User blog comment:12th Supernova/Chapter 789: The Final Countdown/@comment-5239749-20150606041657/@comment-24.235.56.170-20150607215654

Yeah, Vivi was actually a pretty strong character. She wasn't the greatest fighter, but she was smart and had conviction. Basically, she knew how to be a good leader, which is exactly what Luffy needed at the time.

If memory serves, Vivi only broke down and cried once. And it was a big moment. (AND it wasn't in the middle of a fight.) She felt responsible for a lot of shit and got emotional, but she still kept going.

When the bomb was stopped, and everyone was still killing each other, she didn't break down and cry. She screamed her lungs out until it was over.

The problem is that this formula seems to be repeated each time: princess (Vivi, Shirahoshi, Rebecca, Mansherry) with a useful power (competent leader, Poseidon, haki, healing ability) who is strong enough to try and help in some way, but not great in a fight, needs Luffy to save her from a tyrant (Corocodile, Hody, Doffy, Doffy again) who is trying to take over/murder everyone in her kingdom. And every new iteration makes the princess less competent, and less brave than Vivi.

Vivi was a great character. And if she weren't part of a bigger pattern of weaklings, Shirahoshi would have been a really interesting juxtaposition of immensely devastating power in a comically helpless being. In a way, she was like the opposite of Vivi. They didn't need to be the most powerful non-SH in an arc in order to be interesting, as long as someone in the future could be.

But these two new ones have too much in common with the others, so they just don't feel like new characters. And that cheapens the other two, by changing them from two independently interesting characters into variations on a theme. I mean honestly, the first scene of Mansherry was her locked away in a darkened room of the royal palace, (to keep her power away from those who would steal it from the king) being brought food by a guard, and crying as she gets it. That's exactly how they introduced Shirahoshi.