- O-Kiku. We know nothing about her power. We just know she’s “pretty strong” – as said by Luffy – but outside of that? Nothing really. She never had a serious fight before chapter 985, and now I guess we can say she’s stronger than Kanjuro…? But again, we know nothing about her. Treating her as fodder just because we don’t know her power is an extremely weak reasoning.
- Raizo. Another one we know nothing about, except he has some special techniques in his moveset.
- Kawamatsu. Kawamatsu possesses tremendous physical power as he is stated to be the strongest sumo wrestler in Wano. Shortly after being released, he overpowered multiple members of the Beast Pirates with great ease. He possesses immense endurance as he has been fed poisoned fish every day for thirteen years by the Beasts Pirates without dying or even suffering any illness like Tama, a feat which has baffled his captors. However, we have only seen him at work against fodders.
So, after this general look, we can see that the Nine Scabbards are now made of 4 confirmed Commander level characters – one being a Commander (Izo), the other 3 having fought on par with one (Ashura Doji, Inuarashi, Nekomamushi). Then we have a very powerful warrior who could be stronger than them all – Denjiro. However, people are still baffled by how these 9 people could block 3 commanders and attack an Emperor all together.
To this, we need to add something that unfortunately many people seem to forget: this is NOT your average shonen. Being the most powerful doesn’t mean being invincible to everyone whose “power level” is below yours. This is even more relevant in a story such as OnePiece, where WILLPOWER is the most important trait a fighter can have. I mean, Haki is willpower converted into actual physical power. Luffy has won against Katakuri on willpower alone.
And what we’ve had here was 9 people, some of them mustering the willpower of 20 years, who threw away their lives and decided to avenge the man who gave them everything.
You need to understand; this is the equivalent of the Straw Hats going against an enemy after Luffy had been killed by said enemy, and the 9 Scabbards are arguably stronger then the Straw Hats without Luffy. This attack was not just “I used Haki, I overcame his defenses, I wounded him”: that’s why Kaido’s lines are so important. He can’t understand how he’s getting wounded, because his reasoning is extremely shallow; “they must be using a Haki on the same tier as Oden’s, otherwise it doesn’t make sense” he thinks as he screams in pain. But that’s not it, they’re not using Oden’s level Haki. This is so much more than that, and people now screaming bloody murder because “these fodders can hurt Kaido, but Luffy can’t, now it’s sure Zoro can hurt him because there’s no way he’s weaker than them” is painful to read.
*by DrKuro
