One Piece Episode 1170: Gaban's Flashback Loss to Shanks — What Japan Said

On episode 1170 of the One Piece anime, Japanese fans are picking apart Gaban's flashback loss to Shanks — out of 321 comments on the reaction video, one particularly blunt line (165 likes) sums up the frustration: no matter how much Observation Haki you've trained, Shanks just switches it off.

From there the thread splits into a running joke about Gaban's "I surrender" pose turning into an emoji meme, praise for the animation staff's work on "such rough material," and a genuine debate over whether Silvers Rayleigh's Conqueror's Haki actually outranks Gaban's — a debate anchored by the single most-liked comment in the whole thread, at 289 likes.

It ends on a comment that finally gives the cast some credit: for a scene full of weapon-wielding legends, every single one still manages to feel like their own person.

Episode 1170 of the One Piece anime drops fans into Gaban's flashback loss to Shanks, and the Japanese comment section — 321 comments and climbing — has a pretty simple verdict: no matter how much Observation Haki you've trained, Shanks just switches it off. It's less a fight than a demonstration.

It's not just a one-off gripe, either. A few people pile on with the same complaint: Observation Haki is basically a must-have skill against everyone else in this world, but the second Gaban fights Shanks specifically, it gets one-sidedly shut off, like fate itself has decided in advance that he's simply not allowed to see any of it coming, no matter how hard he trains for it.

From there the section turns Gaban's exaggerated surrender pose into a full-blown running bit, with people riffing on the same hand-emoji sequence over and over instead of moving on to literally anything else happening in the episode.

The animation itself gets a decent amount of respect too, technique name and all, even from people who are otherwise here to roast the writing.

The one place the section genuinely disagrees is whether any of this actually makes Gaban look strong at all. The single most-liked comment in the whole thread isn't even about him — it's a direct shot at how he stacks up against a different old-guard swordsman, Silvers Rayleigh.

There's evidence on the Rayleigh side of the ledger too — people keep bringing up that he's supposedly done more with less, holding off a genuine Emperor-class threat without even needing to swing a weapon.

So Gaban loses the internet's respect points on the Haki debate, but the section closes out being genuinely won over by the cast writing around him — which, honestly, might be the more useful compliment for a flashback whose entire job is making you care about a guy who everyone already knows is about to lose, badly, on camera.