The Holy Knights feel forced.

I’m not trying to jump on the “One Piece sucks” trend, but I’m not a big fan of the Holy Knights starting to become a bigger part of the story this late in the game. You can tell Oda’s writing is starting to fall into the usual shonen tropes where new information that creates holes in the story show up. These are things that are bothering me:

• Why haven’t we ever heard about the Holy Knights since the beginning of the story?

• What in the world is this instant transmission ability that the Elders and Holy Knights have that hasn’t been explained yet?

• How the hell did the Holy Knights let Fisher Tiger not only escape from Mariejois, but come back and free a bunch of slaves as well?

• Why didn’t the Holy Knights help the marines fight against the Revolutionary Army during the Reverie?

• Why isn’t Luffy or Robin dead or captured since the start of the story? That instant transmission ability would’ve come in handy so many times and they just now decide to use it.

• How are the Holy Knights strong if all they do is sit on their ass in Mariejois?

Those are things off the top of my head that don’t add up anymore and it’s severely affecting the story. Oda’s usually good at foreshadowing things in the story, but you can tell that this “Holy Knights” thing was added last minute.