It’s never easy for an author to decide to kill his own character, especially when he’s well-liked by audiences. But it seems like Eiichiro Oda decided to do it a long time ago kill Portgas D.Ace, non-bloody brother of the protagonist Monkey D. Luffy. Oda may have been thinking about Ace’s death for some time before the events at Marineford.
As he revealed in a minor magazine in 2012, Oda thought about killing Ace about a year after his first appearance in the manga. Then, with the expansion of the plot, the times have greatly expanded. As the Marineford saga began and the key situations were outlined, there was a special conversation with its editor at the time, Hattori.
Eiichiro Oda was adamant that he wanted to kill Ace, but this its editor Hattori tried to change his mind. However, the mangaka was adamant and what all ONE PIECE readers know happened: Ace defended his brother by stopping Akainu’s magmatic strike with his own body and perished at that point. However, the Mangaka himself then got angry upon seeing Ace’s death in the animewondering why Ace had to die in such a brutal manner.
Obviously, the manga artist didn’t have the same effect in the manga, and seeing the situation on screen and in action gave him different effects. Who knows if, in hindsight, he would have accepted his editor’s words and prevented the death of one of the series’ most beloved characters. And today, Ace returns with the memories of Yamato in the anime of ONE PIECE.
Not just fans, but surprisingly *Oda’s editor* Hattori was against the idea of killing Ace. But Oda had made up his mind ever since he created Ace as a character. Oda got angry after watching the anime: I wonder why Ace had to be killed in such a hard way..😥
— Sandman (@sandmann_AP) February 19, 2023
