Alrighty. Let’s get this over with.
I did get emotional.
No lie. I did. Oda does a great job of writing emotional scenes. But, at the end of the day, this is the story of a… fool of a lord who had the opportunity to save his country but decided to listen to his father’s murderer instead.
There’s just so much crap you have to ignore to like this flashback. I won’t go over it in detail again. The short version is Oden made some VERY bad decisions when handling Orochi but all that is tossed to the side to give a fake emotional impact of him being a hero by protecting Wano for years. It’s forced drama. Sure, the drama is good in places, but it’s all built on a foundation of stupid. I just can’t get over it.
Well, at least Shinobu got to free Oden’s fanboys from their chains. That’s something. And, no, I’m not going into how Oden can die from a bullet to the head yet survive boiling oil for an hour. That’s shonen power level BS and it’s the least of this flashback’s problem.