One of my fav things in writing Kuzan for ASL in Red is how he justifies whole outlooks, habits, and traits based on his laziness, not just Lazy Justice letting him prioritize threats.
Hates gambling? He’s too lazy to put in effort for only a slim chance of a good outcome.
Isn’t into covering things up? It takes more energy and effort to dance around the point and deal with the fallout later instead of being brutally honest now and getting it over with. (in-universe, this is one Law absorbed)
Tends towards minimalism in regards to possessions? The more you have, the more energy you spend taking care of it (plus his past as a vagabond makes him liable to only keep what he can carry).
Excellent at delegation? No one has the energy to do that much alone, plus it’s rude to make your underlings waste their energy by not giving good instructions.
Ability to stay calm and observe a situation until the right time to act? He’s lazy, don’t want to expend energy unless he needs to.
Expert at analyzing opponents? Doesn’t want to waste energy on attacks that do nothing, so again, he waits until he’s sure his actions will have an effect.
The above two pretty much make him an endurance-monster in combat, since they allow him to conserve energy very well when fighting. So not only is he powerful, but traits based in his laziness give him the ability to outlast other powerful opponents in a lot of cases.
One thing that’s nice about working on ASL in Red is Luffy’s canon character as not really giving a shit about the greater state of the world except as it affects his friends and crew.
Like, I am having so much fun on the later stuff where getting closer to One Piece and destabilizing the order the New World has had for nearly twenty years and secrecy the World Government has had for centuries and just…the main characters barely care. Like, they have friends who care (Revolutionary Army members, Hancock, and such) but they have their own totally separate goals they’re more focused on.
To them that’s all side-stuff. And it’s HILARIOUS.
I have mixed feelings on him. On on the one hand, his backstory is very interesting and I like the idea of a character desperate to keep up a cool, untouchable facade as a shield. On the other hand, we know from Pudding’s backstory that the bullying was still going on well after he was an adult and established as the “cool” brother so even if the older siblings are implied to have developed some sort of camaraderie, they didn’t do jack to protect their younger siblings which sucks. Like, dude was so bullied his sister was attacked over it, and now years later he’s cool with his younger siblings getting the same treatment? That’s…less than cool, imo.
Part of the issue is just how old he is. Dude’s nearly 50, he’s one of the older warriors we’ve faced, but his backstory is pretty much confined to his childhood. Like, compare Doflamingo, who’s seven years younger. We know about his childhood, teen years, and young adult years and how that affected the people around him. For Katakuri, we only know his childhood and then it’s just him keeping up the facade. That gap bugs me. We may get more later, since he and Pudding can still reappear, but it bugs me right now.
Luffy: *is the man who staged the most infamous and successful jailbreak from the most impenetrable prison ever in the entire history of the world*
Kaido, a man who apparently never reads the newscoo: lol lock him up that’ll teach him
I mean, it gets better: one of Kaido’s scenes before we got to Wano was literally him reading the paper about Law and Luffy taking out Doflamingo. Which also involved some jailbreaking, in addition to restoring rightful rulers to an island.
Dude knows all the shit Luffy can pull and is just like “okay, but I’m the one who can actually stop this chaotic menace.”
tbh although i do on instinct fear for trafalgar law’s death in the wano arc, i kind of doubt it?
law is oda’s arya – which is to say, law is his wife’s favorite character and the very reason we got to see so much of him. and while that may not be a super strong argument, it kind of makes sense? she’s p much the reason he even survived dressrosa.
i just don’t feel confident saying that he’s going to die. oda doesn’t even kill off characters that often, and with his arc over, i don’t see his death having that much of an impact on the story. law hasn’t said he wants to be the pirate king – if anything, he seems pretty interested in watching luffy cause chaos all the way to the top.
however, eustass kid has stated he wants to be the pirate king, iirc. it wouldn’t surprise me if he ends up getting mortally wounded or even dying in this arc, though i’m not sure he like… deserves it? or more accurately, i don’t think his story has reached the point where his death will matter to the narrative.
idk, i have no doubt that this arc will be painful (oda’s said it himself 😭), but i think at the very least, law is… probably safe?
Cheloneuniverse 