Why Blackbeard Is A Necessary Evil | One Piece Character Analysis

For New Viewers to my channel, I recommend checking out my video on the "Dawn of the World Explained," as it provides a more complete context for some of the ideas discussed in the last section of the video. For the sake of time, I didn't reiterate all those points in-depth in this video, and opted to give a condensed version instead before explaining how Blackbeard fits into it. Hope you all enjoy regardless =)

Hey gang, meet Professor Morj, PhD in One Piece.

What I find poetic is that the only food luffy disliked was the food Blackbeard loved. They were destined to fight from the very beginning

one of my favorite little historical nods in One Piece is that the crew member Blackbeard killed was named Thatch. Both Thatch and Teach are commonly theorized to be the real life names of Blackbeard. Thus Teach, denied himself/killed himself to become himself. If that makes any sense.

"what makes a villain a great foil to the hero is how much you can read into the contrast between the two. how much is the author saying through their differences that the hero alone could not communicate?" I feel like this could be framed

I like how you pointed out Luffy's Hard Work vs Blackbeard's Corner Cutting. It's something I've talked about before when responding to people who think Luffy is special and is just magically chosen by Fate to become Pirate King. I made a huge point about the significance of Oda repeatedly taking away Luffy's "specialness" and making him earn it again. Devil Fruits where special in East Blue but once he gets to the Grandline they're not special anymore. He's just one of many DF users. So what makes him so special? How does he stand out? Through his actions. Luffy defeats Crocodile one of the Shichibukai. Receiving a sizeable bounty for his efforts. But then he's still just another rookie on the Grandline. So how does he stand out? Luffy attacks Enies Lobby and defeats Rob Lucci.So he's blowing up now but he's still just one of nearly a dozen supernovas, amazing rookies just like him. Oda once again makes him stand out through his actions by making him the only one crazy enough to punch a Tenryuubito, and then be the only Supernova to participate in the War. The point was that Luffy always has to earn his worth and everything he has is a product of his own hard work and effort. Even something like being trained by the former right hand of the Pirate King sounds impressive until you realize that Rayleigh didn't actually do anything special for Luffy. He didn't teach Luffy any special technique, rare fighting style, or unique strategy. What he taught Luffy was the basics of Haki. Thats it. While he may have handed Luffy the tools he needed it was up to Luffy himself to make something worthwhile out of it. And after teaching Luffy the basics Rayleigh left, and Luffy refined his strength on his own. In fact every technique we see Luffy come up with is something entirely of his own design and NOT something that Rayleigh taught him. Even just looking at Luffy's Devil Fruit in general it's significantly more refined than just about anyone we've met in the story. Going to the One Piece wiki it's staggering to see the long list of moves Luffy has invented compared to any other character in the series. And that just goes to show how under advantaged Luffy was with the Gomu Gomu no Mi and how hard he's had to work to make it combat capable. He's had to invent dozens upon dozens of moves just to keep up with other Devil Fruit users. Most of which are extremely powerful on their own without having the mount of moves. It makes sense why Oda has to do this though. It's also the same reason I have no problem with Luffy being special as long as he always earns it. Thats because the thing he's aiming for the Pirate King which is something special among special. So Luffy is forced to climb his way through several levels of 'specialness' before he can earn this title.

The blackbeard speech is still my favourite moment in One Piece

Mr Morj : “Another one”

One could say Rayleigh’s question to Luffy with regards to conquering the Grand Line was a test to see which Will he inherited, and that pretty much determined Rayleigh’s subsequent behavior towards Luffy. Ray must have known about the contrast between the D, most likely originating from Xebec’s contrast with Roger.

I literally JUST read Impel Down yesterday in my reread, saw the moment of Blackbeard saying there is no moral answer, and I didn't even connect what that means about his contrast with Luffy. Fantastic analysis as usual. ...how did I never realize Luffy vs. Blackbeard is the Sun vs. a Black Hole. God.

One really cool detail is that when Luffy is talking to any other antagonist, he will joke around and be a little goofy but when it comes to Blackbeard, he’s ALWAYS dead serious.

As someone who’s a Hunter x hunter and onepiece fan your videos make me realize that their is a lack of thematic analysis in Onepiece fandom like there is Hunter x Hunter. I think there’s a little too much theorizing though I think the onepiece theories have died off a bit since Oda has made a point of zigging when we think zag. That being said the thematic videos also age far more gracefully since they aren’t tied to a theory that could easily be disproven next chapter. In other words I hope your videos make the community start to think more deeply about the series beyond just power levels and theories. Thank you Mr. Morj

I remember when Coby was screaming about needlessly throwing away lives to an uninterested Akainu, there was a specific manga panel that focused on Teach's reaction. It always made me think until I binged the Marineford arc in the Anime. He seemed taken aback, as if for a split-second he was actually trying to comprehend what Coby was saying. We never got to see any more action from BB after that moment thanks to Shanks but I really find myself wondering about that panel with regards to Teach's ideals as a villain.

The idea that Blackbeard is the final boss is ridiculous, the evidence that Usopp is the final boss is plain for all to see.

I can't believe how many classic videos Mr Morj drops, I found his channel about 10 months ago, and I keep coming back to his channel to rewatch old videos all the time as well as watch the new ones, If you read this Mr Morj you are a true gift to the One Piece community and the man we needed. Other people drop entertaining/fun videos, but you really articulate so eloquently what makes one piece special, and make me appreciate it in more ways with each passing analysis. Morj is bringing the dawn of great analysis content for one piece, the community has been in a great darkness with annoying power scaling, baseless opinions, and crappy theories with little to no facts backing them, taking over all one piece content. then comes Mr Morj, the man not afraid to talk about the series past, what makes One Piece amazing on a deeper level, analyzing the themes communicated by Oda and communicating them to us with evidence from the story backing it up. Mr Morj is not just riding the hype wave and uploading a lot of poor quality videos for views to take advantage of the youtube algorithm or whatever. Instead, he is taking no shortcuts working hard so that we too can understand the series on a deeper level. Thank you so much for doing what you are doing because you deserve all the praise you get for continuously making this level of content.

The "not playing dirty" part made me reconsider why Sanji didnt poison the cake. He believes that Luffy will defeat Big Mom on his own anyways.

Looks like I have to go back and read Impel Down now. Jesus Christ, Marineford is one of the best anime arcs ever written and you can't change my mind.

Seriously Mr. Morj, you're a blessing to the One Piece community. Phenomenal video like always :)

The goat back at it again, Goda dropping fire chapters and Morj dropping fire videos.

Stunning video really. Something that you seems have missed when you talked about how Blackbeard just ate Devil fruits to become stronger while Luffy earned his victories, is what Blackbeard said to Ace when he revealed his power of darkness : "Paramecia, Zoan Logia, those who have Devil fruits power becomes cocky and lazy and think that's all they have to do to be strong, but it's no more the case with my devil fruit" (basically that's what he said). It seems to me that it's pretty clearly a foreshadowing of Blackbeard predicting his own defeat here, he has alredy 2 Devil Fruits, according to many theories he could add a Zoan one and so he would have one devil fruit of each type, will become completely cocky and thinks he is invincible, and will lose because of that. In fact Whitebeard said it to him in Marineford when he slashed him and pinned him down after seeing that his devil fruit was ineffective, he said that one of the weakness of Blackbeard was is too much confidence in himself.