Max K

I definitely agree with Wano’s emotional scenes. For example, Yasuie’s death did not hit me too hard when I first read it, but I was bawling when I watched it in the anime.

Even after reading dozens of manga and watching tens of different anime, One Piece still sits at the top of my favorites. I think one its strongest attributes is definitely these emotional moments that do not even need to kill a character to make them so effective. I remember crying about three times in a span of a couple episodes when I first watched Chopper’s backstory, as well as tearing up seeing Ace’s smiling body on the ground after his death. However, I must say I was not very sad for the great Whitebeard’s death. I struggle to put in words, but I was more impressed with the pure raw power that Whitebeard held, as made especially apparent when he died while standing up, without a single scar inflicted on his back, or a “coward’s wound” as Oda put it.

I definitely agree with you that tutorials can be a big hit or miss with some games, all based on their executions. A game with the best tutorials, or rather lack there of, was Yacht Club Games’ Shovel Knight (later renamed to Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove). In this 2014 8-bit 2D platformer, the controls come naturally to the player, even if they never played a game of that genre. Or Mega Man X’s subtle flow of how it teaches its player the basics (Egoraptor did a very nice video on that game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM).

However, a game I think fails in its tutorials is Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which released on the Switch in late 2017. This is without a doubt one of my favorite games of all time, but I cannot praise its tutorials that much. They are fairly confusing and do not do a great job at explaining mechanics, even I failed to understand a key combat mechanic until very late in the game.

As a big fan of the anime and manga and someone who’s reread and rewatches the series a few times, this is a pretty interesting view of the events and characters present throughout. I think some things like Reg showing off his masculinity in the form of mentions of his penis to being constantly shirtless may be also due to Tsukushi’s (the mangaka) rather odd fetishes when it comes to those subjects.

In terms of Bondrewd, I think it should have also been noted that he genuinely does care for the children that he leads to death. Even Prushka, a girl who he raised until her tragic death, was someone who he truly did love (https://pastebin.com/suLy0FN5).

I would have liked if you went more into more of the Sixth Layer and its many horrors, primarily Irumyuui’s obsession with becoming a mother.