Welcome to the Anime Walk of Fame, a series of retrospectives on the many characters of the anime world. You'll see all your favorites along with a few that deserve more than their reputations give.

So sit back relax and enjoy the show.

Kuro is Pretty Dumb

It seems odd for me to refer to Captain Kuro as dumb when he's easily one of the most intelligent characters in the show but his decision making had more holes than Swiss Cheese.

To be fair, I doubt he'd planned for Luffy to show up, in order to evade capture, he used Jango to hypnotise Axe Hand Morgan, the only survivor of Kuro's massacre into thinking Morgan captured him but placed a fake instead, pretended to be a victim of pirates to gain trust into Kaya's estate as her butler, the fact that he already looked and sounded the part helped, he also gambled on the town eventually ignoring Usopp's cry wolf phase and even stopped a mutiny when he was called out by his crew for how long the plan was taking, but he made the fatal mistake of being too impatient when attacking Merry, when if he managed to just not react to Luffy and his crew, he may have actually succeeded, the sad thing is that he is the most intimidating villain of the original six starter villains, since then he's floating about the seas, as a free man anyway since in the eyes of the world, he's dead but any attempt to comeback in a world of ever stronger pirates and his reasons for wanting out in the first place is being that the world was too chaotic to tirelessly keep going, I think it's safe to say that Kuro wants nothing to do with the One Piece world anymore.

Morgan Isn't The Best Introduction To The Marines

Now for the second lowest impact villain in the show.

Axe Hand Morgan was the first Marine villain encountered by Luffy, we see that Morgan is completely full of his own self importance when he claims to have caught Captain Kuro of the Black Cat pirates not knowing he has been hypnotized.
This translates in him essentially ruling with a literal iron fist, exemplified by how spoiled his son Helmeppo acts in the beginning, after his defeat, he gets a Court Marshall from Garp but taking advantage of Garp's lax approach, he escapes by threatening to kill his own son and has been on the run since.
With Marines meant to be the antagonists rather than out right villains, starting with Axe Hand Morgan isn't exactly the best choice for this, Smoker on the other hand is a much better choice to fulfil this role and does so well, despite his even scarier appearance he's shown to genuinely care about the public making him a perfect representation of the marines rather than Morgan.

The True Beauty of Alvida

Over the next couple of weeks in celebration of a successful live action One Piece, we'll be going over East Blue's Gallery of Rogues starting with the first pirate Luffy sent flying, Iron Mace Alvida.

Alvida is portrayed as very cocky and over confident yet backed up with intimidating strength and influence, while she is dispatched as quickly as she was introduced, she returns in the closing arc of the East Blue with a sleeker, sexier look thanks to the Devil Fruit Powers of Slip Slip, making everything slip off her body including her weight, she also aligns with Buggy and acts as a second in command and even led his crew when he was incarcerated in Impel Down; for someone who lasted less time than any other villain in the series, Alvida is one of only five characters who have been active since episode 1, even though her relevance to the plot is to remind us that Buggy really isn't in charge of his own crew, the fact that Alvida is still there speaks volumes about her strength and intellect, this translates well into live action and time will tell whether or not we'll get the slip slip skinny Alvida in the Netflix adaptation if only to display how she ever got a hold of the fruit.

Hamel is Such an Asshole

The anime of Violinist of Hameln is the most poorly handled adaption of all time with Hamel being the most affected character.

Hamel in the tv series was depressing and emo, the manga however, he's a complete ass hole, in fact now that I think about it, this was a trend in the 90s started low key by Ranma.
Just to give you a run down of Hamel's crimes against just his team alone, he frequently forces his team into embarrassing costumes just to avoid direct fighting himself or couldn't think of a better strategy, Flute especially.
He'd take all the credit for driving out evil when Sizer is doing 90% of the slaying, even in the movie when three members of his team are turned to stone, he uses from as projectiles even shattering poor Raiel, in fact killing his team members is a fairly common occurrence for him.
The irony is that the tv series changed him for the worst especially as the show suffered horribly with budget problems with still shots and a colour palette of being overly dark filtered and a general lack of anything even remotely comedic.
The 30 minute movie is what we should've got from Violinist of Hameln, which at the very least is entertaining.

Amy Rose is the Perfect Feminine Heroine

With her classic debut happening near 30 years after being introduced in Sonic CD, Amy Rose has become as well knowm as the rest of the cast with very little changing bar just getting older.

In her debut she was introduced in a green blouse with orange skirt looking closer to the default Sonic design, this is a far cry from the prototype eras where Sonic had a human girlfriend with a curvy figure and red dress akin to Betty Boop with a blonde wig; her role was to play damsel and I've said this before, there's nothing wrong with being a damsel character if it's proven that the one who kidnapped you is shown as very threatening, this of course was Metal Sonic, this is why I usually give Princess Peach a pass going up against Bowser. From there, Amy shows up in racing titles with her own car and Sonic the Fighters with her Piko Piko Hammer, Sonic Adventure was the breakthrough game sporting an older look that gave her a retro red dress and a new hair style which still acts as her design today.
She starts out running from a robot pursuer only to fight back at the end perhaps being inspired by Sonic's constant heroics, from there she was a frequently playable character.
Her personality started as a hopeless tween romantic, becoming a more active romantic when she decided to simply get what she wants, some of my other favourite iterations includes Fleetway Sonic as a more committed Freedom Fighter, Sonic X as a more fleshed out version from the games and Sonic Boom where she develops a more peace keeper mentality akin to a therapist.
At no point does she ever sacrifice her feminine persona to follow other female protagonists in the recent trend of action girls with no colour palette, Amy has evolved in the right way to remain as popular as her Nintendo counterpart Princess Peach and that popularity has made her playable in the classic games as of this Friday.