- Joined
- Dec 12, 2015
- Messages
- 6,154
- Age
- 22
I just started thinking about it. It's kind of interesting that we see two warlords who went up against Yonko's back in the day which led to them getting their mental scars from their defeat. Their pride tarnished, they fled back to paradise from their trauma of the New World and resorted to using power separate from their own in order to get back in the game. Crocodile seek the ancient weapon Pluton, while Moria uses Oars as his bodyguard. They used outside sources as their power because they lost faith in their own.
It makes the fight between Luffy and Crocodile better in retrospect. We see Crocodile constantly projecting his own insecurities onto Luffy with how he kept telling him how the top of the ladder constantly destroys the dreams of rookie pirates such as him who seek the pirate king position. The difference was that Luffy through sheer force of will will come back up regardless of the odds against him. In comparison to Crocodile dreaming of becoming pirate king, who felt utter humiliation and loss of self confidence to the point he fled from the new world after 1 defeat from the Yonko Whitebeard, Luffy kept fighting fighting back after losing to him multiple times. Both rookie pirates losing against a superior being, both come out of the experience in different ways. Crocodile was the one who decided to run away and still kept this philosophy till alabasta.
At the end of the day, Luffy came out the victor out of that fight because he never let go of that ambition regardless of how many times he'd lose. He didn't care if he fought a Warlord or a Yonko, he'd keep attempting to fight even if it killed him if it meant protecting what he believed in.
That's why during the Summit War arc, we see Crocodile helping Luffy multiple times because he helped see a new perspective on he used to approach things before. I think the final nail in the coffin for him was when Whitebeard got stabbed by his own man and his reaction to it.
He saw Whitebeard as this unstoppable force of nature that he could never touch on his own, and yet the same man was privy to getting stabbed by his own underling in an uneventful way. Seeing Whitebeard go through illness and fighting not like he should, he realized that everybody is fallible regardless of their power and status.
By the end of it, he psychologically became a completely different man from he was and decided to go back into the New World to continue where he left off decades ago without running away again.
I really do think that had Crocodile run away from his dreams and continued to make a name for himself in the New World, he'd be one of the most powerful and influential pirates of the modern era.
It makes the fight between Luffy and Crocodile better in retrospect. We see Crocodile constantly projecting his own insecurities onto Luffy with how he kept telling him how the top of the ladder constantly destroys the dreams of rookie pirates such as him who seek the pirate king position. The difference was that Luffy through sheer force of will will come back up regardless of the odds against him. In comparison to Crocodile dreaming of becoming pirate king, who felt utter humiliation and loss of self confidence to the point he fled from the new world after 1 defeat from the Yonko Whitebeard, Luffy kept fighting fighting back after losing to him multiple times. Both rookie pirates losing against a superior being, both come out of the experience in different ways. Crocodile was the one who decided to run away and still kept this philosophy till alabasta.
At the end of the day, Luffy came out the victor out of that fight because he never let go of that ambition regardless of how many times he'd lose. He didn't care if he fought a Warlord or a Yonko, he'd keep attempting to fight even if it killed him if it meant protecting what he believed in.
That's why during the Summit War arc, we see Crocodile helping Luffy multiple times because he helped see a new perspective on he used to approach things before. I think the final nail in the coffin for him was when Whitebeard got stabbed by his own man and his reaction to it.
He saw Whitebeard as this unstoppable force of nature that he could never touch on his own, and yet the same man was privy to getting stabbed by his own underling in an uneventful way. Seeing Whitebeard go through illness and fighting not like he should, he realized that everybody is fallible regardless of their power and status.
By the end of it, he psychologically became a completely different man from he was and decided to go back into the New World to continue where he left off decades ago without running away again.
I really do think that had Crocodile run away from his dreams and continued to make a name for himself in the New World, he'd be one of the most powerful and influential pirates of the modern era.
