Ham

"Did you guys know? If you share a drink, you can become brothers..."

When I watched the Post War arc for the first time, it felt like the perfect thing to come after Marineford. Just getting to see the (kinda) carefreeness of ASL as children was really fun and was a nice, calmer thing to read/watch after the war.

I love the dynmaic so much. I ADORE found family (clearly, as this is One Piece.) Seeing how Luffy befriended Ace (and Sabo) was really interesting, and just really it was so NICE to actually see more about Ace!! AND THEN WE LEARNED ABOUT SABO...

I could go on a rant about how upsetting Ace having a Sabo shaped hole in his life is. Like really, his dynamic with Sabo is SO good and him losing Sabo just feels so wrong? Like, Ace needs a counterpart and it's just an intense feeling when he doesn't. (At least in the Ace novels there was Deuce. I love Deuce.)

I just love these 3 together a lot, and I wish we could've gotten adult Ace, Sabo and Luffy goofing around.(I just have to imagine it. IT'S FINE.)

Ace, Luffy and Sabo watching a sunset. Sabo is holding a pipe.

Ace

When Ace is first introduced in Alabasta, he immediatley was a cool character that I wanted to see more of. When he became a part of the main story during Impel Down, he became one of my favorite characters pretty much the moment I saw Luffy was going to break into Impel Down for him.

He and Robin are pretty similar, with Enies Lobby and Impel Down/Marineford paralleling each other in a lot of ways. It's one of the reasons why I was SO shocked when Ace died. I really expected him to have a Robin moment of "I want to live!" except he didn't. And then after the war, we get the arc focusing on Luffy meeting Ace and we learn about Sabo... Everything from Saboady through Return to Saboady just fit so well together and was such an emotional journey that I have to look at it as one of my favorite set of arcs in One Piece.

Page of facial expression of Ace drawn how he was during Alabasta.

Concept art page of Ace in 3 different poses

Getting to learn a little more about the effect Ace had on people in Wano got me really, really excited. Getting to see him inspire O-tama and Yamato was really cool, and was nice to see him become *important* and not just a character who died and it changed Luffy's life (though that's important too.) And it was nice to see Luffy actually talk about Ace.

The only downfall was he looks different now, as he doesn't look GREASY anymore! I thought he was so fun in Alabasta because he was greasy and it was kinda funny.

Sabo

Sabo is very, very intersting to me. At first glance at his appearance and orgin, he's extremly different from both Ace and Luffy and is definitely the odd one out. Except, when you see him grown, he feels closer in similarity to Luffy than Ace did. (probably from being around Dragon for so long.)

Compared to Ace and Luffy, he also feels the most unstable out of the three. I'm not sure if it's just growing up and having amnesia for the majority of it, the way he was raised and trained to be a revolutionary, the impact of remembering who he was and the impact of Ace's death or what. All I'm saying, is get this boy some therapy, DRAGON!!

Sabo being the succesor to the Mera-Mera no mi has so much potential and I'm excited to see him progress with it. Oda should give him blue fire, I'M DEMANDING IT.

Luffy

wip