Failure's of Wano: The Nine Red Scabbards

 

Nine Red Flavors of Disappointing

    One Piece is great, but is it perfect? No.

    I’ve been in love with One Piece since I first heard the 4Kids Dub Intro, and that affection only grew when I began reading it weekly. One Piece is something special to me and many others, but it’s still a story, and no story is above criticism. One Piece has had some exemplary storytelling highs, like Alabasta and Water 7, and some unfortunate lows, like Long Ring Long Island and Fishman Island.

    What’s the most recent low in One Piece’s two-decade-long storytelling career? WANO.

    The Wano arc, the culmination of half of the series’ lifespan, is imperfect. If I had to break it down, I would say it’s slightly good at the start, almost decent in the middle, and atrocious in the end, leveling out to a Barely Okay Arc.

    This rating of mine is also not an issue of “‘X’ was not as relevant as I wanted, so the arc was trash” or “I hate the designs and fights.” Wano, as a story, suffers from a litany of problems, most of which are systematic of Oda’s writing style and some that feel inherent to the very idea of Wano itself. 

    There are so many problems with this arc it will take a while to dissect what makes it as unfulfilling as it is. Let’s start small and break these problems down bit by bit to understand the failures of Wano.
Where do we begin? Let’s focus on our introduction to Wano in the form of its collection of flagship characters, the Nine Red Scabbards.

The Nine Red Scabbards

    The Akazaya Nine, or the Nine Red Scabbards (depending on your translation (and what I will be calling them moving forward)), were a group of nine characters introduced throughout the New World arcs of One Piece sporadically to the Straw Hats and us the readers.

    The Scabbards are a group of time-displaced samurai (minus the five who stayed in the present) who are retainers to the Kozuki clan, the “good guy” samurai faction the Straw Hats align themselves with. Their stated goal was to avenge their fallen leader, Kozuki Oden, install his son Kozuki Momonosuke as Shogun of Wano, and free their nation from the blight of the Yonko Kaido and the Shogun Kurozumi Orochi.

    The Nine Red Scabbards, as a collective, have a compelling reason to ally with and push Luffy to help Wano. They also all have some cool designs and gimmicks and are, on a surface level, a decent concept as a group. The problem? MOST OF THEM ARE POORLY WRITTEN AND POINTLESS. 

I am sure all of them will be super memorable and not a waste of time! Sarcasm

    A group of nine new central characters in a Shonen manga is hard to sell, especially when the main cast is just as large and the supporting and antagonist cast are even larger. A writing genius would be required to balance such a bloated cast. A balance Oda, unfortunately, did not keep. The Nine Red Scabbards have some real winners who justify their existence well, but you can write out others and lose nothing.

    But which Scabbards qualify in what category of being worth keeping or needing to be cut?

    To do each of these characters a proper service, we will go over each of the samurai, covering what works and what does not work and if they warrant being kept in the story or not on the merits presented to us as they are or from some rewrites that would benefit the story as a whole. So let us get started with the first Samurai introduced in the story:

Kin’emon: KEEP (Barely)

    The first Samurai introduced to us (in bits and pieces) is thankfully one of the most relevant but bland. He has a terrible collection of character quirks in his first few arcs. Kin’emon is a pervert, sexist, and largely ignorant of social norms in a way that, when we get to his time in old Wano, does not quite match up with the Oden flashback’s portrayal of Wano (making me question why the time travel was needed at all).

    Thankfully, Oda wised up and got rid of most of these traits when he mattered (around the Zou arc). That was a good choice, but he forgot to give him anything to replace those traits, making Kin’emon less a person and more a tool to drive the story forward to Wano, and even then, a barely passable one.

    In terms of aesthetics, he has an eye-catching design with that asymmetrical kimono. Kin’emon’s power set is a classic One Piece combo of weird and useful. He has a support devil fruit that is fun and thematically appropriate and rocks an almost interesting sword style in a series in need of them. Kin’emon’s aesthetics rank higher than some of the other scabbards I will discuss later, but that is all I like about him.

    He has a lot of flavor on the surface, like a chocolate coating, but when you dig deeper, you will find him hollow.

    Kin’emon’s story has some good elements, acting the part of Momonosuke’s surrogate father while being a mentor and head retainer. He has some of the better story beats out of all the Scabbards (on paper) in him organizing the raid, longing for his wife, and overall being the face of the Nine Red Scabbards as a group. Yet, does it have to be HIM? What about Kin’mon makes him fit for the roles he has besides the fact he’s the first samurai introduced to us?

    Realistically, could Kin’emon’s role not have got to any of the other Scabbards besides the Minks?

    His tangible contribution as a leader is the fuck-up on the meeting location before the raid that worked out in their favor, which was a good bit, but not something made possible because HE did it, but because it was a funny moment.

The face of someone who knows they just peaked as a character (Chapter - 975)

    Kin’emon’s problem is that he is a face without any features. His initial personality, being an archaic Samurai, is quickly made irrelevant (and was not worth much to start), so what more is there to him besides ‘leader’, and what makes him fit for that role? Luffy is a leader, and Law is a leader, but they have unique leadership qualities and motivations that highlight those traits. What about Kin’emon as a leader is uniquely his own that makes him worthy of the role?

    Kin’emon has motivations, sure, but they are either not truly his own (all the Scabbards share a motivation for the same reason) or not explored enough (his unique relationship with Momo and his love for his Wife) to build him up.

    He does not even have any leadership moments that make him stand out, as the planning of the raid was a group effort, and the location meeting fuckup I mentioned earlier was funnier despite him instead of because it was him. That said, there is one thing that makes Kin’emon worth some positive discussion; an action that will mark him forever.

    Kin’emon, for all his faults, had one of the best send-offs any of the Scabbards got. Momo and Shinobu, backed into a corner, staring down Kaido, a monster no one present could stop. Kin’emon, representing Wano’s past, stepped in to fight the “Strongest Creature” to protect Momonosuke, the embodiment of his nation’s future. He died in battle, protecting the son of his fallen leader, and bought his country one more chance to see it freed from tyranny incarnate. 

RIP Kin'emon (2012 - 2021) (Chapter - 1014)

 

    However, that did not happen. Kin’emon survived Kaido. Kin’emon survived thanks to one of the worst fake-out deaths in One Piece that I struggle to think anyone would defend. The sexist samurai lived because he was never properly put back together from being cut up by Law’s power.

    This was not foreshadowed. It was never shown or stated to be something that could happen after Law cuts them up, nor does it excuse his survival from having his entire body smashed by Kaido’s haki-infused Kanabo. It is a laughably bad excuse to keep Kin’emon around after such a great climax to his abysmal character. It drags any value he had down substantially with his continued existence.

    I am not advocating that Kin’emon should have died, but he certainly should not have been in that position in the first place if he was not going to die.

    If we wanted to keep Kin’emon around Wano, which I would advocate since he is a functional intro to the Samurai in concept, I would recommend changing him from the ground up. Either commit to the archaic samurai bit, perhaps making him much older than the rest of the Scabbards and generally antiquated even back in their heyday or make something else his personality. The first one he got did not work as written, and I doubt anyone will defend it. I would also not have him “die” to Kaido and instead kill off one of the other scabbards in the same manner, a point we will revisit later when relevant.

    If those changes are not to your liking, just get rid of him and have any of the other non-mink scabbards be the introduction to the Samurai of Wano. Kin’emon is, ironically, a relic of what I assume was an attempt to characterize Wano that Oda wisely decided was not worth using or made sense once he settled on the Oden timeline. He has some value in theory but a little less outside that.

    We have covered the first of the samurai. Now let's move on to the next in the line-up: Kanjuro.

Kanjuro: Keep.

    Ah, the resident traitor character and passable execution of the trope, as long as you do not squint too hard and think about his actions pre-traitor reveal.

    Kanjuro is a guy I almost like conceptually. He has an eye-catching design, his actor theme and drawing power are great, and I enjoy him more than Kin’emon or Raizo (not a high bar), especially with him being a traitor the entire time. The main problem with Kanjuro is his choices before the traitor's reveal and how his narrative thread paid off in the Raid of Onigashima.

    Kurozumi Kanjuro’s whole gimmick is that he is an actor, a deep cover agent planted by Orochi to grease the wheels for the coming coup and die when his job is done. Kanjuro did just that and even went twenty years into the future when the execution was botched, something I imagine he did not foresee coming but had to play along at the time. The odd part was that Kanjuro continued to play his part post-time travel and how all his and Orochi’s choices from that point on make little sense at all.

    The timeline of actions after the Scabbards arrived at the present is fragmented and loose, so let me break down Kanjuro’s actions after he arrived at the present time in the story to illustrate some glaring flaws in his traitor story.

    When Kanjuro arrived in the present, he told Orochi of the Scabbards and Momonosuke’s arrival,    naturally, and that they were forming a new rebellion. Kanjuro was, from his perspective, still working for Orochi, and their coup failed to end the Kozuki bloodline. He had a second chance to get it right since his boss now controlled Wano. Orochi, for his part, had command of all of Wano, Kaido as his ally, and a head filled with murderous paranoia for the Kozuki clan.

    It would then follow that Orochi, with Kanjuro, suddenly appearing twenty years in the future to tell Orochi that Momonosuke and half of his retainers were time-traveled to that very day and were planning to start up a rebellion, would immediately apprehend and/or kill them, right?

    He did not do that, and, from how the events are described, allowed Momonosuke’s retainers and allies to develop a plan to build up their forces and scatter to the winds to gather allies and intelligence. He did not even tell Kaido about any of them, as the Animal Kingdom pirates were the ones to get involved to stop their escape, all by chance (some goons noticed them sailing away). Why would Orochi and Kanjuro ever allow the biggest threat of the Kurozumi clan to escape when they had every chance and reason to end them before they left Wano?

When keeping your allies out your Traitor plot (inevitably) backfires

    Kanjuro was a deep cover agent defined more as a tool to Orochi’s will who only acts when told to do so. It makes sense why Kanjuro would not kill the scabbards and Momo in their sleep of his own volition unless given orders. But why would Orochi, a craven sadist with a deep fear of the Kozuki clan, NOT immediately do everything in his power to stop the Scabbards and Momo when Kanjuro filled him in?

    The answer is, most likely, the traitor plot-line was not conceived till Wano proper (or at least had not been solidified enough as early as Punk Hazard to get all the details straight) and this odd timeline of events I described comes from a mix of that and some character statements regarding the sequence of events Oda did not think through. Whatever the case, it created a lot of odd choices that Orochi or Kanjuro would never have conceivably made with the information given to us about their characters and choices and actively damages both of them narratively as a result.

    It is a shame, as there was an easy workaround to this problem that fixes all the story issues surrounding Kanjuro I outlined above. Kanjuro would work better if he was not one of the time-displaced samurai and instead was still in deep cover for twenty years and got blindsided by the others' arrival in the future.

    If Kanjuro, still playing the part of a loyal Kozuki retainer, was one of the samurai who got captured (like Kawamatsu), he could have, conceivably, been broken out by Kin’emon and co. as they were escaping Wano, with little time to argue or get the word out to Orochi. Kanjuro would have then still kept up the ruse since he could not act without new orders from Orochi and would keep playing the part of a Scabbard up until he could get back to Wano to tell Orochi everything he learned and get new orders from there.

    That would solve a lot of Kanjuro’s narrative problems and make him a more effective character when looking at his actions pre-traitor reveal. Still, the reveal made a great impact during the perceived failure of the raid before it even started and the kidnapping of Momonosuke, but did Oda stick the landing with him and his story after that? No. 

Schrodinger's Traitor in its natural state: Dead until off-panel (Chapter - 986)

 

    Kanjuro in the raid on Onigashima is…Weird.

    He instantly gets “killed” by the remaining Scabbards when they find him… And then he gets back up after they thought they killed him and uses some Oden replicas to mess with the Scabbards, somehow killing Ashura in an explosion of all things (in a series where half the time that never works to kill someone). Kanjuro then fights the remaining samurai again and becomes a flaming spirit drawing, or something, that detonates some bombs and attacks Orochi for some reason and that is it.

    I am being reductive, but Kanjuro is all over the place in the raid and kept alive or possibly dead at the whim of the plot when the characters who put him in that state would have no doubt killed him properly.

    I appreciate Oda using a character in an unorthodox manner instead of a direct fight. Yet I feel Kanjuro directly fighting one of the Scabbards, instead of just getting killed and getting back up again several times when Oda needed the Scabbards to be too busy to help anyone, would have been a much more compelling direction.

    Kanjuro had the potential to highlight one of the Scabbards as a character with his betrayal and give us a fight with real personal stakes (in an arc where there are less than five of those out of a dozen). Kanjuro was wasted with a bunch of fake-outs and no interrogation of his motivations and perspective. It is really a shame as Kanjuro, while too important to cut, is also badly executed, and it feels wrong to not highlight how badly he was handled. A sentiment I cannot help but feel for the next in our lineup of Scabbards.

Raizo: Cut

    Raizo is not worth keeping, which is weird considering he was so important Kaido of all people got involved in Orochi’s blood feud with the Scabbards.

    To give a little history lesson, during Dressrosa to Zou's weekly chapter releases, Raizo was a BIG discussion point, from how he looked, his powers, and how he would be the next Straw Hat, typical One Piece forum discussion. Those talks became extra heated when Jack, one of Kaido’s top henchmen (and highest bounty holder then introduced), was revealed to be hunting Raizo and essentially tortured and mass-murdered minks for his whereabouts. The expectations attached to Raizo after an All-Star of the Beast Pirates went to such lengths for him and the Minks to lie and protect him even at the threat of genocide left many wondering what this ninja’s deal was and how he must have been super important to warrant it. Did he end up deserving such treatment? I have to say no.

War crimes for a worthless Ninja, Beast Animal Kingdom Pirates at their finest.

    Raizo has a weird design I cannot help but enjoy. The gag of all the guy characters finding him cool is fun, and his scroll powers are great! Raizo has a lot going for him, but was it worth all the buildup and in-universe bloodshed? What about Raizo made him worth all that effort in-universe from Kaido and Orochi’s perspective?

    Raizo is not the leader of the Scabbards. He did not have Momonosuke with him. He was one of the time-displaced Scabbards, so he did not have anything valuable related to rebellion activities in the present (besides the stuff they already knew since Kanjuro told Orochi as previously established). The only thing that you could argue was important about him was that he was the first Scabbard Orochi managed to track down, but that feels disproportionate for Kaido, someone who barely tolerates the mad shogun, to commit entire fleets worth of resources for a guy who ultimately was not worth it in or out of the universe.

    Raizo's contributions to the plot are minor and could have been someone else. His mission of breaking Luffy out of jail, discounting the jail being more a training arc for Luffy, was so easy to sneak around in Chopper and O’Kiku did it alongside him and could have been anyone as a result. His big fight with Fukurokujo, a barely relevant big-head man, lasted too long (even if it was a good community meme) and not much payoff. The one thing he did of substance, being the guy to help put out Onigashima when it caught fire alongside Jimbe, while cool, is not enough for me to think this guy is worth keeping around. So he should just be cut. 

A staring contest on fire sounds a lot cooler on paper than in execution

    Raizo is good yet irrelevant despite the buildup. His uselessness is made more evident with how little the whole Ninja faction thing Oda set up in early Wano got barely explored. I cannot recommend keeping him around despite how much the story was shaped in getting to this guy pre-Wano. A choice I am sad to say will also befall the next guys in the Red Scabbard line-up. 

Catviper and Dogstorm: Cut One

    Realistically, do we need two mink kings?

    Yes, they have cool designs and make for an almost interesting world-building element for Zou and a neat hype piece for Jack the Drought, but what purpose does having two of them serve to the story or their narratives? Their “feud” used to explain the two-king system on Zou is poorly justified when we get around to that, blaming each other for Oden’s death, which NEITHER HAD A DIRECT ROLE IN, which is amplified when most of the focus placed on one over the other.

    Dogstorm does very little compared to Catviper. Why keep him around? Dogstorm’s only relevance was bringing most of the Minks to Wano, something Wanda or any of the other Minks of note could have done and was around on Wano doing nothing before Luffy’s arrival and fought Jack, a fight Cat Viper would be just as fitting to have instead of Perospero. 

He had one leg ahead in the Mink King race...until he didn't

    Cat Viper has more personality (even if it's mostly Garfield gags) and is more active in the plot by actually going out to do stuff and not just waiting for things to happen. Plus Cat Viper showing up later to Wano means, in the hypothetical that we cut Dogstorm, that we have more time for other characters to shine. ProZD also voices Cat Viper in the English dub. That fact automatically makes him the best choice to keep (in my biased opinion). 

Garfield: Anime Adaptation

    Honestly, it’s a pick-your-poison thing for which Mink King to keep as, functionally, either of them could do each other's roles with little loss, so combining their roles is a decent call. A suggestion I will levy for the next Scabbard, O’Kiku. 

O’Kiku (and special guest Izo): Keep but combine with Izo

    O’Kiku is a character I like a lot, especially for what she represents in a series with some…Complicated portrayals of LGBTQ+ characters across its lifespan. O’Kiku is an excellent trans rep character in how unambiguous and respectful that fact is presented. However, this good rep is unfortunately bogged down by O’Kiku being just a bit too irrelevant to warrant keeping around on her lonesome, so she would need some extra narrative meat to become a worthwhile character to keep.

    O’Kiku has a lot of flavors I like. I like her kind warrior mentality, the various badass outfits she gets (that mask she wears in the prison mine is awesome, I love it), and the stuff she gets to do, mainly the small moments, are really good! 

#QUEEN

    The problem is that her contributions to the plot are lacking. O’Kiku’s introduction plot with Luffy and Zoro could have easily been cut (all you needed for that section is Tama’s kidnapping and Tsurujo, nothing else), which is a bad start to a character introduction. Her involvement in Udon is minimal, and her one real win, against Kanjuro, amounted to nothing since he got back up! Her losing a limb, one of the few impactful acts Kaido does against any of his opponents in the raid, is the only thing she has going on that matters during that phase of the story, and, most egregiously, she doesn’t even get a chance to react or acknowledge her brother's death since it was skipped. O’Kiku is too unneeded to justify her existence on these merits alone. However, she has a rewrite to make her just relevant enough to keep around: combine O’Kiku with her brother, Izo. 

Remember this guy? You shouldn't, but points if you do.

    Who is Izo? Izo started as that one background Wano gun guy in Whitebeard's toolbox of trivia page commanders, but, by some miracle, he got expanded on when the Oden flashback portion of Wano began as being introduced as being O’Kiku’s brother, and a part of Oden’s posse before sticking with Whitebeard and being a Red Scabbard club card member without the commitment. He then shows up later in the Raid when Marco and Cat Viper pop in, which was cool and credit where it is due, Izo is a good callback on Oda’s part for including him, but that does not mean he added much in the grand scheme of things.

    The only moments of note Izo has is participating in the first Kaido fight, helping fight random opponents in the raid (which gave Usopp a good moment), and dying with not a word of sorrow from the rest of the scabbards post-raid. So, if Izo even counts as a Scabbard, I would say cut him. He is only a random guy on the trivia page during Marineford that randomly became relevant and not much else. The modicum of relevance Izo has should not go to waste and instead be used to make O’Kiku even better.

    Izo’s connection to Whitebeard is interesting enough that I think transplanting it to O’Kiku, someone more relevant would be a good choice. O’Kiku’s selection as one of the time-displaced scabbards did not add much to her character, as her remaining in Wano did not actively help the rebellion in the least, so having her take the place of Izo in the story, but still make her way to Wano, would still work out.

    O’Kiku is a fun, if irrelevant, character that, with a little rewriting, and cutting her brother to make her better, she could become a scabbard just about worth keeping around. A status that the next scabbard also gets.

Ashura Doji: Keep (But Rewrite)

Ashura Doji, a pink-haired bandit with a deceptively good design may seem like an easy cut when you look at him in his totality. His claims to fame are him being a fat bandit bastard who surprised us all by doing some badass shit against Jack for like a few seconds, then did little else, and then died.

That is a reductive summation, but that's all he added in the grand scheme of things, so why do I want to keep him? He offers a unique perspective to the Scabbards and has the potential to be a great character if rewritten.

Unlike the rest of the Red Scabbards who stayed in the present, Ashura wanted nothing to do with the Raid when asked, and his reasoning was some of the most powerful stuff in all of Wano. For years, Ashura watched Oden and Kozuki loyalists, people he considered dear friends and comrades, throw themselves into the meat grinder that was the Animal Kingdom Pirates for nothing more than pride and loyalty and, after so much loss, just give up on the dream. Ashura went back to his criminal roots jaded and unwilling to see another failed attempt at freeing Wano and a cause that, after so many failures and most of the Scabbards displaced in time or captured, was dead.

This narrative alone elevates him among the Scabbards in my book, as it offers a realistic look at what the failings of the Samurai of Wano would do to those who lived on. Ashura did join later, basically being conned into it but as loyal as ever, so how can we make that even better?

Ashura Doji reading about how he died

Ashura Doji got done dirty, straight up, by dying at the hands of a Kanjuro Oden copy that exploded. One Piece deaths are notoriously hard to sell after so many fake-outs, especially by explosions, so having THIS be the way to end him was insulting. Ashura Doji deserved to die in a better way, not defending the other Red Scabbards, defending Momonosuke, the Future of Wano.

I want Ashura Doji to die in the same situation Kin’emon needed a fake-out to survive. It works so well to have the old drunken bandit who lost faith in the Kozuki cause and, on the day he finally found the will to fight for what he believes in one more time, dies to see it come to fruition by fighting the very man who crushed his dream so many times, Kaido, to keep Momonosuke safe for just a while longer.

Ashura Doji is a guy who could easily have been a great character and a highlight of Wano with just a little tweak to his ending and some more screen time. 

All Hail the Fat Bastard!(Chapter - 921)

And in the spirit of small but meaningful rewrites, it is time to look at the token Kappa of the Wano crew.

Kawamatsu: Keep

Kawamatsu is a character I go back and forth in my head on keeping him around.

He has the best Scabbard design, a unique power set (in a group that needs it, sword fighters are not known for being unique in the series), and a vibe I appreciate. At the same time, most of his relevance in the story is background material and setup, like saving Hiyori, stealing weapons, and whatever he had going on with the random fox who can turn into the bridge guardian, but did that stuff need to be him when Denjiro could have played the same role?

Denjiro, the last Red Scabbard introduced, got up to a lot in Wano over the years and his activities overlap A LOT with the others. He raised Hiyori for most of her life when she ran away, making Kawamatsu’s role as the chosen caretaker feel pointless when it could have been Denjiro the entire time. Kawamastsu also inspired Onimaru to steal weapons to one day arm the future rebellion by dawning a fake identity, but Denjiro also played the role of a thief in his off-time with a fake identity.

You could easily mash these two character elements into Denjiro, and it would make more sense. The stuff Kawamatsu did in the prison mine also feels pointless besides checking a mark on getting the Scabbards together, as he only helped fight prisoners and guards no reader would ever consider a threat, and all his contributions in the raid are too minor to mention. 

Why were you even with him in the first place?

Why do I advocate keeping him? Besides my stated bias I outlined above, Kawamatsu would be a perfect candidate to absorb the character elements of another character in Udon Prison that can be cut: Hyogoro.

I will not go deep into why Hyogoro could be cut from the story. The Yoda clone will be a part of another Wano-focused write-up. You can sum him up as the old Wano Yakuza boss who still commands their loyalty, a temporary mentor to train Luffy, and acts as a sympathetic character for Straw Hat, and that is it. Kawamatsu, a better character conceptually and a member of the native Wano “Main Character” squad, was also trapped in Udon prison and knew the form of Haki Luffy learned from Hyogoro (as most evident by his stabbing Kaido, being one the few haki techniques able to pierce his skin).

The Kappa could have served the same outlined purposes Hyogoro had and done it better since he is a more interesting character from the jump.

It would take more rewrites than my improvements to Ashura, so let me propose a hypothetical new direction for Kawamatsu. If you do not want him to be the yakuza boss from the jump, you could instead have him inherent leadership from Hyogoro, who died in one of the early raids against Kaido and commands the prisoner Yakuza’s loyalty because of the inherent position, which could be a functional reason to have him be in charge of them.

Crazy how you could cut half the characters here and lose nothing of value

If you needed an excuse to make Kawamatsu weaker than Luffy (hence the pirate needing to protect him), have the abuse he suffered be the cause. Kawamatsu was only eating one fish a day and had been suffering from dehydration/toxic water exposure, so that could have left the Kappa severely weakened to the point he needed Luffy’s help. A weakened state that could then be reversed by him getting a few good meals and clean water in his system, an excuse used to revitalize some of the Straw Hats a few times over the series so it would be an easy pill to swallow!

If you don’t like that new direction for Kawamatsu, you could cut him. It is a shame, but he feels a bit redundant compared to the absolute best Red Scabbard and the last introduced, Denjiro. 

Denjiro: Keep

Denjiro is great. He works so well in Wano and is positioned in the narrative in a way that it is laughable that some of the other scabbards even exist when this guy is around.

He looks good and has a strong backstory, his double-agent background in Wano is a better traitor reveal than Kanjuro, and he is overall so proactive in setting up the Raid that I feel he earns his keep better than any of the Wano Samurai who stayed in the present. 

What Clinical Depression and Insomnia does to Samurai (Chapter - 973)

As I mentioned above, Denjiro could easily be the one in the story who did most of, if not all, of Kawamatsu’s stuff to prepare for the raid (the fact he was not Hiyori’s guardian on day 1 is kind of ridiculous), and his role as a thief Robin-hooding in Wano, while sweet, needs more narrative backbone so he can be stealing weapons as well (something as the local Yakuza boss and right hand of Orochi he would be great at doing).

In all honesty, Denjiro feels like such a natural fit as the leader of the Nine Red Scabbards that Kine’mon feels even worse a character in comparison to Denjiro the GOAT, who could have been the secret leader of the rebellion as his thief identity.

The one gripe against him is that he kinda disappears from the raid after the Red Scabbards fight Kaido and then appears only to kill Orochi, a kill that, while he was a good choice to get the kill, was SO set up to have Hiyori murder him it was insulting to have that bait and switch. 

 

Kill Stealer

 

So have him do some stuff before then, like defending Luffy from the CP0 agents in place of Izo, who we cut, and then leaving to find his adopted daughter once Drake showed up to continue that fight.

We saved the best of the Red Scabbards for last, but overall, does the Nine Red Scabbards, individually, work as characters in one of One Piece’s biggest Arcs?

Conclusion

So the Nine Red Scabbards, all in all, are a mixed bag. They are not the worst characters in Wano when you examine them all as a group, but they are still not great. Two Scabbards deserve to be written out of the story, another three being arguably just as cutable, and those remaining who earn their keep, EARN THEIR KEEP.

In a way, it is a shame so many of the Scabbards ended up so worthless to the story they are most central to without losing a beat. Wano is an ambitious War arc, but one of its chief problems is how many characters of “importance” there are and how that bloat ultimately drags down the more relevant characters from really shining, be them the natives of Wano or the Straw Hats themselves.

I love One Piece, but the Nine Red Scabbards represent one of its biggest problems. Oda has a pattern in the Post-Timeskip arcs that stems from thinking bigger stories need more characters to give them weight.

That is not untrue, as a series as grand of scale as this in its endgame deserves that kind of payoff, but it has the side effect of taking panel time and story focus away from the real stars of the show, The Straw Hat Pirates. The Nine Red Scabbards, no matter how much I said they did nothing, took up a lot of time and space in Wano, time and space beloved characters like Nami, Usopp, Chopper, Brook, etc. were not afforded, with all of those character not receiving a relevant fight or story line in the arc that builds on their characters.

I do not want to see Raizo having a death match with his ninja rival every chapter for a few pages. I want to see the characters I grew up with, that has grown and evolved across decades of storytelling, truly thrive in the endgame of this wondrous story of One Piece.

That is not to say characters like Vivi, Law, or the Scabbards do not deserve to grow and shine as characters. One Piece is built on guest characters like that, they are the ones who truly bring One Piece to life and leave watchers and readers excited to see how their stories are doing hundreds of chapters later. But did Wano need NINE of these guys in an arc with all the Straw Hats, many of their allies, and many even more cuttable Wano natives and guest party members?

After reading all this, I hope you ask yourself the same question.