First, lets talk about Blackbeard:
- He started with a bounty of zero and no reputation before it jumped to 2.2 billion which would account for:
- beating Ace (well maybe, since this was in exchange for a Warlord position);
- stealing Impel Down prisoners;
- beating Whitebeard and his crew while also taking his territories:
- beating a Supernova, Jewelry Bonney (the World Government acknowledged this);
- and fighting the Revolutionaries and Cipher Pol during timeskip.
All of that gave him a 2.2 billion jump from a bounty of 0 since the last time we’ve seen him. That’s pretty underwhelming for killing a guy with a bounty of 5 billion. However, there’s a bigger reason why that is and this will also be a key difference in Luffy and Blackbeard’s situation when defeating an Emperor.
Let’s start with, who exactly started the war with Whitebeard? It wasn’t Blackbeard. It was the World Government and their decision to execute Ace. This created the confrontation between the Marines, the 7 Warlords, and the Whitebeard Pirates.
An all-out war in which would ultimately disturb the balance of power, which is exactly what the Marines did.
This is a different case with Luffy who openly declared an all-out war against the Kaido-Big Mom Alliance in Kaido’s territory unlike Blackbeard with Whitebeard.
So back to Blackbeard’s case, he didn’t get the bulk of the credit, if any at all, for taking down Whitebeard even though the whole world saw him kill him and take his powers… the Marines are getting the bulk of the credit, and rightfully so since they are the ones who weakened him and declared the war.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Luffy isn’t the one dealing all the damage to Kaido and has had a variety of help… however the key difference is that this is Luffy’s war. So like the Marines… he will get the bulk of the credit for leading it. And when I say “leading“, I’ll explain that soon.
Now to Luffy’s case for reaching 5 billion. What exactly is Luffy up against compared to Blackbeard?
- He’s up against the world’s most dangerous pirate crew in the world, the Kaido & Big Mom Alliance, whose captains’ total bounty is 8,999,100,000 berries.
- That’s almost 9 billion, nearly 4 billion more than Whitebeard’s bounty while also surpassing Roger’s, which would make this alliance bounty the highest for any pirates ever, and Branew is making this point of emphasis. However, they will ultimately fall to Luffy this arc. Why Luffy in particular?
- Think back to Whole Cake Island. Remember the newspaper?
This exaggerated newspaper on Luffy’s brilliance in particular is important because now the world is under the impression that Luffy is some brilliant leader that can take armies such as Germa 66 and pirate crew such as the Fire Tank Pirates under his command. But they’re not completely wrong since he’s the captain of the Grand Fleet and he has shown signs of leadership from time to time. However…
This is setting up Law and Kid to be in this same role as Germa 66 and Bege’s crew, which is being under Luffy’s command but not as much if they both beat Big Mom but still, you see where I’m going right? The entire world now believes that Luffy is some sort of commander and so this is shaping up to frame Luffy as the guy who spearheaded the attack on 2 Emperors, which isn’t entirely wrong. Law played a role too but is the world aware of Law’s leadership like they are with Luffy now? Probably not.
