As Crocodile was about fight Luffy, Miss All Sunday turned to leave, and Crocodile namedropped that she was Robin...
Well first of all, that probably means that Crocodile is after a poneglyph on Alabasta. Not sure how throwing the country into turmoil helps him find it, but okay. But how does threatening to kill the only person who can read the poneglyph help him... find the poneglyph and read it? Huh? That was just nonsensical.
Second... let's not forget that Robin was HELPING CROCODILE for years, planning out and organizing this operation. She shares responsibility for hundreds, thousands, possibly tens of thousands of deaths by murder, starvation, thirst, civil war, etc. And Luffy is going to recruit this woman? Yes, I know she is one of only a handful of people alive who can read the poneglyphs so she is invaluable, but ugh. Just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Interesting power Crocodile has. Looks like rather than just escalating raw powerlevels like in DBZ/HxH/Naruto/Bleach, they instead went the Jojo's route and gave the villains unique abilities that can't be overcome with raw strength, only through cleverness. Personally I think the only way to kill Crocodile would be to lure him out into the ocean, and then burn down the ship he is on. He could try to turn into sand by the wind wouldn't be able to carry him all the way to shore so he'd drown. Looking forward to seeing how Luffy figures out how to defeat an intangible man. Maybe Ace will show up to take out Crocodile, we haven't seen him in a while. Or maybe he's going to fight Teach? Smoker went back to the ocean so I think there might be a fight with Teach going down there.
An army of a TWO MILLION MEN? That is a logistically impossible army size. If you go to a large American Civil War reenactment (or any large gathering of people out in the wilderness), one of the things that becomes immediately obvious is the sheer amount of water that is required for everyone and the enormous difficulty of trying to transport that much water regularly. An army numbering in the thousands can't live off of the land in even a lush region for more than a few days without all of the resources being consumed, so they HAVE to move on or starve and thirst. Popular media, romanticized paintings, and summaries in history books portrays big battles as thousands of people fighting at once... but in reality a "big battle" was a series of small battles each fought few hundred to a few thousand men cycling in and out. And here we have TWO MILLION MEN converging all at once... in the middle of a desert that has had a 3 year drought, with cities already stretched to the limits of their resources already.
EDIT: finished Alabasta
I'm feeling like Alabasta suffers from Chimera Ant arc syndrome; the fans hype it up as the best thing ever because of how long it is (and therefore that makes it feel "epic"?) and the symbolism, but it just isn't a very enjoyable story. My interest was piqued at the beginning when Crocodile still didn't know that they were coming and they arrived and bumped into Ace and Smoker and Tashigi, but then it became very dull as they were traversing the desert for a dozen episodes. Then they went to Rainbase and ran into the Marines again and were running around Crocodile's casino and it was great! And then it became very dull again as they headed to Alubarna. The Strawhats formulaically fought Crocodile's lieutenants for 10 episodes. Halfway through Sanji's fight I began fast forwarding. The only decent, actually interesting fight was Zoro's. And then there is a ticking time bomb and all they're all searching for it... yawn. And Vivi is crying the whole time. And then the arc climaxes with yet another "Luffy vs villain" fight that drags out for six episodes... yawn.
(But seriously, the parts where the Strawhats kept bumping into the Marines, and the whole Rainbase section, that was great!).
There is also some weird, anachronistic logic towards the end, where Vivi decides to blow up the kingdom's 4,000 year old palace for shock value to grab hold of people's short attention spans. This is post-modernist thinking trying to be applied to a traditionalist country. From what we've seen, the palace is pretty much Alabasta's only significant landmark/monument/national treasure. Destroying that would be destroying an enormous portion of Alabasta's cultural heritage. It's irreplaceable. You can't just "rebuild a new palace"; it will never have the same value as THE original palace. I can't think of any IRL pre-19th century civil wars where the rebels intentionally tried to destroy their country's capital or palace. Realistically, destroying the palace would only hurt the country more and further alienate the people from the ruling faction. But I digress.
Lol Igaram and Pell came back from the dead after having nukes going off in their face. So I guess we're 130 episodes in and no one has died so far except for MAYBE Arlong? Arlong would have to be dead or otherwise the moment he woke up he'd massacre the villagers. Also, the 100 Baroque Works members that Zoro fought at Whisky Peak? Apparently he killed him. Couldn't really tell since they had no blood and it was just like they were knocked out.
I wonder how they're supposed to get their ship up to a floating island in the sky. Lemme guess: they will bait a giant bird down into carrying the ship up there? There is a space elevator? Or they will position the ship over an underwater volcano, and let the eruption launch the ship up to the island? Teleportation magic?
EDIT: also wanted to comment on the ship combat at the end. I think that is the first ship battle we've had thus far in the whole series? For a series about pirates out on the ocean, ship battles have been pretty much nonexistent thus far. Well, I guess it's hard to do battles when everyone has superpowers, but still. Interesting that the Marines were hurling giant iron spears at the Going Merry, which I suppose actually makes more sense than cannonballs. See, it's really, really hard to sink a wooden sailing ship. Unlike modern metal ships, wooden ships float on water, so even if you have several holes below the water line and water in the hull, the ship is still going to float. Plus, the cannonballs were more for creating splinters that ravaged the crew inside the ship, so your men could capture the ship. But this is a shounen manga where everyone is immune to splinters and shrapnel, and since you can fire giant iron spears which weigh down the enemy vessel... yeah okay that makes sense.
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