![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lego_joker posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
scans_dailyThe state of things in American superhero comics being what they are, I couldn't really find a dead character I wanted to revive without making my post look horribly dated. Death has been a revolving door at DC and Marvel since almost Day One, as it should be, and you never know who's gonna be pulled away from the River Styx next.
So let us journey eastward, where comics generally don't have to deal with things like "shared universes" or "characters too iconic to stay dead". In particular, to a world of endless oceans, sea monsters, and pirates of every shape and size.
I've talked about One Piece a grand total of zero times in this community, which is ironic, since it was the series that got me into fandom in the first place. Better fix that now.
General plot: a cheerful, dimwitted boy by the name of Monkey D. Luffy, who can stretch like Mr. Fantastic and punch as hard as Solomon Grundy, has set out in the Golden Age of Piracy to become the most famous pirate of them all. And adventure. Mostly adventure. To this end, he's gathered a crew of other assorted (but very loyal and very badass) weirdos and journeyed to the Grand Line, a narrow strip of ocean where the weather changes on a dime, kaiju-sized sea monsters inhabit almost every square mile of water, and hundreds of vicious pirate crews roam. The only real law here is the Law of the Jungle; even the tyrannical World Government and its main arm of enforcement, Marine Headquarters, can't really establish any dominion over the Grand Line.
Among Shonen manga, One Piece actually has an infamously low body count, despite having (as of this writing) close to 800 chapters and some of the most brutal fight scenes in all of manga. "Nobody ever dies in One Piece (outside of flashbacks)" used to be a fairly heavy meme, and a fairly accurate one. An ordinary butler with no combat training gets gutted by five katana? He's up and running within a day. Two professional and very competent assassins corner a small child who's the only witness to their boss's grand plan? The kid makes it out alive with no explanation whatsoever. Psychotic dictator with lightning powers brings down a huge Bolt O' Judgment on a helpless old man? The old man pops up later without a single scratch.
But then, series creator Eiichiro Oda threw us a curve and a half with a certain story arc that killed off not one but two named characters, both fairly heavy players in-universe.
Those of you who follow the manga probably already know where I'm going with this...
Meet Portgas D. Ace, older brother to Monkey D. Luffy. He is, in a word, better at pretty much everything than Luffy is. Better fighter, more notorious reputation, higher intellect, and unfailingly polite to any strangers that he meets. As if that weren't enough, he also happens to be a trusted lieutenant to the most powerful pirate in the world of One Piece: Edward "Whitebeard" Newgate. Newgate, for those who don't know, stands about twenty feet tall, commands a massive fleet of 1,600 pirates, and can create small tidal waves with one swing of his weapon.
Ace makes only a handful of appearance in the manga, beginning with this small lead-in on the winter wonderland known as Drum Island (remember, read from right to left):
In a neat bit of foreshadowing, the townspeople also mention that the day Ace showed up, the island's near-constant snowfall suddenly stopped.
Now, over to the kingdom of Alabasta (basically, imagine Disney's Agrabah, only with 1000% more political intrigue and a Jafar analogue who can personally command sandstorms and drought).
The fellow on the bottom there is Marine Captain Smoker, your standard Loose CannonCop Marine (With His Own Sense of Justice). Despite having a fairly low rank in the marine hierarchy, he's one of Luffy's most dangerous opponents; in fact, at this point in the story, he's the only arc villain that Luffy and his crew flat-out ran away from.
Naturally, a confrontation ensues.
Meanwhile, Luffy and his crew have just docked at Alabasta (in a storyline involving the Princess of the country that I don't have space to post here). Luffy, like a true Shonen hero, is thinking with his stomach instead of his brain.
Luffy gets himself some grub, right before a massive chase happens. Also, no one pays the tab at the diner.
Just when Smoker is about to catch Luffy, Ace steps in.
Quick note: Ace's powers come from the Mera Mera fruit, which basically make him a firebender who can also turn into sentient fire. In the One Piece world especially, powers like these (called "Logia") are the equivalent of a jackpot in the superpower lottery - you can dish out destruction without even meaning to, and almost no physical attacks can scratch you if you're paying attention.
Luffy and his crew escape, and regroup on the ship to discuss Ace...
Two important things to note here: the paper that Ace gives Luffy is revealed several hundred chapters later to be a "Vivre Card" - a card made from fingernail clippings that acts as a compass to Ace's location and begins to shrink in size when Ace's life is in danger. Also, the hunt for Blackbeard is the major focus in Ace's life, driving his actions throughout the entirety of the series.
Before Ace goes, however, he gives us one more demonstration of his powers, effortlessly taking out a fleet of bounty hunter ships after his life.
(In the anime adaptation, there are four or five more filler episodes that have Ace travel with Luffy's party a little while longer, but it's been ages since I saw those, and I don't think they were much good.)
Ace pops up again about a hundred chapters down the road, still on the hunt for Blackbeard (and still pulling Dine-and-Dashes). This time, his path doesn't cross with Luffy's; his adventure is relegated to the chapter-cover mini-arcs, where Oda illustrates the storylines of side characters in largely wordless narratives.
In a small village in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere, Ace has finally found Blackbeard! Unfortunately, it's the wrong Blackbeard.
(To be fair, the real Blackbeard actually looks pretty similar to this poor sap. Only more thuggish and pirate-y.)
Ace gets his ass tossed into a river by the angry townsfolk, and since he can't swim, he ends up being rescued by a little girl.
Long story short, Ace repays his rescuer by delivering a letter to a Marine base. A fairly entertaining comedy of errors results as Ace has to go undercover as a marine (and even winds up saving the sailors on a burning ship), but there's only one real piece of payoff:
With the new intel on Blackbeard, Ace finally tracks the traitor down on Banaro Island. Unfortunately, Blackbeard has gotten himself a massive boost in power with the Yami Yami fruit, which allows him to control darkness and gravity. In essence, he now has dominion over black holes.
Ace is defeated, and Blackbeard turns him in to the marines as a bargaining chip to become a Warlord of the Sea (a sort of government-sanctioned pirate who has certain privileges at Marine institutions). Not long after, an execution is scheduled for Ace.
This, in turns, triggers that "very big incident": Whitebeard marshals all 1,600 of his men (plus forty-three independent pirate crews allied with him) to descend on Marine Headquarters in a rescue attempt. In response, Marine Headquarters gathers every one of its elite officers at the execution site to make sure that the execution goes off without a hitch.
What results is the series' "Paramount War" arc, where almost every single high-roller in the series, on every side of the morality spectrum, lock horns in a massive battle royale. Before it can begin, however, the head of the Marine Fleet has something to say...
How to describe Gold Roger's presence in the world of One Piece? He is THE pirate, THE outlaw, THE inspiration that thousands of other pirates look up to. The only man who survived the Grand Line to the very end, the man who amassed the sort of wealth, fame, and power that most other people can't even dream of, and the man who, at his execution, dared every other pirate to seek out the treasure he left behind. If this story were about wizards, he would be their Merlin. If this story were about superheroes, he would be their Superman.
Naturally, the World Government hates his very bloodline. And today, they have the chance to extinguish it once and for all.
The only thing standing in their way? Thousands of angry pirates who either hate the marines that much, owe favors to Whitebeard's crew, or some combination of the above.
For reasons too complicated to discuss here, Luffy is at the execution site with a new set of allies (his old crew happens to be scattered among a series of islands across the world, and are in no condition to go help him). Lots and lot and lots of fighting, interspersed with the occasional flashback, ensues.
By the end of it, though, Luffy does get Ace out of those shackles... but ah, if that was where the story ended, we wouldn't have this post, would we?
The guy who just put a fist-shaped hole into Ace's gut here is Admiral Akainu, a man with control over magma. He is, with a few possible exceptions, the biggest douchebag in the series - the kind of psychotic "peacekeeper" who once blew up an entire refugee ship because a criminal may have snuck onboard.
For an extra kick in the pants, this entire chapter was titled "The Death of Portgas D. Ace".
Back when I first read this story, I'd wanted Ace revived because I thought his death was a massive storytelling mistake. He was fairly fun to read about, but we'd simply gotten too little of him to form any genuine attachment. Even at the time, I never cried when I saw his death; if anything, I was annoyed at how Oda had finally fallen to "Kill off a character for shock value"-itis after years of restraining most character deaths to backstories and the like.
(To a lesser degree, this is still my attitude toward the entire Paramount War arc; it's supposed to be this Big, Decisive Moment in the series, but there are so few characters I'm familiar with that I find it almost impossible to root for anyone. In any case, Luffy's not even my favorite of the main characters.)
Upon reread, though... yeah, I have to admit that this is a pretty touching death scene. Even trimmed like this, you can get a sense of exactly what kind of person Ace was like, what kind of life he lived, and why him dying young is something to emote over. I'm still rather annoyed with the writer's excuse of "he's an unbeatable obstacle for Luffy, so I had to do SOMETHING to get him out of the way", but that's neither here nor there.
And yet? I still want him back. I can't exactly pinpoint why - maybe out of sentimentality, maybe because it has good storytelling potential, maybe just because I like his design - but I do.
His resurrection might even be on the horizon; Oda's concept art for the series shows that he's at least considered making Hell an actual place in the world of One Piece, and considering all the bizarre lands that Luffy has visited, maybe he will sail down there one day and see the ghosts of all pirates past...
And if not... well, there's always fanfiction.
So let us journey eastward, where comics generally don't have to deal with things like "shared universes" or "characters too iconic to stay dead". In particular, to a world of endless oceans, sea monsters, and pirates of every shape and size.
I've talked about One Piece a grand total of zero times in this community, which is ironic, since it was the series that got me into fandom in the first place. Better fix that now.
General plot: a cheerful, dimwitted boy by the name of Monkey D. Luffy, who can stretch like Mr. Fantastic and punch as hard as Solomon Grundy, has set out in the Golden Age of Piracy to become the most famous pirate of them all. And adventure. Mostly adventure. To this end, he's gathered a crew of other assorted (but very loyal and very badass) weirdos and journeyed to the Grand Line, a narrow strip of ocean where the weather changes on a dime, kaiju-sized sea monsters inhabit almost every square mile of water, and hundreds of vicious pirate crews roam. The only real law here is the Law of the Jungle; even the tyrannical World Government and its main arm of enforcement, Marine Headquarters, can't really establish any dominion over the Grand Line.
Among Shonen manga, One Piece actually has an infamously low body count, despite having (as of this writing) close to 800 chapters and some of the most brutal fight scenes in all of manga. "Nobody ever dies in One Piece (outside of flashbacks)" used to be a fairly heavy meme, and a fairly accurate one. An ordinary butler with no combat training gets gutted by five katana? He's up and running within a day. Two professional and very competent assassins corner a small child who's the only witness to their boss's grand plan? The kid makes it out alive with no explanation whatsoever. Psychotic dictator with lightning powers brings down a huge Bolt O' Judgment on a helpless old man? The old man pops up later without a single scratch.
But then, series creator Eiichiro Oda threw us a curve and a half with a certain story arc that killed off not one but two named characters, both fairly heavy players in-universe.
Those of you who follow the manga probably already know where I'm going with this...
Meet Portgas D. Ace, older brother to Monkey D. Luffy. He is, in a word, better at pretty much everything than Luffy is. Better fighter, more notorious reputation, higher intellect, and unfailingly polite to any strangers that he meets. As if that weren't enough, he also happens to be a trusted lieutenant to the most powerful pirate in the world of One Piece: Edward "Whitebeard" Newgate. Newgate, for those who don't know, stands about twenty feet tall, commands a massive fleet of 1,600 pirates, and can create small tidal waves with one swing of his weapon.
Ace makes only a handful of appearance in the manga, beginning with this small lead-in on the winter wonderland known as Drum Island (remember, read from right to left):
In a neat bit of foreshadowing, the townspeople also mention that the day Ace showed up, the island's near-constant snowfall suddenly stopped.
Now, over to the kingdom of Alabasta (basically, imagine Disney's Agrabah, only with 1000% more political intrigue and a Jafar analogue who can personally command sandstorms and drought).
The fellow on the bottom there is Marine Captain Smoker, your standard Loose Cannon
Naturally, a confrontation ensues.
Meanwhile, Luffy and his crew have just docked at Alabasta (in a storyline involving the Princess of the country that I don't have space to post here). Luffy, like a true Shonen hero, is thinking with his stomach instead of his brain.
Luffy gets himself some grub, right before a massive chase happens. Also, no one pays the tab at the diner.
Just when Smoker is about to catch Luffy, Ace steps in.
Quick note: Ace's powers come from the Mera Mera fruit, which basically make him a firebender who can also turn into sentient fire. In the One Piece world especially, powers like these (called "Logia") are the equivalent of a jackpot in the superpower lottery - you can dish out destruction without even meaning to, and almost no physical attacks can scratch you if you're paying attention.
Luffy and his crew escape, and regroup on the ship to discuss Ace...
Two important things to note here: the paper that Ace gives Luffy is revealed several hundred chapters later to be a "Vivre Card" - a card made from fingernail clippings that acts as a compass to Ace's location and begins to shrink in size when Ace's life is in danger. Also, the hunt for Blackbeard is the major focus in Ace's life, driving his actions throughout the entirety of the series.
Before Ace goes, however, he gives us one more demonstration of his powers, effortlessly taking out a fleet of bounty hunter ships after his life.
(In the anime adaptation, there are four or five more filler episodes that have Ace travel with Luffy's party a little while longer, but it's been ages since I saw those, and I don't think they were much good.)
Ace pops up again about a hundred chapters down the road, still on the hunt for Blackbeard (and still pulling Dine-and-Dashes). This time, his path doesn't cross with Luffy's; his adventure is relegated to the chapter-cover mini-arcs, where Oda illustrates the storylines of side characters in largely wordless narratives.
In a small village in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere, Ace has finally found Blackbeard! Unfortunately, it's the wrong Blackbeard.
(To be fair, the real Blackbeard actually looks pretty similar to this poor sap. Only more thuggish and pirate-y.)
Ace gets his ass tossed into a river by the angry townsfolk, and since he can't swim, he ends up being rescued by a little girl.
Long story short, Ace repays his rescuer by delivering a letter to a Marine base. A fairly entertaining comedy of errors results as Ace has to go undercover as a marine (and even winds up saving the sailors on a burning ship), but there's only one real piece of payoff:
With the new intel on Blackbeard, Ace finally tracks the traitor down on Banaro Island. Unfortunately, Blackbeard has gotten himself a massive boost in power with the Yami Yami fruit, which allows him to control darkness and gravity. In essence, he now has dominion over black holes.
Ace is defeated, and Blackbeard turns him in to the marines as a bargaining chip to become a Warlord of the Sea (a sort of government-sanctioned pirate who has certain privileges at Marine institutions). Not long after, an execution is scheduled for Ace.
This, in turns, triggers that "very big incident": Whitebeard marshals all 1,600 of his men (plus forty-three independent pirate crews allied with him) to descend on Marine Headquarters in a rescue attempt. In response, Marine Headquarters gathers every one of its elite officers at the execution site to make sure that the execution goes off without a hitch.
What results is the series' "Paramount War" arc, where almost every single high-roller in the series, on every side of the morality spectrum, lock horns in a massive battle royale. Before it can begin, however, the head of the Marine Fleet has something to say...
How to describe Gold Roger's presence in the world of One Piece? He is THE pirate, THE outlaw, THE inspiration that thousands of other pirates look up to. The only man who survived the Grand Line to the very end, the man who amassed the sort of wealth, fame, and power that most other people can't even dream of, and the man who, at his execution, dared every other pirate to seek out the treasure he left behind. If this story were about wizards, he would be their Merlin. If this story were about superheroes, he would be their Superman.
Naturally, the World Government hates his very bloodline. And today, they have the chance to extinguish it once and for all.
The only thing standing in their way? Thousands of angry pirates who either hate the marines that much, owe favors to Whitebeard's crew, or some combination of the above.
For reasons too complicated to discuss here, Luffy is at the execution site with a new set of allies (his old crew happens to be scattered among a series of islands across the world, and are in no condition to go help him). Lots and lot and lots of fighting, interspersed with the occasional flashback, ensues.
By the end of it, though, Luffy does get Ace out of those shackles... but ah, if that was where the story ended, we wouldn't have this post, would we?
The guy who just put a fist-shaped hole into Ace's gut here is Admiral Akainu, a man with control over magma. He is, with a few possible exceptions, the biggest douchebag in the series - the kind of psychotic "peacekeeper" who once blew up an entire refugee ship because a criminal may have snuck onboard.
For an extra kick in the pants, this entire chapter was titled "The Death of Portgas D. Ace".
Back when I first read this story, I'd wanted Ace revived because I thought his death was a massive storytelling mistake. He was fairly fun to read about, but we'd simply gotten too little of him to form any genuine attachment. Even at the time, I never cried when I saw his death; if anything, I was annoyed at how Oda had finally fallen to "Kill off a character for shock value"-itis after years of restraining most character deaths to backstories and the like.
(To a lesser degree, this is still my attitude toward the entire Paramount War arc; it's supposed to be this Big, Decisive Moment in the series, but there are so few characters I'm familiar with that I find it almost impossible to root for anyone. In any case, Luffy's not even my favorite of the main characters.)
Upon reread, though... yeah, I have to admit that this is a pretty touching death scene. Even trimmed like this, you can get a sense of exactly what kind of person Ace was like, what kind of life he lived, and why him dying young is something to emote over. I'm still rather annoyed with the writer's excuse of "he's an unbeatable obstacle for Luffy, so I had to do SOMETHING to get him out of the way", but that's neither here nor there.
And yet? I still want him back. I can't exactly pinpoint why - maybe out of sentimentality, maybe because it has good storytelling potential, maybe just because I like his design - but I do.
His resurrection might even be on the horizon; Oda's concept art for the series shows that he's at least considered making Hell an actual place in the world of One Piece, and considering all the bizarre lands that Luffy has visited, maybe he will sail down there one day and see the ghosts of all pirates past...
And if not... well, there's always fanfiction.
