Random Thoughts on a Villain from One Piece in Regards to MLP

Lengthy title I know

So anyway, one of my fave shows of all time is One Piece, an anime series about pirates. I tend to think that it shares a lot of similar core themes as MLP, despite being vastly different in tone, genre, setting and well lots of stuff.

And I realised it has the perfect villain to act as a foil to Twilight Sparkle and her friends.

Allow me to tell you about Baron Omatsuri

(spoilers for One Piece film six, Omatsuri and the Secret Island will follow)

So Omatsuri is a pirate, in a setting where pirates are everything from benevelont dreamers, violent thugs, ambitious villains and even hopeless cowards. Omatsuri sailed the seas adventuring with his beloved crew, who were all dear friends to him and he'd gladly do anything to protect them.

So unfortunately, they all die in accident, with only Omatsuri surviving.

Naturally, Omatsuri couldn't let handle this. They were his FRIENDS, he was their CAPTAIN, surely he could've done SOMETHING. Falling to despair, he finds a magic flower called the Lily Carnation, granting him immortality and the ability to resurrect his friends.

How will it do this? simple: Omatusri merely needs to feed it other pirates, which will allow it to create essentially copies of Omatsuri's friends.

So Omatsuri creates an island resort/amusement park, luring pirates with promises of fun and games, while using said games to break apart pirate crews and destroy their friendships, gleefully driving their captains to the same despair he felt while he feeds their crews to the Lily Carnation.

Baron Omatsuri is an interesting character in relation to MLP cause he's a VERY dark take on how friendship can be such a big deal to someone: so important they're willing to destroy other friendships and directly hurt people, solely because his friends are more important to him than anyone else, so driven by despair by their loss he becomes a sadistic monster in the pursuit of even having fake copies of them. A man who willingly and gleefully destroys friendships, driving people to feel the same pain he feels, because they're worthless to him, because they aren't his friends.

I honestly wonder how Twilight and her friends would handle a guy like this....