Nahh every single WG executive gotta be in the files. Akainu, Kizaru and Aramaki especially.
You answered your own question.
Competency is the issue here but I guess it was fine for a while.
He didn't do anything wrong, his thorns did their intended job, The Arrow and the Dream Monster were at fault.
If anything, I think the underlying problem was complacency.
It's actually the ship getting blown up indirectly by the giants through the MMA.
The fun thing is that G5 is intentionally "bad" because Oda thought that everyone has final powerups that are too generic and serious so he has to.
Sommers (and I think several others) are clearly not up for snuff until at least Eblaph, they got packed multiple times on God Valley and got packed multiple times by Roger. I don't know how did the guy got hired long enough to get an Abyssal Covenant from Imu.
Imu has some kind of DF or power. BB's DF has the ability to negate other DF users making their DF powers weaker in contact with his DF. Loki still has chapters to show the full abilities of his DF but it was definitely needed for whatever reason to make him deal with his father who Imu was controlling.
Which is not his fault because he is not in control of Not-Nika
G5 is what Luffy's awakening was going to be regardless of Nika, even if it were the straight Gomu Gomu Fruit "Making the World Rubber" in retrospect means "Luffy warps reality"
Because God Valley and getting packed by Roger means he loses to the top .01% of the people on the planet and isn't a real metric of competency.
Roger wasn't slow moving and predictable, he was just stuck for 13 years because he couldn't read the Poneglyphs and as soon as Roger got someone that could he effectively went from zero to laugh tale in just about a year and the how doesn't seem to be to widely known because if the Road Poneglyphs were fully known then Zou would have been under attack by more than just Kaido, who had just found out about the Road Poneglyph on Zou when Kanjuro told Orochi.
I'm actually talking about Xebec. The time between him invading the Garden of Flowers and speaking to Imu to the God Valley incident is 20+ years at least. That's more than enough time for the World Government to find a way to get rid of him. And then of course, they found out where his family is hiding at and everything else is history.
Its not bad in concept, its bad in execution because Oda turned his protagonist into a dull, laughing jackass.
The other thing I’ve heard was that Gear 5 kind of changes the spin of the Gum Gum Fruit, where before it was “Luffy was finding ways to make this devil fruit work because it’s said to be pretty weak and/or not impressive compared to other devil fruits” to “Luffy has literal God powers and toon force on his side”.
Who the hell said that, anyway?
This comment.
Gear 2 and 3 felt like a natural progression of Luffy using his powers in creative ways which is how DF worked in OP to me. The user is who is in control on how they use their DF and something as silly as being able to stretch your body can be utterly dangerous in the right hands. Gear 4 was Luffy using his Haki training to boost his power but integrating it with other gears and create devastating results. I think the reason why G5 feels so off is because it basically just says "oh yeah he can just do all that from the start because his fruit is a cartoon."
Would add this to my argument too because by saying Luffy's fruit was some hidden god fruit you take away from the coolness of it. In the universe itself it basically just is the silliest thing people have ever seen rather than them being confused on how silly it is by its nature if that make sense. With the shanks thing it also proves how early One Piece had things happen for their own purpose and years later would be written to be like "oh no Oda planned for this all along you see"
I still think Law's coming back into play even before the final war. There's so much emphasis put into his DF that I'm kinda surprised he doesn't have a higher bounty.
Literally does what everyone should know it does when we saw Doffy's and Katakuri's awakening. It gives the world its properties. String, mochi, rubber. It is exactly what you should have thought it was if you paid attention. The only surprise was the transformation.
Upon seeing what the fruit could do, you have to admit that its reputation being suppressed is the only reason as to why it is not infamous. It is insanely versatile and strong. The only way one could dismiss it as weak is if every previous user was an idiot or because of the WG.
You do realize that Oda is very open about the things he did not plan, right? Clearly he planned this. He did not plan about Shank's arm though. Credit for that goes to his editor at the time.
Even if it wasn’t planned, the issue is the emotional impact, and the aspect of “Shanks using it as a way to free himself from Imu’s control” can take away from it.
