Offscreening Fights In One Piece

One Piece spoilers will follow

When writing a good story, it's important to limit exposure to what isn't important to the story. For example, when you're writing a romance story, you don't have to show the male lead driving over to pick up his girlfriend, or them cleaning up after a party. Shonen battle manga like One Piece are no exception, especially when they have to balance several story elements- battle, character development, plot development, worldbuilding and others- so there may be times when it's better not to show battles. Unfortunately, there are also times when not showing battles proves detrimental to the overall story.

The basics

The concept of offscreening fights is simple enough, but it can take on a few different variations.

1. Not showing the end of the fight. The start of the battle is shown, but the ending is told to the reader after the fact. For example, when Sanji fights Page One in Wano, showing off his Raid Suit in the process, the end of the battle is not shown, although both Sanji and Page One survived the battle.
2. Not showing the beginning and/or middle of the fight. For example, Luffy and Nami's battle against Cracker lasts over 10 hours, but the manga skips from just after Cracker's true self is revealed to shortly before the conclusion of the fight.
3. Not showing any of the fight. For example, the battle between Kuzan/Aokiji and Sakazuki/Akainu for command of the Marines took place over ten days during the timeskip. Luffy only learns about the outcome at the end of the Fishman Island arc.

Pros and Cons

There are various ways this practice can help the story, and various ways it can hurt it. First, the benefits.

• It improves the pacing. As I mentioned above in my romance movie analogy, stories can't show every single trivial event. As One Piece's battles get larger, particularly the battle of Marineford and the more recent battle of Onigashima, Oda can't afford to show every one-on-one fight in detail. Having some battles happen offscreen not only helps the story develop, but proceed to the interesting fights.
• It can provide a tantalizing sneak peek at things to come. For example, when Whitebeard and Shanks fight on the former's ship, their weapons clashing splits the skies. The outcome is rather vague, although apparently, both decided to stand down, and Shanks left Whitebeard's ship.
• Often, the outcome of a fight is more important than seeing it in its entirety. As epic as the battle against Aokiji and Akainu would have been, it wouldn't have been feasible to show the entire ten-day battle. The result- Akainu becoming Fleet Admiral and Aokiji leaving the Marines- is what's relevant to the story, and Jimbei delivers it.

Now for the ways it can hurt the story

• Some of the skipped battles would have been exciting to watch. There are too many examples to list, but I'll look at some of them in the case studies.
• Done excessively, it makes the story seem rushed and even comes off as lazy. Do you remember how I said it isn't a good idea for romance movies to show scenes that don't contribute anything to the plot? It also isn't a good idea to skip from just after the couple's first date to when they're considering marriage(unless the point is that they're rushing into marriage). Battles are an important part of shonen manga, as well as one of the more entertaining parts of the story, and if One Piece doesn't invest enough time in that aspect of the story, the overall quality will suffer.
• Some of the Straw Hats will lose screentime and the chance to fight. In most story arcs, Luffy and Zoro, as well as Sanji to a lesser extent, get a chance for a big one-on-one fight. Usopp, Brook and Franky do relatively well, but fall by the wayside at times. Robin, Nami and more recently, Chopper, barely get any fights. In One Piece, fighting battles is often a way for characters to contribute to the plot and get/demonstrate their character development, so characters who don't often fight seem underutilized.

Next up will be some case studies, of good and bad examples of offscreening fights.

Good Example: Usopp vs. Mr. 2.

You may not remember this fight happening, especially since Sanji fought Mr. 2, while Usopp and Chopper fought Mr. 4 and Miss Merrychristmas. Despite that, when all the decoy "Vivis" took off their cloaks after luring the Baroque Works assassins away in order to let Vivi stop the rebellion, Usopp ended up facing Mr. 2.

Vivi's attempt to stop the rebellion fails, and Usopp arrives on a horse to rescue her. But then the scene cuts to Sanji, who learns that Mr. 2 defeated Usopp with almost comical ease. Sanji then realizes that Mr. 2 has slipped away and impersonated Usopp, meaning that Vivi is in danger.

The battle wouldn't have been too long, but not showing it until the aftermath helps the reader briefly assume that the Usopp who arrived to help Vivi was the real one.

Good Example: Kid, Killer, Hawkins and Apoo vs. Kaido

While the pirate alliance of the Straw Hat and Heart Pirates works to take down Doflamingo, another alliance of Supernova crews has its sights set on Kaido. They make their move around the time of the Zou arc, planning on doing battle with one of the Four Emperors of the Sea.

As one might expect, this does not go well, although the reason why is only revealed later. Apoo had been on Kaido's side all along, and Hawkins had surrendered and joined Kaido out of fear, resulting in Kid and Killer both being captured. By not showing the fight, Oda allowed the revelation of the breakdown of the alliance to be saved until later, when it would work best.

The only disappointing part is that the viewers don't get to see Kaido's strength, but it's effectively demonstrated when Luffy fights Kaido, and Kaido defeats Luffy in a single blow.

Bad Example: Red Scabbards vs. Kanjuro

One of the key mysteries in the Wano arc is the identity of a traitor among the Red Scabbards, someone who has been surreptitiously passing information to their archenemy Kaido. Eventually, the traitor is revealed to be Kanjuro, who'd been traveling with and fighting alongside the Straw Hats since Dressrosa. Kanjuro kidnaps Momonosuke, the son of the Scabbards' liege lord Oden, and escapes.

At the gates of Kaido's stronghold Onigashima, Kanjuro faces his former friends in battle. The fight shows that he and Kikunojo are prepared to all out... then cuts to Kanjuro lying face-down on the ground in a pool of his own blood, apparently dead.

Kanjuro's demise is so anticlimactic that many believe he's not actually dead. This may end up being the case, but at this point, the focus seems to have shifted to the battle with Kaido and Big Mom, so it's unlikely that Kanjuro will play any role in this.

Bad Example: Duke Dogstorm and Cat Viper vs. Jack

As far as minor villains go, Jack had quite an introduction. He was the first character introduced who had a bounty of one billion berries. During the Zou arc, while the Minks were able to defeat most of the Animal Kingdom Pirates, they weren't able to defeat Jack in a days-long battle, although Jack was forced to deploy poison gas against the Minks.

Dogstorm and Cat Viper got a chance for a rematch in which they possessed the advantage- their Sulong forms. Does this lead to an exciting fight? Not at all- they defeat Jack off-panel and move on to Kaido. While Kaido's the main antagonist of the arc, and a major foe in One Piece as a whole, it's rather disappointing that Jack's fight got skipped like that.

These are only a handful of examples, but they effectively illustrate the positive and negative aspects of the trend.

Conclusion

Like many tropes and other narrative tools, offscreening fights can be done well or poorly, and doing the former requires using it wisely and in moderation. Unfortunately, One Piece's ever-increasing scale means that the story often relies too heavily on offscreening fights, to the detriment of the overall product.

UPDATE: After reading Chapter 1007, I learned that Kanjuro is actually still alive. However, since his final fate has yet to be determined, and he had seemed like a textbook example of how not to offscreen a fight, I will leave his section up for posterity.