One Piece is an adventure series that has been written by Eiichiro Oda. The series follows a young boy named Monkey D. Luffy who dreams of becoming the Pirate King. In order to pursue his dreams, Luffy sets out to find the legendary treasure. The series has many qualities that make it stand out from other series.
One Piece has its fair share of fights, and they are all very good. While fights are crucial to advance the story, they are not the main highlight of One Piece in any way. The best qualities of One Piece are its story, characters, and lore. Oda pays extra attention to the tiniest of details, and he often drops hints about future arcs, power-ups, and characters in various ways. There is no question that it is fascinating to speculate about the future, but sadly, many One Piece fans have been mainly focused on gauging the strength of characters.
Power Scaling
Power scaling is a method by which fans determine the power of a character by comparing them to others. When done with enough proof, power scaling could actually be interesting, but since there are many characters in One Piece whose abilities still remain a mystery, it is difficult to analyze their strength.
So, fans use headcanon to determine the power of that specific character. Sometimes these debates can get out of hand, and they can seriously ruin the experience of not just the people who indulge in them, but for those who just want to enjoy the epic story.
How Does It Ruin The Experience?
-15.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1500&dpr=1.5)
The key aspect of power scaling is the headcanon. It basically means creating an image of a character even though there is no proof to back it up. The most common power scaling debate on the internet involves characters such as Zoro and Mihawk. Before the Wano Country Arc even began, fans were expecting Zoro to beat Kaido. This was, of course, a ridiculous claim considering that Luffy is the main protagonist of the series and the strongest member of the Straw Hat Pirates. The fans had presumed that since Zoro had slain a dragon back in the Punk Hazard arc, it was a foreshadowing by Oda that Zoro would slay Kaido, who ate a devil fruit that allowed him to turn into a dragon. This never materialized, as Luffy was the one who defeated Kaido and freed Wano from his tyranny.
Fans who had been following the story properly knew that Luffy would defeat the Emperor, so they were quite pleased when the young pirate took down the "Strongest Creature in the World." This caused problems within the fanbase as the fans who believed Zoro would kill Kaido felt betrayed. They thought that Oda ruined the story, which was a bizarre claim as there was absolutely no way that Zoro could defeat someone who was way stronger than his captain. After Zoro was taken away from the rooftop, some fans were so agitated that they were openly claiming that they would stop reading One Piece. This is just one of the many problems that are associated with power scaling.
On numerous occasions throughout the story, Oda has tried to help the fans understand the power dynamic within the Straw Hats. When the crew fought against CP9 during the Enies Lobby Arc, Oda revealed the Doriki (which is a way to measure the physical level of a person) of all CP9 members. Unsurprisingly, Lucci who was Luffy's opponent, had twice the Doriki of the next strongest member of CP9. This was a clear indicator that Luffy is twice as strong as the next Straw Hat, which is Zoro.
Furthermore, there is a clear pattern of opponents that the members of the Monster Trio face in every arc. Luffy fights the strongest, Zoro fights the second in command and Sanji fights the third best. As many fans tend to ignore this pattern, there are debates over the internet which often turn ugly because other people don't agree with their headcanon.
Is There A Need For It?
The short answer is, no. There is absolutely no need to scale the power of characters. One Piece has always been about complex world-building, important themes, and other mysteries. While power scaling is acceptable to some extent, placing too much focus on it distracts the fans from the actual material that classifies One Piece as one of the best pieces of literature.
Not having a headcanon will benefit the fans and help them enjoy the story. Power scaling is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is not required to enjoy the story as it does not offer anything important. So it would be better if fans would stop indulging in power-scaling debates as Oda will eventually answer these questions in the manga. In comparison to power scaling, theory crafting is much better. There are already numerous theories about the history of devil fruits or the past of certain characters, and many of these are highly detailed and backed up with some kind of evidence.