as far as one piece antagonists go Crocodile truly gets absolutely scooby-doo’d at unmatched levels
He immediately falls for a phone scam and from basically little garden to rainbase he doesn’t even know the strawhats are alive (and clowning towards him at incredible speed). As soon as he does, they’re in his house tearing at his walls and bringing marines into his villain lair.
He uses a literal floor trap door over a gator pit to catch them, gets phone scammed again, full scooby-doo chase scenes after Chopper through the streets while still missing him, and suddenly his prisoners have escaped his impossible cage, and his giant bananagators are dead. and Nico Robin saw it all happen.
He then spends rest of the arc complaining about those meddling kids and their dog “strawhat pirates and their weird pet” and at no point does he even know how many strawhats there are.
Like yeah he keeps having plans on top of plans to stop everything Vivi can do but also she keeps coming up with a new thing to do (Tom and Jerry ass dynamic).
Part of it is that he’s underestimating them and keeps grandstanding villain monologuing but also teens keep killing hundreds of his grand line bounty hunters and he straight up does not know what is happening.
Cause he IS trying to kill them he’s sending top assassins after them and ripping out luffy’s organs, the whole time he’s yelling HOW ARE YOU ALIVE?? DIE. as whack-a-mole Luffy keeps inventing new ways to hit him.
Ops tags are too good to leave out