Why Enel Is STILL More Important Than You Think

this is an L the false god of skypia and an entity completely unknown to those inhabiting the blue sea and quite thankfully so because they have no idea the sheer destruction and ruin that he could call upon them anel is a fantastic onepiece villain whose greatness is masked by the Iron Curtain of skyer a traditionally overlooked Arc that almost 20 years after it concluded turned out to be one of the most absurdly important pieces of World building and NL is no exception and we're going to reexamine him today because we're on a mission to every major antagonist in the most comprehensive and exhaustive way possible video by video today featuring God anel so an El probably has one of the most uniquely fearsome introductions in all of One Piece because we don't actually see him we don't get to see him for quite some time but all my crap do we experience him because whilst on what she thought was a lovely sky holiday Nami rides to upad and witnesses an act of God an impossibly powerful and focus shaft of lightning descending from the well the even higher above the clouds that they already are in order to Smite a sinner it plays very strongly towards the religious themes of the Ark because a lot of times when people share their experiences of God they tend to be very isolated and personal which is what Nami experienced here on her own away from the other straw hats so two very important things about this the first is that Oda deliberately chose Nami to be the first witness because within the Kushi has the best mixture of pragmatism and powerlessness which makes her an ideal audience surrogate and I think it's very powerful being able to take take someone so grounded in tangible realism and then immediately making her question her core beliefs of the world because after this experience she returns to the straw hats fully prepared to believe that gods exist and the second important thing is that let's say those gods exist that's bad because we've now angered them because Nami overheard nl's priest discussing the straw hats or as they refer to them illegal trespasses meaning that the straw hats are now the enemies of the Gods a concept that would eventually tie very neatly into the will of D no Admiral no wall or no emperor of the sea has ever been able to achieve this depth of Terror upon introduction because when it comes to all of all of the them we at least knew that they were living breathing and probably killable beings but with NL we have no concept of whether or not he's even human which is emphasized by the silhouette we see of him shortly after we see what resembles maybe human features but Oda has crafted it in a distinctly alien style there's no emotional expression nothing to indicate any kind of humanity and overall it's something that we can't connect to almost like staring up at the Statue of a deity and whilst we as readers aren't meant to you know fully buy into this because you're all very clever you know from the beginning that something's up in this NL is probably not all he seems even then on first read through you still can't help but Wonder yeah but what if because in the very next chapter we have another experience of the seemingly omnipotent God sending another blast of focus lightning to strike down konus and whil Luffy does SA her this feeling of powerless is one that we're not quite used to in one piece we are dealing with something completely out of our depth the fact that you could be struck down anytime anywhere for seemingly any reason is the Pinnacle of threatening it's such a gripping and compelling introduction to a villain and we still haven't actually met him yet now if that's all there was to God NL then I would give him a perfect 10 out of 10 for threatening right here and now but the idea that nl's designed to explore is a bit more complicated than that when we do finally meet anel he is a spoiled bored entitled man brat who genuinely believes that he was born as a god with the Divine Right To Rule and if all of that sounds a little bit familiar to you it should because NL is a prototype for the world Nobles and his existence is a miniature World Government all rolled into one now some people may be offended by my comparison of NL to the world Nobles because of his power he's strong in everything but they're not really that different NL does possess a loia type devil fruit that allows him to conj manipulate and become lightning which allows him to personally Smite but the world Nobles have access to three Marine Admirals that they can summon at any point and do more or less the same thing but probably worse they also both believe that they're Untouchable the world Nobles have this Divine sense that no lower being would dare enact violence Upon Us whereas an El just thinks that it's physically impossible because of his Divine loia fruit but when it comes down to it if either Luffy or a world Noble is facing a punch from Luffy then they're both getting hit pretty hard and even though ANL is essentially Invincible against anyone else when facing Luffy he has about the same chance of winning as someone like St Charlos Luffy's rubber body is the natural counter to an El's devil fruit and you know why that is it's because he is the enemy of the Gods which puts anel in a bit of a tricky position because during skypia he's both the most threatening villain we've encountered to this point as well as one of the least threatening because he can't even begin to stand up to Luffy so whatever our experience of enel's Godlike Powers were is now enel's experience of Luffy's ability to casually backhand him into Oblivion and this is a situation in one piece where I do think that we sacrificed the villain for the sake of the idea which is not a bad thing the idea should always be Paramount but it's really important to note that enl is not designed to be your typical epic Sheran antagonist he's here to explore the idea of a false god a cardboard cutout a being who appears fearsome at a distance on stage with all of the right lighting and fun smoke effects but in reality is incredibly fragile and poorly constructed when you get up close to really examine him which again works perfectly for the arc the idea in my opinion is executed immaculately but I can definitely see why enl leaves a lot of people wanting a little bit more from him as a traditional shown and Challenge and to be real a lot of NL is more difficult to appreciate in the moment because skyer is an arc that compounds exponentially in the context of everything that comes after for example the beautiful idea that NL the false god is ultimately overcome by Luffy the actual Sun God is something that really won't resonate until wner and there's all sorts of mindblowing dialogue in skypia that takes on a completely different meaning now like during the final fight with NL Luffy says here we are on this nice sky island and you go and make the weather or thunder stormy and nasty you thunder freak so the first time you read this it feels like very classic Luffy he's simplifying a very complex problem down to his own personal annoyances but then you go and read this post wo and it's like a declaration from the Sun God himself almost willing the sun back into existence by dispersing an El's attack and screaming let the sunshine I don't want to get into this too deeply because we've now entered more General skypia Arc territory and I want to keep this focused on NL but all of this is to say that the role he plays and what he represents is much easier to appreciate in retrospect so my next criteria for a solid antagonist is having an understandable motivation and this is where I think anel gets a bit misunderstood earlier I compared him to the world Nobles and one of the very purposeful decision Oda makes with them is to betray them as almost comically black and white evil villains they don't have overly complex motives they do bad things because they're innately bad people people and they believe that they have the Divine authority to exercise their desires to do all of the bad things it is actually a little bit worse than that because both NL and the world Nobles assert that they have a Divine duty to subjugate the unblessed but it's not something that they believe in to the core of their being it's more of an excuse to do horrible things in the case of the world Nobles anyway with NL there's quite a bit more to it than that at the climax of the survival game God NL generously Graces the finalists with an explanation as to why he's being such a prick and intends to destroy skypia and he actually has some pretty powerful words the roots of this conflict are much deeper than you know think about it you are not clouds but you were born in the sky you are not Birds but you live in the sky the foundation of this country in the sky is unnatural land is the place for land humans have a place for humans and a God has a place for God each has a place to which it must return so NL believes that the fundamental order of life has being unnaturally shifted land shouldn't be in the sky and humans should not be occupying the space of birds it's weird so in order to fix this anel has crafted a weapon of mass destruction not to return the land and the humans to where they belong but to punish and eradicate them for breaking the natural order to begin with unlike the world Nobles enl isn't just being a prick by unzipping his pants and waving around his Divine rights he's actively trying to restore the order he believes in and I think it's a pretty damn solid motivation for someone who literally believes himself to be a god with that Authority and Duty which is something that a lot of people seem to miss when whenever I see discussion about NL online there's a lot of confusion a lot of people think he's a really flat villain in terms of motivation and if I had to guess I'd say that that's because there's a tendency amongst new fans to sort of blast through skypia speed readed if you will get past all of those frustrating speech bubbles and right into the punch fighting but then once you get to all of that you realize wait a minute why is he destroying the island that wasn't explained which I think is also partially a sandwich effect of skypia being placed between the Saga breads of alabaster and water 7 skypia tends to be considered the valley between those two peaks and for a wide range of reasons that I won't go into in this video doesn't quite get the attention it deserves and as a result neither doesn't know but I think he has an incredibly logical path to mass destruction but we still have yet to discuss his actual ultimate ambition at the end of Sky we have a very left field motivation reveal for anel which is that all of this time his plan was to go to the Moon Because he believes it to be a sacred Divine world to be inhabited only by gods to build his Godly Kingdom which to make make the comparison again is very similar to what marua represents for the world Nobles if you legitimately believe that you are a God then it only makes sense that you would want to ascend into the heavens so other than not reading his dialogue the only thing that might hold NL back in the area of motivation is that all of this is revealed quite late into the ark and in this age of online media literacy and criticism people tend to be very impatient and demand logical reasoning right from the gecko and they tend to conflate their impatience with poor storytelling whereas I think it's okay not to understand why a villain is doing all of the things they're doing so long as that eventually when it is revealed it makes sense and NL makes all of the sense it's a last minute puzzle piece that completes the full picture of ANL which we will then frame and hang on our one piece story wall so criteria number the third one for a superb villain is a compelling Persona and in this regard enl has a very captivating presence right from the gecko mostly because of that Godlike fear that he instills in the introductory segments but counterintuitively it only gets stronger when we see his true nature because it turns him into a wildcard character it asks and I suppose answers the question of what would happen if you gave a floyed human the powers of a God and that answer can be anything he could do anything I don't know what he's going to do but it's probably not going to be good anytime an L is on screen or on page we could be about to witness anything from a devastating event to a lovely chat over an apple in fact one of my personal favorite in all scenes is when he appears behind Robin and they have a tense discussion about archaeology where Robin managed to fool NL into confirming that the Golden Bell Tower exists which firstly great job by Robin continuing to point out the flaws in this false deity but secondly I was on the edge of my seat throughout this entire discussion because at any moment enel could have flipped Robin could have said something to offend him or enel could have just gotten bored and zapped her right there there was a very palpable danger here and there always is which makes enel a very compelling presence to behold he has a volatile range of emotions available to explore which to me makes him much more interesting than your class classic stoic evil villain guy and dl's Aesthetics greatly assist this feeling as well in fact he is one of the most unique character designs in all of One Piece which is saying a lot because this Series has a lot of wacky crap but then again that's also the problem NL is in one piece and if anything's going to let anel down in this category it's that he's up against some of the most compelling antagonists in all of media we're talking your crocodiles your flamingos yamachi men and so so many more how is it even fair to be asked to compete with them it's not but NL does his best regardless but quite possibly nl's strongest feature and what he definitely has going for him is one of the most satisfying defeats in the entire series which is very important to me if I'm not satisfied with a villain's defeat then why did we bother to explore them in the first place but NL has one of if not the most iconic defeats in one piece getting smashed into the Golden Bell with Luffy's golden rifle sending the sound of the Bell echoing all the way down to the Grand line and letting Mont Blanc Cricut know that the city of gold was in the sky the entire time so there's some symbolism here that would be reused with do Flamingo obviously it's very fitting that Eno was beaten in the sky as if being knocked off his Godly pedestal I also love that Eno was beaten by his own hubris as he was the one who equipped Luffy with the golden fist required to take him down and one of the most underrated satisfying aspects to me was all of the citizens watching nl's body fall from the sky and seeing the ark Maxim come crashing down and sinking below them let's just Linger on that for a second the ark built by God is sinking that's such a brilliant visual metaphor for falsehood the only detriment is that enl didn't quite have the Legacy set up to make this hit as hard as other payoffs have he was a villain introduced and defeated within the same Arc he didn't have the multi-arc buildup of crocodile or the decade long buildup of do Flamingo which means that whilst I actually think that en's defeat is more iconic DOL flamingo's defeat is more satisfying because it put a full stop on so much that we'd been building towards over that decade again it's not fair but one piece has stupidly high standards of payoff to compete against and then there's my personal favorite part of enel's story which is his post-defeat character Rock starting with Oda drawing ANL without his bandanna which revealed a surprising quantity of God hairs but the really cool thing about NL is that he is a very very rare onepiece villain whose defeat at the hands of Luffy didn't leave him broken he was beaten by Luffy Shaw but that didn't deter him at all and NL still goes after his ambition and actually goes on to make it to the moon and it changes him remember that old motivation was all about maintaining that natural order and remember how he thought that order functioned land Sky Moon humans Birds God humans shouldn't be in the sky and gods they should be in the sky but like really in the sky not the plean bird Sky however on the moon enel discovers the truth of the world which is that humans didn't Ascend to the sky they descended from the moon to the sky islands and potentially even the blue sea which means that everything in El had believed to this point had been turned on its head the moon was was n't the land of the Gods it was the ancestral home of the sky people and what's worse is that once enel got to the Moon all he discovered was more types of ungodly Vermin to deal with such as the incident with the space pirates but he does find and activate a legion of automata and essentially achieves his dream of starting a Godly Empire on the Moon I mean just what an absolute boss he gets to the Moon learns the harsh reality of the universe and then decides screw it I'm going to do what I wanted to do anyway it's very Luffy likee and in that way I have a lot of respect for anel he's had a lot of well Noble comparisons in this video but his driving force is infinitely more impressive and I'm very excited to see what enel does when and if he comes back into the main story but overall as a villain enel Aces a lot of criteria with motivation satisfying payoff and a great post-defeat Arc but I think he falters with Threat Level because of the idea that Oda wanted to explore the cardboard cutout God and whilst he is undeniably compelling and all has to go up against the big guys and in the grand scale of one piece I think he falls just a little bit short but that still makes him a definite ater villain in my books which I think might actually be a lot higher than many of you were expecting but enl is a fantastic villain and I'd strongly encourage going back and rereading skypia but you let me know in the comments where would you rank canel and which villain would you like to see ranked next

Channel: GrandLineReview

Views: 217,258

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Id: b6yRYtQxsYk

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2024