Ever since Kaido's introduction, he was already shaping up to be one of One Piece's strongest characters. This is a given, as Kaido is the central antagonist of the highly anticipated Yonko Saga, where Luffy and the Straw Hats are set to face off against the most powerful pirates on the seas. When the Straw Hats finally arrive in Wano Country, we expected Kaido to be the cherry on top of the fireworks explosion from all the buildup. In the end, did Kaido live up to the hype?

While Kaido is a formidable character and deserves the title of "world's strongest creature," he failed to live up to the implications of his suicidal introduction. There's also the problem that Kaido was hinted at having a strong flashback section, only for the flashback to be disappointing.

We'll discuss all the ways Kaido hasn't lived up to the hype. That's not to say he's not a great villain. When a saga like the Yonko Saga lasts a decade, any villain presented as the biggest threat will struggle to live up to the hype.

Kaido's Hype as the Strongest Creature

Kaido's introduction is the best introduction of any villain in One Piece. He's in the clouds thousands of feet above the ground, then falls to the island below, creating a giant crater, but he's unharmed. On the contrary, he's annoyed that the pain he's feeling isn't enough. It turns out his favorite pastime is suicide, since he can't die, even by his own hands.

When we reached Wano, the first thing he did was blow up the mountains with minimal effort using a single breath of fire. He then defeated Luffy with a single blow: this was the first time Luffy had been defeated with such minimal effort.

Kaido then continued to fight his fellow Yonko, Big Mom, splitting the sky in the process. They fought for days, and when they stopped, they had no visible injuries or fatigue.

He then fights the Nine Red Scabbards with little effort after initially being surprised that they could harm him. Most of the scabbards are as strong as Kaido's best fighters, and he easily defeated them anyway.

The next step is his match with The Worst Generation alongside Big Mom. They defeat them all to their deaths, especially Zoro. Kaido then manages to defeat Luffy once or twice.

The only reason Luffy stands a chance against him is because of three impossible power-ups in a row: Luffy mastered Advanced Armament Haki in a record time of a few days. He then mastered Advanced Conqueror's Haki mid-fight with Kaido, out of instinct after simply realizing the technique existed. Eventually, it turns out his Devil Fruit is secretly one of the most powerful in history and has now awakened.

One of these power-ups is a miracle. Three of them happening in the space of a few days and minutes is downright impossible. Yet, it happened anyway.

So, is the hype that Kaido is the most powerful villain yet true to the hype? In this category, absolutely.

Kaido's crew didn't live up to the hype

While Kaido has been in vogue since the introduction of the Yonko concept, this also extends to his pirate crew, The Beast Pirates. If they don't live up to the hype, it will negatively impact their leader.

After all, this isn't just any old pirate crew—it's a Yonko's crew. They must feel like the most powerful group of pirates the Straw Hats have ever encountered, light years ahead of even Doflamingo's crew, the Donquixote family. The problem with the Beast Pirates is that they don't feel much stronger than the typical pirate crew the Straw Hats have encountered in the past, despite history saying otherwise.

None of the Beast Pirates have abilities that make them seem like an overwhelming threat. Think of CP-9 in their first introduction, where they effortlessly defeated several powerful characters and turned out to have manipulated them all for years. Rob Lucci himself defeated Luffy and Zoro with little effort.

Moving on to the Donquixote family, they are all dominant forces in the Dressrosa arc, turning several strong characters into harmless playthings before they can even become a problem. When they don't, they beat them all within inches of death.

Aside from Jack the Drought, who fought the Mink tribe for days, The Pirated Beast didn't do anything nearly as intimidating. Even then, Jack would cheat with poison gas when he got frustrated that he couldn't defeat his enemies quickly enough.

The Tobiroppo, a group of the Beast Pirates' six best fighters after Kaido and the three commanders under him, is introduced a little too late in the story. By the time Straw Hat's B Team defeated them, it felt like they'd just been introduced a few episodes ago.

It didn't even seem like a challenge. For a group supposedly as strong, or even stronger, than the Shichibukai, they fell quite easily. None of the Straw Hats are that tired afterward. Compare that to the Donquixote family or the main agents of Baroque Works, where the people tasked with defeating them had to muster every ounce of strength just to win.

Most of the time, the defeat of Beast Pirate's best fighters is so anticlimactic that it's hard to believe the fight is already over. This even includes when Sanji defeated Queen, for example. Over so suddenly, you wouldn't know he was defeated if it weren't for a title card announcing it.

King is Kaido's strongest fighter, and he is defeated by Zoro, who is seriously injured after fighting two Yonkos, while his energy is sucked out by his magic sword, Enma. So even when Zoro was at his weakest, he can still defeat King?

So there you have it, The Beast Pirates. A strong group of villains, but not the strongest we've seen so far.

The disappointing lack of substance in Kaido's flashbacks

With the Yonko Saga, it's traditional for every major villain to receive a flashback so the audience can see the villain's struggle in life. In the Dressrosa Arc, Doflamingo has a flashback where he suffered because of the people's bigotry against the Celestial Dragons. We realize that the reason Doflamingo is such a monster is because he believes he has a right to a life where he is king above all else. This right was taken away when his father took away his birthright as a Celestial Dragon. Doflamingo is a monster, but we sympathize with his life full of suffering and understand why he does what he does.

Big Mom also received a lot of attention with a flashback to her as a child. We realize that due to her monstrous strength, even when she was small, no one could control her and she lived a life where she had no family and everyone was afraid of her. Her current tyrannical presence and her compulsion to have dozens of children are an attempt to force the world to be her family. Because no one could control her as a child, she never graduated to adulthood. Mentally, she is still the same child from the past.

Given that these two major villains have excellent flashbacks so we can get to know them, it stands to reason that Kaido would also receive a life story. As the Wano Arc progresses, we get a glimpse of this. We learned that Big Mom and Kaido were once part of the same crew. The two now hate each other, but references to their past friendship are everywhere.

Next, we have a flashback to how Kaido and King became friends. We see Kaido, who, unlike his current state, is full of laughter, smiles, and hope for the future. So far, we've gotten a glimpse of who Kaido is building up to. Obviously, there will be a flashback of Kaido's life story at any moment. Then it's done...

With Doflamingo and Big Mom's life stories, we really got to know them. We know what motivates them. Whey is the most precious. This isn't the case when we finally get to know Kaido's life story. Because unlike the other two, Kaido's is just a montage. It's mainly about him being the strongest, from his teenage years to adulthood, ending with King's vague quote that the one who beats Kaido in the future might be Joyboy.

The problem is, we don't need this flashback to know that Kaido is the strongest. We've known that from the beginning. We haven't gotten any details about his friendship with Big Mom or his time in the Rock Pirates. We haven't understood why he's turned into a more nihilistic individual in the present when he was full of light in the past. Nothing. No character shows any emotion at all.

The Disappointing Way Kaido Was Defeated

Ever since we first met Kaido, who jumped out of the clouds so he could give himself a dignified death, we've known he's all about suicide. It defines him. Everything he does is for the express purpose of allowing him to have the dignified death he believes Roger and Whitebeard achieved. The problem is, Kaido is so strong that even with his daily suicide hobby, it seems nothing on earth can kill him. So he prepares to start a war so great that he'll have no choice but to die.

It's disappointing that his suicidal tendencies played no role in the story beyond his initial introduction. He's always looking for a fair and just fight against a powerful opponent, but whenever he's disappointed with the outcome, it's not because he failed to die from the fight, but because he didn't believe he defeated his opponent honorably.

His suicidal tendencies are never mentioned again. Instead, he is motivated to always seek a pleasant fight with an honorable victory. There's this idea that if Kaido could defeat his opponent honorably, he would be happy.

This lack of follow-up on Kaido's suicidal personality leads to a disappointing ending. Visually, the Kaido vs. Luffy fight ended similarly to the Luffy vs. Doflamingo fight, where Luffy tries to use his giant fist to finish off his opponent, while the opponent uses his own finisher. While it looks similar, the context is different.

In One Piece, Luffy always defeats the main villain in an ironic way that visually represents the destruction of the villain's dreams. Crocodile wants to hide from the shadows, so Luffy punches Crocodile in full view of the country.

Dressrosa is a beautiful land on the surface, but it is actually a prison secretly manipulated by Doflamingo. Thus, Luffy defeats Doflamingo by hitting him so hard that the landmass of Dressrosa is destroyed along with him, only to be rebuilt again by his people without Doflamingo's influence.

Since Kaido's suicidal tendencies are not explored further, once Luffy beats him to his ultimate defeat, there is no deep context beyond the superficial level that the final boss is now gone. There is no exploration that Kaido is finally at peace. Has he finally achieved his ultimate goal, a dignified death? None of this is explored or answered. As of now, none of us can even confirm if he is actually dead.

As for Kaido's strength, he has proven himself to be a powerful villain. Where he falls short of the hype is that his storyline hasn't fully realized his character's potential.