Roger’s List: Top 5 Miraculous Survivors

Hello everyone. I’m Roger and welcome back to Roger’s List. If One Piece has one golden rule, it is this: Unless you see a character die with your own two eyes, no matter what happens to them, they are probably not dead. Case and point, the man you see above. Hyena Bellamy, believed to be deceased since ch.303, was recently revealed to in fact be alive and well in ch.704.

Heck, even I wrote this guy off as dead in my first edition of Roger’s List on this very site. Of course, such a reveal as a character’s rise from the grave yields the appropriate reaction of an earth-shattering “…eh” at this point. Why? Well, because us One Piece fans are pretty much use to it by now. Just about every big scale arc of the series has at least one instance of characters breaking the rules of the circle of life and slapping the grim reaper in the face.

 

In fact, I am going to chronicle some of the greatest offenders right now. Here are the Top 5 Miraculous Survivors of One Piece.

#5: Pell

I'll tell you EXACTLY what's with the Pell Hate.

 Our first offender comes in the form of Pell, the guardian falcon of Alabasta. In my own opinion, I think Pell’s a perfectly swell character in the grand scheme of things. He’s got a neat design, a likeable personality, admirable ideals, and an awesome devil fruit power. The problem is that once the action actually gets rolling, he falls into the same category of characters like Tashigi: characters who are suppose to be badass, but really just end up getting their ass kicked… a lot. Here is a chronicle list of what happens to Pell in the course of the Alabasta Arc:

• He takes out a score of Baroque Work cannon fodder before running into Mrs. All Sunday, who literally bends his entire body backwards with her powers.


• Despite being snapped in two by the backbone, he manages to find it in himself to carry an impaled Luffy out of the dessert, feed him, and fly him all the way to the Capital City of Alubarna, where he proceeds to assist Vivi and the Straw Hats in search of the bomb. However, he is then shot out of the sky by Mr.7 and Miss. Father’s Day (AKA girl in stupid frog outfit).


• Despite having broken wings and at least a 100 foot fall from the sky into a raging battlefield below, he manages to find it in himself to fly all the way to the top of the clock tower, grab the bomb by his talons and carry it into the sky, willingly self sacrificing himself so that the bomb goes off outside the range of the people below.

Despite now being atomically blown to Kingdom Come, some random doctor in the middle of nowhere (who at this point, must be completely detached and naive to everything else that is going on with his country right now.) who patches up all his wound with the most sophisticated of medical practices: bandages and a crutch.

Totally. Not. Kidding.

So let me get this strait, Mr. Oda. You expect me to believe that Pell, after having his back snapped, his wings shot, fell a minimum of a hundred feet from the sky, flew a massive [probably immensely heavy] bomb high enough to be out of range of every living being in Alabasta, dropped the bomb just seconds before the blast, then accelerated himself at breakneck speed to out fly the explosion lest he’d be disintegrated?

I get that he’s suppose to be Alabasta’s strongest warrior, but this is just ridiculous.

And yet, we’re just getting started.

#4: Wiper

The more and more I think about it, Berserker Wiper is basically Pell 2.0. He fulfills the exact same archetype of being the strongest warrior of his village. Though it’s fair to say his character has a bit more meat to him. The history of his people is an important factor of the plot, he’s the descendant of Kalgara, and in his opening moments of the series, he performs the ever so badass act of taking out all three of the Strawhats most powerful fighters in a swift 1-2-3 blow. So yeah, this guy’s got a lot going for him right out the gate.

So what happened? Well, during Eneru’s Survival Game, Wiper was in possession of the Reject Dial, a weapon that absorbs impact and re-releases it 10 fold. It is so powerful that many of Wiper’s comrades plead to him not to use it, as they make it very clear that no man can survive using it twice.

Wiper uses the Reject Dial… 3 times (first against Shura, second against Eneru, and the third on Giant Jack), and brushes them off like they’re nothing. Not only that, but he is also subjected to Eneru’s El Thor technique, a beam of lightning so powerful, it can level an entire village. Yup, brushes that off too.

Oda, I get that the point of all this is “He’s just that badass.” That’s fine and all, but why would you create rules about the Reject Dial if their only purpose in the first place is to be broken?

#3: Pagaya

So it’s one thing for Wiper to take a couple million volts of electricity and brush it off because well… as we mentioned, he’s a badass. He can do that and get away with it (barely). But Pagaya? He’s just a regular old guy. That’s right, Conis watched with her very eyes as her father, while trying to assist an injured member of the royal guard at Upper Yard, was caught in Eneru’s El Thor attack. (The same attack that both almost killed her, and also struck Wiper as I mentioned.) Miraculously, we find out later that the attack didn’t kill Pagaya, but merely pushed him down to a lower level of the White Sea.

 

Yeah sure Oda, that’s totally how lightning works. It doesn’t pass through your body and fry your nervous system, shutting down your heart. Mike and Brian from Avatar the Last Airbender just got it all wrong.

Giant beam of destruction? Pssh, no big.

#4: Paulie and Co.

I believe it is common knowledge across the One Piece fan base that the Enies Lobby Arc is the current high mark of the series, and I am not about to debate that. High stakes. Dramatic character turns. Awesome fights. Some of the best animation the series had seen at that point. While I was pretty much able to stomach most of the ridiculous stunts and irrational heists that were pulled in this arc, there was one particular instance that still gets on my nerves.

So Spandam, the leader of the CP9, activates a Buster Call, which summons ten Navy Warships and five Vice Admirals to Enies Lobby with the express orders of leveling the entire island and indiscriminately wipe out every living being on that island. While in attempt to flee the island, the Straw Hats allies in this heist, that being the Galley-La Foreman and the Franky family, all get cornered by five of those warships, and in an instant, are fired upon. There is a moment of dread, when the Straw Hats realize that over fifty lives who helped them get this far to save just one person have been wiped out in an instant. Nami even says it herself:

“Can people really die that easily?”   

As much as this could be a very valuable lesson for you and your crew, no Nami, apparently they can’t, because in the very following episode, we find out that this happened.

All aboard the Bull Shit Train!

So… Paulie had enough rope on his…wherever…to harness a massive net over a cliff in the few measly milliseconds before the cannons fired upon them, and made it big and strong enough to hold himself, Lulu, Tilestone, Yokozuna, Kiwi, Mozu, Zambai the rest of the Franky Family, and on top of all that, two giants and two king size Yagaras. Like…really? I could have understood him being able to save maybe himself and a few others, but ALL OF THEM? Come on!

And tied for #1, competing for the Title Sole Survivor, our two main protagonists...

Luffy and Zoro

There’s no denying it. Since their fateful meeting in Episode Two, these guys have been bruised, broken, maimed, cut, diced, impaled, waxed, rusted, drowned, burned, frozen, shocked, poisoned, and obliterated to hell and back a thousand times over. Of all moments, the ones that stand out the most are when Zoro put his own life on the line to protect his captain in Thriller Bark, and Kuma passed on all of Luffy’s battle damage to Zoro (keeping in mind that Luffy’s body, being made of rubber, is able to take far more a beating than any normal human), the second being in Impel Down when Luffy was covered in Magellan’s poison and was subjected to an intense operation that, were he lucky to even survive, sapped ten years of his life away.

It’s like when these guys first met they were like…

"Hey, lets play a game. It's called, "who can step their foot in the grave the deepest without falling in."

"Challenge Accepted."

 

"That the best you got, you panzy!"

So I guess the question is, WHY does this keep happening? Okay, so Luffy and Zoro are fine. They’re the first and second most important characters of this story, therefore they have main-character-immunity for this kind of thing, but everyone else on the list? Outside of their respective arcs, none of them have held any significant importance to the plot of this story, so keeping them alive only accentuates the fact that all of the Straw Hat’s victories seem cheep because none of them had any real consequences to them. That’s a problem if you want people to take your work seriously and look back on it decades from now as a mature piece of fiction that transcends its surface as just another show for kids.

In Alabasta in particular, there is a moment where Luffy tries to teach Vivi a lesson about how death is inevitable and her attempt to make sure no one is going to die in this war is naive. By the end of the story though, Luffy’s lesson becomes completely pointless because no one dies in this struggle (sure, maybe a couple nameless rebels and royal guards passed away in all the fighting, but no one the audience can connect to.) THAT is where much of the hate toward Pell comes from. His sacrifice was supposed to be Vivi’s lesson. Her right of passage as a grown up woman who will be responsible for ruling these people. But no, he survives, and Vivi ends up another pampered princess getting everything she wanted with no consequences attached.

Okay, I’ve given Oda enough crap. Here’s my theory on why these Survivals genuinely needed to happen.  Had these characters died in each of these big arcs of One Piece where it made sense for them to die, the death toll would eventually pile up, and people would start to see a pattern. Regardless of whether or not these deaths were the Straw Hat’s fault, the finger would start to be pointed at them for being the one common denominator. After a while, our heroes would stop seeming so heroic if all their actions lead to one or more deaths of people we care about.

For example, in the Resident Evil movies, why the hell would anyone want to be Alice’s friend? Everyone associated with her dies, while she gets out by the skin of her teeth. Same goes for Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, or Nathan Drake in Uncharted, or the Elric Brothers in FMA, or Yoko with every guy she kisses in Gurren Lagann (seriously she might as well be Poison Ivy). Heck I’ve even said in the past that One Piece is like The Odyssey of our generation, and Odysseus lost all of his men in his journey back home to Itheca (Sure, mostly through their own weakness and stupidity, but still).   

There’s also the other theory that Oda does indeed intend to bring all these characters back later down the line for some big battle that will be inevitable at the end of the series, and that flies. I would also be unwise to admit that these very accusations are likely what lead Oda to make such a huge statement in Marineford War Arc, and you all know exactly what I’m talking about.

What!? Too soon? It's my son after all.

I believe that is more than enough rambling for one month. Feel free to leave a comment below stating your own theory’s behind these incidents, or if you wish to mention another death defying moment I seem to have forgotten.

 

Until next time. I’m Roger, and they just made the list.