

 

[SlendVeny]

Hey guys, I was wondering if you guys are fine with me changing One Piece pages. Like Luffy (Emperor)

Primarily adding Border templates for their P&A sections. And also changin their Technique to their English localization versions (BUT I will add their actual japanese names, both Kanji and Romaji). Because the English localization is farr more available and known. That way outside audiences heading to this wiki can not be confused.

I agree with all of this, and I think everyone would agree with the border part.

 

[Apotheosis69]

May Amitābha bless all of ya