User blog comment:Nobody700/The worst in the best/@comment-1595565-20131218053445

About your first qualm, Oda said in an SBS somewhere that he is not crazy about killing people. I do agree with you, and I think Oda is making an attempt to remedy that. If you look at all the people who were declared dead on Punk Hazard not counting Kin'emon: Brownbeard and all the Shinokuni victims, they were all declared dead, without much room for doubt at the time. All of these guys were very minor characters, so they wouldn't be missed if they did die. Everyone was declared dead on the spot once they were consumed by Shinokuni. If you ask me, the 12 hour window between when the gas hits someone and when they die was a deus ex machina to get Oda out of having to kill so many people. The only ones who didn't show any sign of recovery were Vergo and Monet.

Now, one could easily argue that Oda is just messing with us, but that's really an on-the-surface write-off of its overall meaning. If everyone else is definitely alive, why not just bring back those two other people? To me, it says that Oda is taking steps to change this. I think he realized that the lack of death is rather unrealistic and is trying to fix it. But, he really doesn't like killing people, so he's taking his time test the waters of how it feels. He left the option of killing a lot of people open during Punk Hazard, but thought it was too much too soon, so he only made the body count two.