Holy crap this is like world record breaking pace guys

Speedrun/Time Travel AU masterlist

I really appreciate Oda’s “show, don’t tell” type of storytelling, and one my favorite uses is when he made sure to show us just how big the world is pre-timeskip. We learned in East Blue that Luffy and the Straw Hats are a dangerous pirate crew, extremely strong and capable of beating all of their opponents. It keeps going like that, but to a lesser extent in the Grand Line (Crocodile, Enel, Baroque Works). Still, by the time they reach Sabaody and are completely defeated, it doesn’t feel forced - we all believe that Sentomaru and Kuma are stronger than Luffy and capable of beating them all.

It doesn’t come out of nowhere. It feels right, and one of the reasons it works is because their defeat has been building up since Water 7 and Enies Lobby. They won their fight against CP9, of course, but they were all visibly more exhausted and beaten up than in any fight previously. Moria - one of the weakest Shichibukai - put up so much of a fight that they could barely stand when Kuma came. Luffy - the strongest of them - wasn’t even conscious anymore. Their fights have been getting steadily harder and harder during the course of the series, and by the time they reach the Red Line, they are winning only thanks to determination and luck. I’m not saying both of those do not play a part in a fight, but determination and luck can only do so much, as we’re shown in Sabaody. With opponents getting stronger and Straw Hats getting more notorious, it was only a matter of time until they were beaten, and Oda shows it beautifully. Kuma and Sentomaru are not some kind of god-like fighters that are so above everyone else that they can, of course, defeat our protagonists. They’re normal for New World - Sentomaru is even weak, comparatively - and they completely dominate the fight. 

It’s even better illustrated during the Impel Down and Marineford Arcs. In Impel Down, Luffy is defeated again and again, beaten down and forced to sacrifice ten years of his life just to succeed. In Marineford, he is the single weakest non-grunt player on the battlefield, and literally anyone with any importance can mow him down in an instant. He doesn’t defeat any of the big players, he doesn’t personally bring any kind of significant fighting prowess to the battlefield. I’m not saying he’s not important to the war. In fact, he’s extremely important - he brings the Impel Down prisoners, all of whom play big parts in liberation of Ace; he stops Ace from being executed with his haki; he rallies the whole battlefield behind him numerous times. But his importance doesn’t rest on his strength, because he’s simply too weak to actually matter. It rests on the fact that Luffy is... Luffy. 

And that’s where “show, don’t tell” is the strongest. We were told previously that New World is completely different from Paradise, but we didn’t care. Luffy is the protagonist, of course he’ll win. But on Sabaody and Marineford we’re shown the truth. Luffy isn’t simply weaker than the world-class powers like Sengoku, Whitebeard or the Admirals. He’s weaker than anyone of importance in New World - he’s grunt level, because he is only capable of beating New World grunts.  

Those two years of training are suddenly not only a convenient plot device - we, as readers and watchers, are completely convinced they’re necessary for the very protagonist to survive.

And that’s why it works.