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The story
A thread on 5ch’s Live/Anime Board (なんでも実況G) about how Ace from One Piece died sparked heated discussion. Posters debated the plot point where he dies after falling for a provocation, the later-revealed backstory behind Whitebeard’s famous “no wounds on his back” detail, and whether a more satisfying death could have been written.
Opinions were also divided on why a character with main-character-tier bloodline ended up meeting this fate.
What people said
Absolutely not taking it back!
And it's hilarious that he picked the worse of the two big options and that's where the decline started.
If they'd kept him alive, they wouldn't have needed to bring in Sabo.
Is Ace the only one getting bullied by the plot?
Compared to Kuma ("Higuma," i.e. brown bear), whose reputation keeps climbing as an ever-stronger character,
everyone else's survivability has gotten so absurd that dying just makes you look like a weakling by comparison.
Wasn't he beaten by Blackbeard and captured on the spot?
I think that's the feat that got Blackbeard into the Warlords (Shichibukai).
Ace: goes berserk, gets the Whitebeard Pirates half-wiped out, then dies after falling for a cheap provocation, throwing it all away for nothing.
Rengoku: dies protecting the protagonist and everyone else to the very end.
If the Stone Hashira had shown up nobody would've died though.
Demon Slayer has way too big a power gap between individual Hashira.
You think so? That seems like a pretty normal gap to me.
Even the Stone Hashira couldn't handle Akaza.
He hasn't awakened his Demon Mark yet, so he'd probably just die.
After all that talk about being "family," he just took the Navy's word at face value — really exposed how shallow those bonds actually were, lol.
Exactly this.
The whole setup where he gets fooled that easily in the moment is just too sloppy ("osomatsu"-level, a pun on 粗末/"shoddy"). If it had been set up carefully well in advance, sure, but this…
Every single character just stands around doing nothing until it's their turn, then introduces themselves, does a little something, and that's it.
Handling a big cast is just not his strong suit.
It's like they're all just reading lines off a script.
Luffy not even recognizing his crewmates' faces after the two-year timeskip.
Sanji nearly dying for real from a nosebleed on Fish-Man Island.
Effortlessly dodging everything with Observation Haki.
Yeah, it really feels like things started going off the rails right around when he started writing Ace's death scene like it was meant to be moving.
so it makes sense that Ace, with that same blood running through him, couldn't stand it either when his crew got mocked.
It's genuinely sad that he ends up doing the exact same thing as the father he hated so much, except unlike his dad he's not strong enough to pull it off, so he just dies like an idiot.
Honestly it was pretty shocking to learn the real reason he had zero scars on his back was just that he ran too fast to ever get hit.
why didn't they use that perfect piece of bait?
Editor: "Let's have the doping backlash hit Luffy right here, and have Ace die protecting him."
Oda: "…" *lights up with inspiration*
It pretty much had to be a tearjerker death right in front of Luffy.
I mean, he just shouldn't have said "take it back" or whatever — that's all it would've taken…
He could've just died protecting Luffy after Luffy collapsed from exhaustion following back-to-back fights.
I think they just should've cut the part where he falls for the provocation.
Being the son of the Pirate King alone is already insane —
the adopted son of a Yonko,
the adopted grandson of a legendary Marine.
Why'd they kill him.
Exactly because of that. He'd overshadow Luffy.
Just from that one fight trading blows with Smoker in Alabasta, he was already massively popular.
Someone important to the protagonist dies → they fall into despair but manage to accept it thanks to encouragement from friends and allies → they grow as a person.
That's a pretty standard, tried-and-true story beat.
Probably because if they'd kept him alive, Oda would've had no idea what to do with him.
Akainu's whole rant was just too full of hard truths.
Thought "no wounds on his back" meant he'd crushed every enemy head-on — turned out it just meant he was really good at running away.
Like you can see from the flashback arc, it's just that Roger's bad traits came out in him.
The problem is people said he was "on the level of not even beating Smoker," and that's what's dragging his reputation down…
Hard to say with how crazy the power inflation for villains has gotten lately.
He's top-tier as far as the Navy goes, but as an opponent for Luffy… eh, kind of underwhelming.
Combat-wise he's definitely top-tier.
Mentally though, he's the weakest — bullies a coworker, gets yelled at, and grovels an apology.
Background and Key Points
Portgas D. Ace’s death is not a recent plot point — it happened in the “Summit War of Marineford” arc, serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2010 and adapted into the anime not long after, making it one of the most-revisited moments in Eiichiro Oda’s now nearly 30-year-old series. Ace, the biological son of the former Pirate King Gol D. Roger and the sworn brother of protagonist Luffy, was captured by Blackbeard (an act that earned Blackbeard a seat among the Seven Warlords, a now-defunct government system that pardoned strong pirates in exchange for service). His planned execution triggered a war between the Navy and the Whitebeard Pirates that ended with both Whitebeard and Ace dead, the latter killed by Fleet Admiral Akainu’s magma-fist after Ace charged him following an insult to his late father.
The thread’s real fault line isn’t whether Ace should have died — most posters accept the story needed it — but whether the way he died (goaded into a reckless charge) cheapens an otherwise strong character, and whether the later-revealed “Whitebeard never took a wound on his back” backstory was a poignant reveal or a retcon that undercuts him.
What the thread never mentions is the practical fallout: Ace’s death is the direct reason Sabo, the third sworn brother, was written into the story two years later, and it’s the hinge that pushes Luffy into the two-year training arc that reshapes the entire back half of the series — so structurally, the “pointless” death is anything but.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Live/Anime Board) thread “[Sad News] Even Thinking About It Now, Fire Fist Ace’s Death Was Just Plain Dumb.”
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