Halfway Broken 107 & 108 (Patreon)

Alright! As I mentioned in the poll that went up yesterday, I have the Halfway Broken entry ready today...and its nearly 11,000 words. Meaning that, despite not getting its update on the 1st, it still got pretty close to its usual total for the month. A bit over two thirds of the usual, at least.

I can also now say that I've read the Manga all the way through the end of the Whole Cake Arc. Since I'd already watched (to much suffering and frustration) most of Wano via the Anime, I really only need to read the Levely Arc, after which I'll be into the Final Saga. Honestly, while the Manga was better than the Anime, I can't say I was overly impressed with any of the story arcs. Zhou was the closest to actually good, and the shortest unfortunately. Dressarosa was okay, mostly because it was the only place where the training the crew did in the timeskip actually seemed to matter.

Punk Hazard and Wholecake Island were both fucking awful, as far as I'm concerned. I hate, absolutely loathe, lazy ass writing by authors who constantly depict a protagonist getting beat like a drum despite supposedly training to get good. It's particularly common in shonen, and annoys the hell out of me. You have a character train their ass off and get good, then immediately have them stomped all over and only pull last-minute victories by durability and grit. Because, apparently, that's the only thing that matters. Not skill, or smarts, or preparation, or literally anything else. Just slamming your face into the wall over and over until the wall breaks.

Ugh.

Anyway, enough about that! Wholecake Island did at least give me a basic feel for Jinbe. I'm honestly still not sure he's going to join the crew, as I'm not convinced he's honestly a great fit for the way I've shifted Luffy and Co around. But I can at least write him successfully now, I think. Which is good since, while he only spoke a little bit in this set of chapters, he'll play an important role in next month's releases. For reasons that should be obvious once you've read this releases chapters ;-).

Enough jabbering from me, though! As always, the new content is attached to this post in the various different formats, and new master files with the entire story will be added to the Pinned Post shortly. Author's notes will follow in the comments when I have a few moments to actually write them :-). Enjoy more of One Piece: Halfway Broken!