You mean Game of Thrones. ASOIF does not have random deaths. Everyone says he does but he doesn’t.
Wellllll Not "Random" but Fat Fuck is such a poor writer who is so absolutely scared of having his plot actually go anywhere that any time a good guy gets close to accomplishing something..they get betrayed and murdered. The Red Wedding is a really cool "Gatcha" moment..but it is where the series begins to go to absolute fucking shit because from that moment on the plot slows to a crawl because one of the two main characters is fucking dead.
Game of Thrones pushed it into the stratosphere, but once you see it in the TV series it's really hard to reread the books and not see that it is the same bad habits..except more subtle.
Martin is a fucking hack.
I thought it was established that anything edgelord related was put into Gear 4 (mainly to set up Gear 5 being a happy, carefree idiot. Who’s also a god reincarnated).
As for random deaths, I can only assume it’s because the stakes are raised so the death toll has to go up to go along with it, except Oda’s been shown to be very methodical with how he shows death and who he kills off.
That or people REALLY hate the Celestial Dragons, and want them to get their karma before Oda metaphorically schedules it.
I don't think Gear 4 is "Edge Lord"
Boundman is fucking Silly on a conceptual Level, Luffy literally can't not bounce when in it.
Tank Man is the Super form of the thing that he has done with bullets since Captain Morgan's troops shot him and he flung the bullets back.
Snake man is the upgraded form of the hilarious bullshit he did to negate Enel's Observation Haki except now he can bounce the attacks fast enough that it works.
As for when Oda kills people..he kills people when it actually matters..and honestly I think his reluctance to kill people is a GOOD thing.
What would have killing Wapol really accomplish compared to having him come back and be Vivi's foil while she is on a side plot?
What would have killing Pell accomplished? Crocodile's ass was already beat by the time the Bomb was going off so even if Pell died it wouldn't have mattered because Crocodile was already not a threat.
Ace, Pedro and Yasuie all died doing things that were important to the plot.