User blog comment:Kaido King of the Beasts/A Rival for Luffy/@comment-24850639-20160119170756

I would say One Piece doesn't fit the mold, but depends how you want to define the word rival. An antagonist isn't a rival if they have no relevance to the main character after they've played their role as an antagonist. Based on the examples you've given, and from personal experience from other shows, I'd say the following is required for someone to your rival:

1) VERY similar, if not slightly higher/lower strength

2) You have every reason to fight them, but probably wouldn't actually kill them

3) There is a strong level of mutual respect, just enough to potentially create friendship/mutual goals


 * 1) 2 is prob the most important, but #3 can overshadow #2 if the respect is strong enough. For example, there were plenty of points where Sasuke would have been willing to kill Naruto, but never once did he fail to acknowledge Naruto's skills and potential as a rival to his own. Kenpachi probably WOULD kill Ichigo, but he's always acknowledged him as a worthy adversary, even before Ichigo knew it. Byakuya on the other hand prob wouldn't kill Ichigo due to the respect thats developed between them, but he considers himself better in just about every way. Jean and Mugen from Samurai Champloo threatened to kill each other all the time, but they developed a respect for each other throughout the series where you just knew they wouldn't kill each other even if given the prime opportunity. Its hard to translate this to OnePiece because there are so many characters, and the show goes so many places. Coby has definitely been around the longest, but he still seems to be no match, so that knocks him off. Blackbeard is in many ways the Anti-Luffy, but Luffy will never respect him for the things he's done, and Blackbeard would def kill Luffy if he had the chance. I don't see BB as one of those redeemable characters after him and Luffy have their clash. I disqualify Kid for the same reason, I think he'd kill Luffy if he got the chance to. He respects Luffy's strength, but from what he's said about Luffy, and how they haven't interacted enough with each other yet I can't believe that he sees Luffy as anything other than a threat. Not that they couldn't be rivals, but I haven't seen Kid show enough moral fiber yet for me to believe that Luffy wont eventually see him as a REAL enemy.

For now I gotta agree on Fujitora for the marines, and Law for pirates. His pirate rival sort of HAS to be a Supernova, no other kind of pirate is going to share his level of experience, power, and relevance to the story for a prolonged duration. Smoker's had one too many issues with Marine authority for me to feel like he's going to remain a NAVY adversary through the rest of the series.