Warning: Contains spoilers from One Piece Fan Letter.Anime fandoms tend to be plagued by debates about scale of power and, unfortunately, One piece is no different. Fans often focus more on analyzing arbitrary power levels and deeming someone incredibly weak or incredibly powerful than they do on the story itself, and unfortunately, they often get so caught up in it that they criticize it. anyone who disagrees with them to increasingly unpleasant degrees.
Powerscaling has been a controversial part of One piece fandom for years, and the One Piece Fan Letter special called on fans to get involved in it. The special was a series of vignettes about ordinary people in the world of One pieceand in a meta-sequence, a segment of One Piece Fan Letter was dedicated to parodying the most common debates that powerscaling fans tend to fall into. It wasn’t the focus of the special, but for those who know the subject, and especially for those who are tired of it, it was a lot of fun to watch.
One Piece Officially Makes Canon Powerscaling
One Piece has never been so meta
In one of the stories of One Piece Fan Letterseveral people gather in a bar to discuss the strongest One piece characters in their opinions. Some opinions were based purely on personal prejudices, such as Zoro and Akainu being created simply because someone liked them, and they even tried to use rewards as an arbitrary measure of strength, mainly to shoot down the idea of Sanji being stronger than Zoro. Everything these people said reflects the most common forms One piece fans engage in powerscaling, so One Piece Fan Letter essentially turns powerscaling canon into One piece.
It’s one thing for powerscaling to be canonical One pieceBut what makes things even better is how One Piece Fan Letter it takes time to make fun of it. Aside from how over the top the debate would be, especially with one person randomly mentioning Akainu in a discussion about swordsmen, whenever everyone went too far in their prejudices, Zoro and Sanji would beat them up in annoyance. One Piece Fan Letter was clearly bringing up powerscaling to make fun of itand because of that, the entire segment was great to watch.
One Piece fan letter addresses one of Fandom’s biggest issues
One of the most infamous forms of powerscaling in One piece involves the question of what makes someone a swordsman or not, as many characters are not explicitly treated as swordsmen despite fighting with swords, especially some of the strongest characters in the setting. Most infamously, Debates over who counts and who doesn’t count as a swordsman are used as excuses to increase Mihawk’s poweras people will argue whether Mihawk’s status as the strongest swordsman in the world makes him stronger than anyone who uses a sword like Shanks or Big Mom.
Not only are the same people who rose to power in One Piece Fan Letter get into an equally exaggerated argument about who is the strongest swordsman, but when someone suggested Whitebeard, they were rejected because Whitebeard uses a naginatanot a sword, despite his weapon being classified as a sword, in-universe. Add how someone randomly tried to declare Akainu the strongest swordsman and how everyone got beaten up for their comments, and One Piece Fan Letter is also bringing attention to how ridiculous it is for people to discuss swordsmen, specificallyThis was all great to see.
Why Powerscaling Doesn’t Matter in One Piece
One Piece Fan Letter did a great job of satirizing debates about the scale of power in One pieceand this, of course, highlights why powerscaling doesn’t matter. While there are characters that are definitely among the strongest in the setting, One piece it’s a story where battles play out according to what suits the narrative rather than arbitrary power levels, especially in his later years. Power scale in One piece always miss the narrative weight behind the fightsand the way people Fan letter I became obsessed with it to the point where I got beat up as it highlights this perfectly.
As fun as powerscaling can be, powerscaling often goes so far that it becomes the only thing people talk about when they should be talking about the real story, and the way the characters One Piece Fan Letter obsessed with powerscaling and nothing else perfectly highlighted how much it dominates discussions to the detriment of anything elseespecially when another character would have preferred to talk about Luffy’s character rather than his power. One Piece Fan LetterThe Powerscaling approach was great to see, and this written meta was another part of why the special was so great to watch.