Warning: Contains spoilers for One Piece volumes 103 and 104.One Piece volume 104 has been released in Japan, and in its SBS, series creator Eiichiro Oda ruined Kaido’s best moment from the Wano arc. In volume 104’s SBS, the masked CP0 agents who have appeared across the story are fully identified, and the agent with the scar and black eye who interfered with Luffy and Kaido’s fight is identified as Guernica. The surprising part about that, however, is that it initially seemed that Guernica was the CP0 agent who was briefly seen fleeing Onigashima, since his taking pictures of Luffy’s Gear 5 form had him be the only one confirmed to stay alive, but that agent was identified in the SBS as Joseph.
Guernica being the CP0 agent who went to the roof means that he likely survived the events of Onigashima, but that, in turn, ruins Kaido’s best moment from One Piece's Wano arc. Kaido killing the CP0 agent who interfered with his fight with Luffy was a great moment for him because it reestablished him as a villain with pride who hated having to rely on others for help, especially when it was against someone he saw as a worthy opponent. It was perfectly in character for Kaido to kill the CP0 agent for ruining his fight, but with the reveal that said agent likely survived the fight, the entire event is cheapened because Kaido now didn’t do anything to make up for it.
Kaido’s Fight With Oden Makes The SBS Reveal Even Worse
What makes the reveal about Kaido not killing the CP0 agent who went to the roof in the recent SBS even worse is how his fight with Oden played out. When Kaido and Oden fought, Oden would have won if Kurozumi Higurashi didn’t distract him by turning into Momonosuke, and even though One Piece's Kaido took advantage of that, he still killed Higurashi for interfering with his fight. That’s the same situation as how Kaido’s fight with Luffy played out, so it doesn’t make sense that Kaido wouldn’t have killed Guernica for interfering with his fight just as he did with Higurashi.
The larger issue of Kaido not killing Guernica, however, is that it continues One Piece’s bad trend of fake-out deaths. One of the biggest criticisms about the series is how often a character will seemingly die a dramatic death only for it to be revealed that they survived, often with little to no explanation. This has been a problem ever since Pell’s unexplained survival in the Alabasta saga, and while characters like Ace, Pedro, and Yasuie have had unambiguous deaths, it still happens far too often with characters like Vander Decken, Pound, Kin’emon, and Okiku. Shonen Jump's One Piece continually refusing to kill characters makes it hard to get invested in some of the more dramatic scenes, and Kaido not killing Guernica only serves to continue that trend.
One Piece’s Fake-out Deaths Are Still A Problem For The Series
With the anime having recently reached this point in episode #1070, the show had a chance to include some hints that Guernica in fact did survive his encounter with Kaido against all odds or to contradict the manga and commit to killing him. However, the anime adapts this moment much like the manga does, showing the extreme power of Kaido's blow without actually showing Guernica's body in the aftermath. It is this sort of ambiguous presentation of the attack where the manga stumbled, not committing to confirming or denying Guernica's ultimate fate and unfortunately the anime has fallen into this same sort of trap.
With One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda confirming that Guernica was the CP0 agent on the roof, Kaido’s best moment in the Wano arc is ruined because it means he didn’t reaffirm his pride by killing him for interfering with his fight with Luffy. Not only does that continue the series’ bad trend of fake-out deaths, but it makes Kaido’s character wildly inconsistent because he did explicitly kill someone when in a similar situation before. The Wano arc created a lot of problems for the One Piece manga by the end of it, and this sudden reveal about Kaido doesn’t help with that in the slightest.