A bit of One Piece & Gintama meta (with a couple of spoilers)

The other day I put down some rambling meta thoughts on Twitter considering some aspects of One Piece's and Gintama's narratives/themes. I was going to just drop a link here but I've heard that Twitter has made it tougher for people to view content there if you don't have a Twitter account. So I'm reposting instead. It won't be terribly tidied up, though.
Comments would be extremely welcome.

( behind the cut )