Robin grabbing Hakuba once and getting steel spikes dropped on her back do not count as a “fight.” They were cool moments, but she didn’t actually defeat anyone. Same for Rebecca. She only tossed a couple of nameless people out of the ring, partially dodged an attack from Hakuba (which I did like at the time), and then after that did nothing but cry, run away, and get protected by others the whole arc. The only women who actually fought this arc were Jora and Sugar. Koala? No fighting. Viola? Threw a couple attacks at Doflamingo and then got strung up and needed to be saved by Luffy. Scarlet in the backstory? Had to be protected by Kyros and died without him around. The Tontatta women didn’t fight either. Baby 5? Married off to Sai and no longer takes part in the action.

People aren’t saying “No woman swung a single sword in the entire arc.” We’re talking about 1 on 1 and even group fights. What female protagonists defeated villains this arc? None. When you consider that Dressrosa is literally over 90 chapters long and the only achievements we can point to women having in battle are “Well Sugar was a threat, and Robin and Rebecca had a couple nice ‘moments’,” that’s pathetic. Over 90 chapters and that’s almost all there was. Some people have seriously different standards than me, since I look at stuff like women making up like a tenth of the action roles in One Piece and think “That’s really crappy,” while other people look at that and say, “See, two or three women did a couple of things over the course of 2 years worth of story. That’s so much!”

And when it comes to Big Mom, here’s something. I’m pretty sure she’s gigantic and fat for a reason. She is set to be the only main female villain in the entire series, so of course that’s the design she has, because that makes it more okay for Luffy to violently beat her up. Think about how the fights against different female villains in One Piece go. What happens when they are fat, such as Alvida, Miss Merry Christmas, and Jora? Male heroes can slam them into 4 ton bats, and cut them without hesitation. And Miss Monday too, a tall, heavily muscled black woman? Zoro gets to crush her head in his hand and grin about it.

But how about the ~sexy~ conventional female villains? Well, Nami can fight them (such as Miss Doublefinger and Kalifa), or Usopp can fight them and defeat them without actually hurting them. He shocked Perona unconscious in their fight, and then scared Sugar unconscious twice. People can say that this is how Usopp always fights, but it’s not. He beat Chuu unconscious with a hammer and slammed Luffy in the face with an Impact Dial and exploded that Fishman Guy with an Impact Wolf attack. He’s only defeated people non-physically when it’s cute girls he’s fighting.

And if Nami or Usopp aren’t around and there’s a hot woman to defeat, Oda just has to find another way. Such as having Baby 5 defect and join the good guys because Sai said he’d marry her. On Punk Hazard, Tashigi was shoehorned in so that Zoro wouldn’t have to actually cut Monet down since Tashigi could do it for him. And then there’s all the women who just seem evil, but are actually good and the good guys don’t have to fight them (Nami, Robin, Cindry, Viola). Oh, and remember when it was time for Iva to fight Sadi-chan in Impel Down? Rather than just fighting her, he changed his body to present as female, and only then fought her. That is the only time in the entire manga that Iva has changed his appearance like that–when it came time to fight a woman. That’s something that’s very telling in my opinion.

The only time in the entire history of One Piece that a male protagonist has actually fought a conventionally attractive female villain and seriously hurt her is… Luffy once punched out Miss Valentine in one hit. That’s it. Oda has a long history of treating women differently in his manga depending on their looks. Oda seems to consider it to be more acceptable for male heroes to fight and defeat female villains when he doesn’t consider them attractive. That’s why Oda chose to design Big Mom the way he did, and it’s why I don’t count it as this great victory for diverse, respectful female roles in the story. Because Oda is creating her design and role in the story with ideas in mind like “it’s okay for Luffy to seriously fight her because she looks monstrous and not like an actual woman.”