#ch538

I suppose if I had to pinpoint the difference between them it would be that Magellan's displays of force have been in service to his authority, whereas Shiryu just likes killing people. Magellan thinks that ruling Impel Down with an iron fist is the only way to keep the prisoners in line, so he's quick to pull out the poison hydra even if he gets no personal pleasure out of it. But at the end of the day the result is the same, and if anything Magellan's poison is a crueler fate than getting your throat cut by Shiryu.

Natsu?

It's the exact point that Luffy made when fighting against Arlong way back in the East Blue: Yeah, he's strong enough to beat up the big bad evil guy, but he needs help managing everything else, in a continuous cycle of people helping people achieve their dreams.

Between this, and the strain of repeatedly using Gear 2 there's been a lot of back and forth within the fandom whether Luffy will die or not at the of the series. I myself have changed my mind a couple different times, but whatever the case Luffy isn't going to live to old age. I think this works for him, as Oda has said in multiple interviews that he writes Luffy as his idealized view of a child, it's hard to envision him in a state where he no longer has his youth

While it is kind of wild that the prisoners of Level 6 get to spend most of their time not getting tortured, thematically it fits quite well with the rest of the series. We've already seen with Ohara and the Void Century how hard the World Government tries to make inconvenient histories disappear, and way back on Drum Island it was established that people die when they're forgotten. In the One Piece world, being erased from history truly is worse than being forced to walk through a forest of metal spikes or being boiled alive in a cauldron of blood.

Morely foreshadowing!

I know Iva's options are pretty limited since everything within Level 5.5 has to come from a literal torture prison, but this is not how you properly restrain medical patients.