User blog comment:Videogamep/Why is Sabo Such a Big Deal?/@comment-972068-20131213072410/@comment-972068-20131213221806

Sabo was. He supposedly died, but then came back despite his purpose in the story being served. Because he's alive, his death to the characters has less of an impact. Ace's death was the saddest OP moment for me because of Sabo being dead as well. Now that it turns out he's alive, the significance of Luffy's mourning and breakdown is seriously decreased. That whole flashback mini-arc now seems completely irrelevant, as Sabo could have been introduced now and still leave an impact. Remember when Ace's grave was shown post-timeskip? The only reason for that was to foreshadow Sabo's return. If Sabo was never introduced but that gravestone was still shown with the sake cups, it would have left fans to think "what is that?" and "who could have left that there?" We see glimpses of Ace and Luffy with sake cups in a vague flashback during the Marineford arc, so the cups would have added the significance of that chapter cover alone.

This whole situation is similar to that of an old Sherlock Holmes story. "The Final Problem" is the story where Sherlock dies. After some backlash from the Sherlockians (arguably the earliest form of "fanboys"), Sir Author Conan Doyle revealed that Sherlock apparently didn't die (basically inventing the recton), despite the fact that his "death" seemed final and made an impact.

The only difference between Sherlock and Sabo is that Oda didn't have all of his fans gripe at him for killing him off. Sabo was retconned back to life because all of the information given to us was that he was dead. This isn't just tangible confirmations like Green. This is also confirmed in basically the story. Sabo's death was sad to the characters, especially Ace. Now, there was no reason for them to be sad because he was going to be written back into the story anyways.