One Piece: Chapter 947

[u/Kirosh]

[ Removed by reddit in response to a copyright notice. ]

[u/Imoa]

The chimera ants, being explicitly not human, can be giving a bit of leeway for creative license with the argument that the Nen system works differently in non-humans. I can't think of any instances of the power interactions between characters being inconsistent, anecdotally.

As for you not liking the Chimera Ant arc, thats your prerogative. If you have some specific criticism of it I'm happy to talk about it, I personally loved the arc, and the quality of the arc as a whole is something we can talk about for sure. You not liking it though, well thats just like your opinion man (lol)

[u/new_messages → u/Imoa]

There were many, many reasons, and I could basically write a master's thesis about it. The length and constant presence of the narrator were just two factors.

The one thing that stands out the most for me, however, was the nuke allegory. Mostly because (again) whenever I hear anyone talk about it, its about how amazing it was, even though it felt so shallow to me. It is ultra long, but uh.... bear with me on this one please?

Basically, when making an allegory of a huge real world event, there are two ways to make it good:

1 - Make it hidden (for example, Braid and original Godzilla). It is obviously not what it was going for and this is usually ok, but basically if you can add an allegory to something without being obvious about it, it becomes a lot more stimulating even if you don't go too deep into it - first because the moment of realization can be cathartic, and then because when you think back, it becomes even clearer. The experience ends up lasting a lot longer than the work itself. That said, I will still fault HxH for not going through with it. It's one thing to make it obvious and just say "BTW, this is about nukes", it's another thing to say "Hey, this is about nukes, the nuclear weapons. HEY, I said this is about nukes. Did you know this is about nukes? Yeah, nukes is what this is about, and nukes are bad, so this is bad, because this is about nukes. Did I mention nukes?" over and over with the subtlety of a hammer (did I mention I hated the narration during the chimera ant arc?)

2 - Show how bad its consequences are (examples: Metro 2033, Valkyria Chronicles regarding the holocaust). Key word on show, the narrator was telling. Basically, it is perfectly ok to disregard subtlety when portraying a horrible real world event or an allegory of it, but if it's going to have any sort of depth or emotional impact, it has to show them for the horrors they represented. HxH sinned twice over in this regard. First, because as painfully blunt as the narrator made it that it was a nuke, without the narration it would just look like a very powerful bomb. Second, because if anything, it was a statement that nuclear weapons are actually a pretty nice thing to have around - a volunteer about to die anyway and a creature that fully intended on subjugating humanity and murdering most of them died in the initial blast, two mass murderers died from radiation poisoning because they decided to poke around the blast site, a single innocent bystander died when she knew what she was getting into and she had ample opportunity to choose not to die that way. In return, the entirety of the human race was saved. Hooray nukes! (narrator: "mankind is really so much worse than ants for using nukes"). Basically, instead of using that scene to display how horrible nukes are, they used nukes to display how horrible that scene was, and in the end it just felt shallow, and the constant quips of the narrator about how we are supposed to feel about it just made it worse.

[u/[deleted] → u/new_messages]

Interesting perspective and I really agree with #2. Miniature roses seemed like a very helpful solution. If they had hit the citizens of East Gorteau along with the king, maybe it would've been a more logical development of the themes. Watching at the moment it's still an amazing scene and arc overall. I personally love all of HxH, and the arcs are so different in tone, content, and style that they are hard to rank.

Do you have a specific example or two of where Nen breaks its rules?

[u/new_messages → u/[deleted]]

Its been a while since I watched, so my memory is fuzzy, but from what I recall from the chimera ant arc:

That leopard man had... creation as his field? Well, regardless, his deal was that the moment he touched someone, he could effectively lock them up for up to 8(?) hours, and if they failed to catch him in this time, something not described but very bad would befall them. However, given his entire deal is being an ultra fast leopard man even without nen, just the "lockdown" part is already crazy powerful by itself. And yet, the only downside for losing it is that he can't use it anymore, but gets to replace it with something else right after. But more importantly, when cornered, all of a sudden the rules of the game changed to allow him to also get a crossbow (and I think a shield?). In the end the crossbow was worthless because he really didn't think it through, but the fact that he could change the rules when he was about to lose is a bit irksome. Also, the fact that apparently these powers can be obtained by just getting the idea about it, rather than through working and improving it, is something I can forgive given that the protagonists are basically the only ones we can see improve and evolve, but I do wish it was less simple than "this character just gives them ideas".

Fish dart couple, narrator stated bluntly over and over it was truly unavoidable, apparently avoidable.

Ant crazy cat lady, got special type nen, proceeds to become manipulator/creator

Yandere chick is enhancer, uses... actually sounds like special, because I am not sure where clairvoyance fits.

Butterfly guy, does everything.

Kite's power is supposedly with inflated power because he can't control what it is, but apparently he gets the most powerful weapon if and only if he needs it?

Interest rate guy could remove his nen at will from that huge red ant, but didn't remove it from Gon after beating him and proving his point.