User blog comment:Samium/Heart of Gold (please be well written)/@comment-24769684-20160609215451

I liked Nebulandia, but sure, it had its flaws. A good One Piece adaptation should successfully try to treat Luffy as both a kid and a Pirate King candidate because that's who he is. And recklessly invading islands where he should be pulverized to help his friends is an integral part of his character, given that he did it in all three Marine bases. It's not like he knew Nebulandia was gonna be like that.

So yeah, Luffy got screwed over a bit, but I really liked the challenge he ended up facing. Too often One Piece is just "the biggest force wins" but this deviated from the path by having people who would normally be cannon fodder get a shot at beating Luffy by using tactics and trickery.

How Luffy himself was treated is kind of a mixed bag. I thought that he had a strong outing in Nebulandia by showing how much he was willing to persevere through to rescue his friends, but it admittedly did become annoying as Komei had amazing tactics and an actually valid reason for his actions but Luffy just beat him by saying over and over that he loves his crew. So yeah, at that point Toei seemed unable to give Luffy enough depth to make us actually invested in his actions.