![[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_dailyTo be honest, the Straw Hat Pirates almost got this one, by just a hair, but their two most recent members don't really do much for me, and I've started liking all of them a whole lot less since the timeskip. Besides, I've always liked villains better than heroes, anyway.
So let's put our hands together forrrrrr... Baroque Works!
What is Baroque Works, you ask? Good question! In the world of One Piece, Baroque Works is the name of a massive syndicate of bounty hunters and assassins gathered for the explicit purpose of overthrowing the desert kingdom of Alabasta. During the story arc they appeared in, these guys were the toughest (and quite possibly kookiest) villains that the protagonists had gone up against at that point.
Let's let the lovely Princess Nefertari Vivi explain further (remember: read right to left):
As is the case in many manga series, the guy running the entire show is the smartest and the toughest guy in the bunch. Even ten years after he first appeared, Sir Crocodile (AKA "Mr. 0") is remembered as one of the series' greatest villains - a mash-up of Professor Moriarty, Marvel's Sandman, and just the tiniest pinch of Captain Hook. Over the course of four years, he subtly manufactured a revolution in Alabasta that almost toppled the entire monarchy and brought about millions of deaths, complete with numerous back-up plans meant to foil any do-gooders.
Up-close and personal, he's even worse.
Because Crocodile can turn his entire body into sand on reflex, most physical attacks can't do jack shit against him, and he's absolutely spoiled for choice when it comes offense.
There's the trusty sandstorm:
A nasty little trick where his right hand can suck all the moisture out of anything it touches:
Or just use the big, pointy instrument of death on his left arm:
Also notable: Crocodile is the first villain that Luffy flat-out lost against. Sure, Luffy had faced opponents that made him sweat before, but none of them had so completely owned him in a fight and actually tossed him aside into a pit of quicksand, left for dead.
In fact, it's only because of Crocodile's second-in-command, Nico "Miss All-Sunday" Robin, that the series didn't end right here.
Miss All-Sunday is no slouch in the brains department herself, and her combat abilities are, if anything, even creepier than Crocodile's:
It's a skill tailor-made for espionage and assassination, and it's almost unbeatable for any purely melee fighter.
Let's move on to the subordinate agents (who will be getting black-and-white scans because they're not as important, natch).
Mr. 1 is, sadly, the dullest of the bunch - there's not much to him aside from "emotionless hardass", and he doesn't seem to have any particular talent outside of combat.
His power, granted by the Supa Supa fruit, lets him sprout metal blades on any part of his body (as a side effect, it also lets his flesh mimic the toughness of tempered steel, meaning that most attacks can't scratch him). On a possibly related note, his big fight scene is probably the most brutal one in Alabasta.
Mr. 1's partner, Miss Doublefinger, has a more... refined version of his powers: the ability to grow thorns on any part of her body. Said thorns, I should add, can punch right through stone walls with ease.
While Doublefinger's fight scene is - like most of the female villain fights in One Piece - the softest and most bloodless of the bunch and filled with all kinds of fanservice, it's still a pretty creative fight scene, and I urge you to check out the anime adaptation if nothing else.
Onto Mr. 2, who... I'm not gonna lie, is probably going to be the most uncomfortable character in this bunch. If you paid attention to that graphic up there, he's the only agent without a female partner. This is because he's an okama - a Japanese slang term which can alternatively mean "homosexual" or "transvestite".
His character design is... um...
Yeah. Oda almost seems to have gone out of his way to make the guy look as hideous as possible (in series where there are already very few male lookers), and at first glance, his personality doesn't seem much more progressive - he's obsessed with singing, dancing, and the touchy-feely, and his job in Baroque Works revolves around deception and subterfuge.
Granted, that last part is mainly because of his Devil fruit ability:
This Devil fruit power isn't particularly useful for combat, but no worries. In addition to his many, many skills, Mr. 2 also happens to be the world's reigning master of "Okama Kenpo" - a martial art that combines ballet moves and kung fu into a deadly style.
More than that, though - compared to everyone else in Baroque Works, Mr. 2 is a shining beacon of humanity. After the Strawhats inadvertently saved his life, he repaid the favor by helping them escape Alabasta without getting arrested by the Navy, going so far as to remain behind as a decoy:
(Incidentally, this isn't even the last time he sacrifices his own freedom for the sake of a friend, though the later instances will need much, much more explanatory context.)
As for Mr. 3... he's basically Sir Crocodile with about one percent of the dignity and badassery. Oh, sure, he looks impressive initially...
But once our heroes inevitably kick his ass, he's left crawling and begging Crocodile for a second chance instead of getting the hell out of dodge like an actual smart person:
It's a shame, because his power is really rather impressive: as a "Candleman", he's essentially a Green Lantern with candle wax, able to tap almost infinite amounts of it from his body and shape it as he likes. Oh, and once that wax dries, it's hard as steel.
Mr. 3's partner, Miss Goldenweek, is a strange one: she's a little kid with almost no combat skills of her own (when left alone, the Strawhats' team pet easily kicks her ass). Her abilities are almost entirely meant to play support for Mr. 3, but when she goes into action, she's very, very effective.
You see, she's a "realist" painter. Which, in the wonderful world of manga, somehow translates into "her paint can mind-control people by forcing different emotions onto them".
As Zoro notes, a textbook Idiot Hero like Luffy stands little chance against hypnotism, and it's only when Usopp burns Luffy's shirt off that Luffy regains a fighting chance.
Mr. 4 is almost the polar opposite of Mr. 3: a guy with plenty of muscle but a brain that's slow as thawing molasses. He's the only male Officer Agent without a Devil fruit power, instead favoring a four-ton baseball bat and exploding baseballs.
Out of all the Officer Agent teams, the Mr. 4 team feels the most... familial. There are fan theories that Mr. 3 is supposed to be Miss Goldenweek's caretaker (hence why a ten-year-old is in a giant criminal syndicate), but Mr. 4 is regularly on the receiving end of barbed comments and (harmless) blows from his partner, Miss Merry Christmas.
Miss Merry Christmas herself is loud, pushy, and not particularly pleasant, but her ability to transform into a half-mole is rather well-suited to the earthy terrain of Alabasta:
And when the two of them put their skills together, the results can be downright horrifying:
The weakest of the Officer Agents, Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine, don't really get any full-length fight scenes, but their powers are interesting enough to be worth a write-up:
Yes, that's right: Mr. 5 can explode any part of his body without injury, and he usually chooses to fight with his boogers. It gets even more ridiculous later on, where he breathes in the chambers of a revolver and fills it with invisible, exploding bullets.
As for Miss Valentine...
Since Miss Valentine can freely change her weight without altering her mass one bit, I have to guess that her powers actually center around gravity manipulation. Shame she rarely hits anyone with her attacks when he does one of her 10000 KG presses.
That's about it for the Officer Agents - the Frontier Agents are a lot more grounded in their appearances and their abilities, partially because they were the first agents the the readers met, and so had to "ease" those readers into the Grand Line's more over-the-top power levels. We don't get to see all of them, but the ones we do see include:
Mr. 7 and Miss Father's Day, a pair of sniping experts with incredibly strange tastes in fashion:
The great Mr. 8, in reality an undercover captain of the guard from Alabasta kingdom, who hides guns in his saxophone...
... and his hair-curls.
Miss Monday, the strongwoman whose gimmick doesn't really go further than "super-muscular Black chick"...
Mr. 9, another baseball-themed agent who trades Mr. 4's muscle for Dick Grayson-esque acrobatic skills:
And Miss Wednesday, the undercover Princess of Alabasta with a hidden heart of gold and a massive ostrich... duck... thing.
It's notable that most of the Frontier Agents we see are a lot nicer than the Officer Agents - even Mr. 9 and Miss Monday, who don't have anything to do with the Alabasta conspiracy (that we know of), put their lives on the line to save Mr. 8 and Miss Wednesday when the latter two get outed as spies trying to save Alabasta's monarchy.
(They still live, of course, since Nobody Dies In One Piece, but it's the sentiment that counts.)
Mr. 13 and Miss Friday are in a category of their own - intelligent, semi-sentient animals who are actually enough of a threat to scare the crap out of all the Frontier Agents (the story indicates that Officer Agents who fail their missions are instead executed by whichever agent ranks one number above). They're also responsible for sketching the faces of any new threats to Baroque Works that might pop up.
And I don't know why, but there's just something creepy as hell about these two.
Baroque Works was arguably One Piece's first big Quirky Villain Organization, and Eiichiro Oda would later try to duplicate its success with the likes of CP9 and Thriller Bark's Enigma Four. For my money, though, none of those attempts were quite as successful as the first time 'round. The men and women of Baroque Works are truly one of a kind, and they show up long after they've inevitably been trounced by the heroes. Most of them actually find one form of redemption or another, and as for the rest...?
Well, let's just say they're headed for bigger, better things.
So let's put our hands together forrrrrr... Baroque Works!
What is Baroque Works, you ask? Good question! In the world of One Piece, Baroque Works is the name of a massive syndicate of bounty hunters and assassins gathered for the explicit purpose of overthrowing the desert kingdom of Alabasta. During the story arc they appeared in, these guys were the toughest (and quite possibly kookiest) villains that the protagonists had gone up against at that point.
Let's let the lovely Princess Nefertari Vivi explain further (remember: read right to left):
As is the case in many manga series, the guy running the entire show is the smartest and the toughest guy in the bunch. Even ten years after he first appeared, Sir Crocodile (AKA "Mr. 0") is remembered as one of the series' greatest villains - a mash-up of Professor Moriarty, Marvel's Sandman, and just the tiniest pinch of Captain Hook. Over the course of four years, he subtly manufactured a revolution in Alabasta that almost toppled the entire monarchy and brought about millions of deaths, complete with numerous back-up plans meant to foil any do-gooders.
Up-close and personal, he's even worse.
Because Crocodile can turn his entire body into sand on reflex, most physical attacks can't do jack shit against him, and he's absolutely spoiled for choice when it comes offense.
There's the trusty sandstorm:
A nasty little trick where his right hand can suck all the moisture out of anything it touches:
Or just use the big, pointy instrument of death on his left arm:
Also notable: Crocodile is the first villain that Luffy flat-out lost against. Sure, Luffy had faced opponents that made him sweat before, but none of them had so completely owned him in a fight and actually tossed him aside into a pit of quicksand, left for dead.
In fact, it's only because of Crocodile's second-in-command, Nico "Miss All-Sunday" Robin, that the series didn't end right here.
Miss All-Sunday is no slouch in the brains department herself, and her combat abilities are, if anything, even creepier than Crocodile's:
It's a skill tailor-made for espionage and assassination, and it's almost unbeatable for any purely melee fighter.
Let's move on to the subordinate agents (who will be getting black-and-white scans because they're not as important, natch).
Mr. 1 is, sadly, the dullest of the bunch - there's not much to him aside from "emotionless hardass", and he doesn't seem to have any particular talent outside of combat.
His power, granted by the Supa Supa fruit, lets him sprout metal blades on any part of his body (as a side effect, it also lets his flesh mimic the toughness of tempered steel, meaning that most attacks can't scratch him). On a possibly related note, his big fight scene is probably the most brutal one in Alabasta.
Mr. 1's partner, Miss Doublefinger, has a more... refined version of his powers: the ability to grow thorns on any part of her body. Said thorns, I should add, can punch right through stone walls with ease.
While Doublefinger's fight scene is - like most of the female villain fights in One Piece - the softest and most bloodless of the bunch and filled with all kinds of fanservice, it's still a pretty creative fight scene, and I urge you to check out the anime adaptation if nothing else.
Onto Mr. 2, who... I'm not gonna lie, is probably going to be the most uncomfortable character in this bunch. If you paid attention to that graphic up there, he's the only agent without a female partner. This is because he's an okama - a Japanese slang term which can alternatively mean "homosexual" or "transvestite".
His character design is... um...
Yeah. Oda almost seems to have gone out of his way to make the guy look as hideous as possible (in series where there are already very few male lookers), and at first glance, his personality doesn't seem much more progressive - he's obsessed with singing, dancing, and the touchy-feely, and his job in Baroque Works revolves around deception and subterfuge.
Granted, that last part is mainly because of his Devil fruit ability:
This Devil fruit power isn't particularly useful for combat, but no worries. In addition to his many, many skills, Mr. 2 also happens to be the world's reigning master of "Okama Kenpo" - a martial art that combines ballet moves and kung fu into a deadly style.
More than that, though - compared to everyone else in Baroque Works, Mr. 2 is a shining beacon of humanity. After the Strawhats inadvertently saved his life, he repaid the favor by helping them escape Alabasta without getting arrested by the Navy, going so far as to remain behind as a decoy:
(Incidentally, this isn't even the last time he sacrifices his own freedom for the sake of a friend, though the later instances will need much, much more explanatory context.)
As for Mr. 3... he's basically Sir Crocodile with about one percent of the dignity and badassery. Oh, sure, he looks impressive initially...
But once our heroes inevitably kick his ass, he's left crawling and begging Crocodile for a second chance instead of getting the hell out of dodge like an actual smart person:
It's a shame, because his power is really rather impressive: as a "Candleman", he's essentially a Green Lantern with candle wax, able to tap almost infinite amounts of it from his body and shape it as he likes. Oh, and once that wax dries, it's hard as steel.
Mr. 3's partner, Miss Goldenweek, is a strange one: she's a little kid with almost no combat skills of her own (when left alone, the Strawhats' team pet easily kicks her ass). Her abilities are almost entirely meant to play support for Mr. 3, but when she goes into action, she's very, very effective.
You see, she's a "realist" painter. Which, in the wonderful world of manga, somehow translates into "her paint can mind-control people by forcing different emotions onto them".
As Zoro notes, a textbook Idiot Hero like Luffy stands little chance against hypnotism, and it's only when Usopp burns Luffy's shirt off that Luffy regains a fighting chance.
Mr. 4 is almost the polar opposite of Mr. 3: a guy with plenty of muscle but a brain that's slow as thawing molasses. He's the only male Officer Agent without a Devil fruit power, instead favoring a four-ton baseball bat and exploding baseballs.
Out of all the Officer Agent teams, the Mr. 4 team feels the most... familial. There are fan theories that Mr. 3 is supposed to be Miss Goldenweek's caretaker (hence why a ten-year-old is in a giant criminal syndicate), but Mr. 4 is regularly on the receiving end of barbed comments and (harmless) blows from his partner, Miss Merry Christmas.
Miss Merry Christmas herself is loud, pushy, and not particularly pleasant, but her ability to transform into a half-mole is rather well-suited to the earthy terrain of Alabasta:
And when the two of them put their skills together, the results can be downright horrifying:
The weakest of the Officer Agents, Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine, don't really get any full-length fight scenes, but their powers are interesting enough to be worth a write-up:
Yes, that's right: Mr. 5 can explode any part of his body without injury, and he usually chooses to fight with his boogers. It gets even more ridiculous later on, where he breathes in the chambers of a revolver and fills it with invisible, exploding bullets.
As for Miss Valentine...
Since Miss Valentine can freely change her weight without altering her mass one bit, I have to guess that her powers actually center around gravity manipulation. Shame she rarely hits anyone with her attacks when he does one of her 10000 KG presses.
That's about it for the Officer Agents - the Frontier Agents are a lot more grounded in their appearances and their abilities, partially because they were the first agents the the readers met, and so had to "ease" those readers into the Grand Line's more over-the-top power levels. We don't get to see all of them, but the ones we do see include:
Mr. 7 and Miss Father's Day, a pair of sniping experts with incredibly strange tastes in fashion:
The great Mr. 8, in reality an undercover captain of the guard from Alabasta kingdom, who hides guns in his saxophone...
... and his hair-curls.
Miss Monday, the strongwoman whose gimmick doesn't really go further than "super-muscular Black chick"...
Mr. 9, another baseball-themed agent who trades Mr. 4's muscle for Dick Grayson-esque acrobatic skills:
And Miss Wednesday, the undercover Princess of Alabasta with a hidden heart of gold and a massive ostrich... duck... thing.
It's notable that most of the Frontier Agents we see are a lot nicer than the Officer Agents - even Mr. 9 and Miss Monday, who don't have anything to do with the Alabasta conspiracy (that we know of), put their lives on the line to save Mr. 8 and Miss Wednesday when the latter two get outed as spies trying to save Alabasta's monarchy.
(They still live, of course, since Nobody Dies In One Piece, but it's the sentiment that counts.)
Mr. 13 and Miss Friday are in a category of their own - intelligent, semi-sentient animals who are actually enough of a threat to scare the crap out of all the Frontier Agents (the story indicates that Officer Agents who fail their missions are instead executed by whichever agent ranks one number above). They're also responsible for sketching the faces of any new threats to Baroque Works that might pop up.
And I don't know why, but there's just something creepy as hell about these two.
Baroque Works was arguably One Piece's first big Quirky Villain Organization, and Eiichiro Oda would later try to duplicate its success with the likes of CP9 and Thriller Bark's Enigma Four. For my money, though, none of those attempts were quite as successful as the first time 'round. The men and women of Baroque Works are truly one of a kind, and they show up long after they've inevitably been trounced by the heroes. Most of them actually find one form of redemption or another, and as for the rest...?
Well, let's just say they're headed for bigger, better things.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 04:14 am (UTC)But of course, then we get Ivanakov, and he's just a whole different kettle of fish.
Ivanakov is basically Dr. Frank N Furter with magic sex changing powers, and killer winks.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 09:59 am (UTC)But he's also a black guy named Panther, and the story frequently talks about how he holds a nigh-insurmountable advantage over our hero because of his superior black genes. So the (Japanese) protagonist must struggle manfully against this obstacle and so on.
The story straight-up proclaims that some races are better than others, at least physically. But there's no ill intent at all, as far as I can tell. Kind of surreal to read for a Westerner like me.
I get the impression that nobody ever sat Oda down and talked to him about stereotypes and transphobia. Because despite the frequent grotesque stereotypes, his writing never feels malicious. He probably just needs a good lecture.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 02:08 pm (UTC)But yeah, I can't even read the final arc because it uses "black people are inherently superior athletes" as an actual plot point. It was especially bizarre considering the first arc he appeared in was all about repudiating racism like that.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 09:25 am (UTC)