shanks, warily: yeah? why? we see him like every other month?
buggy, immediately gushing: wasn't he soo cool? like the way he transforms and those muscles! didja see his muscles, shanks? he could probably pick me up with one hand....
shanks who has just realized that he never wants buggy looking at another man who isn't him: .....yes... cool
I haven't reached the chapters with the Roger Pirates' backstory + Buggy talking about his relationship with Shanks yet, but I've gotten little spoilers here and there and I have some thoughts. This could be very obvious but I just connected the two dots lol.
It seems to be implied that Roger favored Shanks at least slightly more than Buggy and it didn't go unnoticed by him. Like, the fact that Shanks was the one holding the hat already says a lot. It seems like Roger had a lot of expectations for Shanks and his future. And this is also why Buggy was so disappointed in Shanks even temporarily abandoning his main ambitions and why he chose to not continue piracy alongside him. Anyway, that's not the main thing that I want to talk about.
There is this panel of someone asking Roger who he thinks is going to find the one piece to which he answers something like: my son, of course! And the other person mentions that he has no son.
I personally took this at face value and thought this was referring to Ace, and Roger's plan to have a son before dying who would follow his legacy and find his treasure and would also be someone who would be carrying the will of D. But maybe the whole thing with Rouge was a coincidence that happened after Roger disbanded his crew and left. Roger seemed to have loved babies, so maybe he just fell in love with Rouge and chose to have a child with for the sake of his own happiness before he died.
And here is something I noticed and it could be nothing or even a translation thing. But the few times that Roger mentions Ace he never refers to him as his son, but his child. He even chose two names and didn't seem to be favoring one outcome.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is, what if this was never referring to Ace and was always about Shanks. Roger basically raised him and Buggy as his sons since they were babies...
If Buggy ends up being the first one who reaches the one piece, this will also end up being ironic.
Am I reaching or was I an idiot for thinking the other way around before asdfghj
Also you can still buy shows/episodes from iTunes, YouTube, etc. and remember to also show some love for the 2D animated shows that are still available/ongoing (either on HBO Max or from other streaming services as well as indie projects)!!! While this doesn't solve everything like the fact that a lot of these shows are now inaccessible to kids or the terrifying fact that entire pieces of pop culture can be wiped out overnight, it at least helps a little bit knowing that not all of these shows are completely gone to the sands of time.