re-reading the wano arc and my thoughts have evolved from what they initially were years ago. i'll save the critique for later and address the good stuff first: that being pre-wb ace, the teenage spade captain.
"ace had so many forgotten promises" verbatim taken off reddit.
maybe.. off-panel perhaps. however it's made explicitly clear in the manga, post-timeskip, that Ace left behind two *broken* promises.
To Luffy, and Tama.
and this results in a shared grief between these two characters. two broken promises depicted as a deep tragedy. see, what oda writes in his manga is a strict limitation of certain special bonds and how they're paralleled or contrasted to few others. and one character does not always have only one important bond. the author interweaves some characters intricately; he treats ace especially like an iconic antique in a museum, down to his relationships. i'll get straight to it.
the use of the kanji '約束' is rare from ace. oda is very deliberate in having him shout it out for only few situations, so you realize this carries weight.
the surface-level inspection is that they both knew ace and deeply loved him. and in return, he really valued his own influence upon them both. but in different ways the dynamic is set, and honoured.
luffy lost his beloved, older brother who promised to stay alive to protect/support him. but tama lost *her Shanks!* in canon, ace spent some weeks with a lonely tama and naturally became the bright ray of hope to her. he promised to not only free wano but to take her out to sea one day. this young girl reminds you of a 7 year old luffy begging shanks the same request of traveling as a pirate. down to her defensiveness over hearing ace's death, you see a glimpse of luffy again in how he stands guard over shanks' honour!
she's the only one, after sabo, who's shown grieving the missed chance of reuniting with ace. (post-ts)
it's somehow very poignant how through ace, the writer tries to establish how different yet also similar luffy and tama are. individually, narratively.
