Alabasta

Kaiser, you said that water was the answer to his problems, and you thought, Apo, that fighting Crocodile might force Luffy to adapt or gain some sort of upgrade.

This week, we finally get the answer to both of these, but breeding Crocodile turns out to be only one part of the equation when it comes to saving Alabasta.

And it's not enough.

It's never enough.

And Robin reads the Poneglyph, and it turns out to be just history.

Mm-hmm.

The history of Alabasta, no mention of Pluton.

What do you guys think about this whole Pluton history situation going on here?

Yeah, I think progressively in One Piece, you see more and more of the structure of the world and the government, and that kind of political aspect of the series gets expanded upon.

I mean, we talked a lot in the Alabasta episode about how Alabasta is the arc in which One Piece starts to get political.

You kinda learn about the warlords and how one of them has abused their power to take over the kingdom and try to turn it into a civil war.

And I feel like we have seen the corrupt ways in which, maybe not the individual Marines, as you were saying, go about their job, but in which they are upholding these fascist and corrupt regimes.

even in previous arcs, he is incapable of just, like, letting even side characters that we don't care about just die.

Mm-hmm.

Like, why the fuck is Pell alive from fucking Alabasta?

[laughs]

During the showdown with the Marines, Luffy's Observation Haki allows him to stay safe even in Smoker's smoke screen, but he can't get any attacks off either, so it's a stalemate, one which Monkey D. Dragon is quick to break and allow Luffy's crew to escape.

Following up from that, nothing mu- really changes in the beginning of the Arabasta arc.

The episode with the giant whale and the events at Whiskey Peak are unchanged.

Luffy does have suspicions about the townspeople because of his Observation Haki, but the feast presented to them makes him forget that pretty fast and things go the same as canon.

Now that he's realized what's happening and he's grown accustomed to it, Luffy is able to activate Limitless Lifeline since he saw Crocodile's surprise attack coming.

Instead of being impaled, the hook crashes into Luffy's chest and slides right off, prompting the man to coat his skull with the maximum level of armament haki he can and headbutt Crocodile while he's still shocked so hard that they're both knocked unconscious.

This development pretty much flips the rest of the Arabasta arc on its head, effectively ending it before any of the preceding events can happen.

When Miss All Sunday arrives and secures Luffy, she makes sure to incapacitate Crocodile as well and deliver him as a prisoner alongside Luffy.