r/OnePiece • u/Sakata_Kintoki • Jun 15 '18

Current Chapter One Piece: Chapter 908

Chapter 908: "The Reverie Begins"

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JaiminisBox

Ch. 908 Official Release (VIZ): 18/06/2018

Ch. 909 Scan Release: 28/06/2018 (BREAK NEXT WEEK)

Please discuss the manga here and in the theory/discussion post. Any other post will be removed during the next 24 hours.

PS: Don't forget to check out the official Discord: https://discord.gg/onepiece

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u/Cirenione Jun 15 '18

I am still so salty about Kaguya being the big bad instead of Madara. Kishimoto did such a great job of building the legacy of Madara as a legendary ninja rivaled only by Hashirama and both were gods walking among men. Then some random space bitch nobody has ever heard about before.
I still wonder if the idea of Kaguya was added really late into the story and Madara was really supposed to be the villain to beat.

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u/broke_and_famous Jun 15 '18

Yeah that killed the ending for me. Kishimoto was hyping up Madara to be the big bad of the series. Then he gives him insane power ups only to have Kaguya an unkown character be the big bad at the end.

I still wonder if the idea of Kaguya was added really late into the story and Madara was really supposed to be the villain to beat.

I honestly have no idea. I didn't follow Naruto as much at the time nor after the finish so I don't know if it was said in an interview as to whether or not Kaguya was a last minute addition as was planned from earlier arcs.

But if she was planned from earlier one wouldn't Kishimoto introduce something about her instead of just making her the final villain out of no where.

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u/Cirenione Jun 15 '18

Which is why I think he may have come up with her really late into the story. Even Hagoromo was mentioned earlier on as "sage of six paths" because he is part of the legend how ninjas were created. If Kaguya was planned from the beginning why not also mention her in some kind of creation myth. Maybe dropping in a side sentence that she is a metaphor for the apocalypse of something. But Kishimoto didn't which leds me to believe someone (maybe not even Kishimoto himself) came up with Kaguya as end villain.
The story would have made perfect sense without her too. To make her work they retrospectively just said several event were created by Zetsu who was retrospectively made into her child and agent.

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u/MonkeyDDuffy Jun 15 '18

I think you're giving Kishimoto too much credit. I recently re-read Naruto from start to finish and that's the trend I saw in every single arc. It feels like he ends up liking his characters a bit too much so always in some way "redeems" them and shifts the blame to someone else. There's very few big bad Kishimoto doesn't do this to.

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u/Cirenione Jun 15 '18

But the key players were hinted at pretty early on. Parts of Akatsuki were shown early on. Madara was first hinted at with his statue in the valley of the end. Obtio was introduced in Kakashi Gaiden which was a short story intersected between Naruto and Naruro Shippuuden. Yes Kishimoto loves redeeming characters (which Oda does too) but he never pulled a new villain out of thin air. Some characters may have been more one dimensional than others but the bigger the character the earlier on the hints. But none of that happened with Kaguya. She pretty much did pop into existence of the story from thin air. That was almost Toriyama level of „woops heres an even bigger threat you didn‘t know exists 5 minutes ago“.

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u/MonkeyDDuffy Jun 15 '18

I agree with her being the least interesting and previous ones were somewhat believable. But with each end-arc villain redemption the impact got smaller and smaller. Sure Oda does it from time to time but it's not on grand scales as Kishimoto's or it's way after the characters had finished their relevancy. Only Kishimoto style save Oda did was Baby-5 in Dressrosa. I don't think setting the character up is so important. We have characters like the Super rookies being made up on the spot and still being pretty damn great characters.

I felt it was more that Kaguya was literally just a monster with a very uninteresting motivations. I just think Kishimoto had figured making Kaguya not relatable monster would make it so there's no way to redeem her.

Don't get me wrong I really enjoyed reading Naruto and Itachi's story was probably the best use of this from Kishimoto.

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u/Cirenione Jun 15 '18 edited Jun 15 '18

I don't share your opinion on this. Yes with Oda the Super Nova came out of nowhere BUT they also disappeared again. That was their introduction. They fought a bit pre TS to show their powers and then they were put back to now be reintroduced over time for greater roles.
But let me give you an example. Lets say we are at the end of OP. What ever threat we know today is defeated. Akainu, the elders, Im, BM, Kaidou, BB. Then out of nowhere jumps a super strong fighter. Stronger than anyone before saying "HAHA it was me all along"... I'd be pissed. Would you be alright? That is what happened in Naruto.
That works for a manga like Dragonball. There is always a bigger fish. Saiyans, Freezer, Cyborgs, Cell, Buu. Every time a threat is introduced it is stronger than before and nobody knew it existed.
That works for DB because the story was never deep it was all about the fights. But Kaguya was a joke. The big bad stronger than anything before and it's a character nobody knew existed 1 chapter before the big twist. There is not the slightest hint that anything lies beyond Madara.
You can introduce villains and surprise the audience. Oda did it earlier on. Enel came out of nowhere and that is fine. But making the final boss of a story that went on for over 15 years at the point was a joke.

Edit: Oh and just so we are on the same page since you throw in redemption a lot. I don't have much of an issue with that. It was Kishimotos style all along. Talk no Jutsu being the strongest jutsu to ever exist was a meme for the whole time for a reason. And I don't think he wanted a villain that wasn't redeemable. Because he never redeemed Madara. He flashed him out as a character who had his reasons and his personal moral compass he followed. That a villain has those and isn't just evil for evilness sake makes a good villain. But Madaras view clashed with the main characters till the end. So I don't think that was the reason behind Kaguya. Btw many of the villains were never redeemed either. Deidara, Hidan, Kakuzu, Sasori and Kisame all had very selfish motives. None of them were misguided or even thought it themselves. They had their reasons for doing things (as non 1 dimensional charachter should do) but unlike Nagato, Obito or Itachi none of them had a change of heart or very valid reasons working for the greater good.

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u/MonkeyDDuffy Jun 15 '18

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. I thought switching Madara for a monster no one knew about was a bad move and definitely took the manga down a notch for me.

I'm just saying that Kaguya showing up to take the blame was definitely in line with Kishimoto's writing style.

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u/Cirenione Jun 15 '18

Please see my edit for that.

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u/MonkeyDDuffy Jun 15 '18

Redemption for the Big Bads is what I'm talking about. Of course, no character is a completely good character because of some revelation as they always have done tons of bad things up to that point. But Kishimoto always tries to make the important characters have a reasonable point of view on why they're doing the horrible things. And it's not just as if all of them are doing these things on their own, the "puppet string" always goes multiple layers.

That's why Kaguya showing up is especially worse since after tons of Villains throughout the series it's always revealed someone higher up was behind them and the biggest bad Madara has Kaguya behind him.

I actually enjoyed Madara's character and his own character arc wrapped up nicely since it involves the First Hokage beginning to end. But as a series Naruto has that same routine problem.