Exactly. Many are trying to draw parallels between Elbaf and prior arcs but Elbaf is just not your average One Piece arc, it‘s a perfect mix of adventure, lore drop and building up tension (setting ip fights), while it still feels to me that the arc just did start yesterday(meaning this in a good way), or to phrase it differently we’ve been a while on Elbaf already but it does not feel forcefully dragged to me.
I'd say it's been pretty
Sabaody-esque so far, without being overly strict in any sort of comparison given the current scale of developments and how transitional Sabaody actually was. In fact, current arcs seem to syncretize several elements/aspects of previous arcs, to the point they're now called sagas (not that we didnt have previous sagas, but we just have a lot more baggage). Egg-Head certainly had a few Sabaody elements to it, but I'd still say it borrows a lot more from W7/EL.
So far we've got the early exploration/adventure with a bit of lore dropping, Sunlight Tree/Adam Tree comparison, Rayleigh/Gaban comparison, and a different take on the Worst Generation group (11 supernovas + blackbeard) --> 11 Holy Knights with Evil Shanks at the helm, already borrowing the Cerberus reference often associated with Blackbeard (+ Shanks connection). We also have a kidnapping plot going on, probably setting up a confrontation between the protagonists and celestial dragons, reminiscent of Camie.
Also seems intuitive that it will connect Gaban with the current events, assuming his kid will most likely be kidnapped, just like the Camie incident set up Rayleigh to show his powers. I'm only speculating a bit, but seems like a good way to earn Gaban's trust into more lore afterwards.
Oda is too formulaic in his story structure for this arc to be something that fresh, but the current scale might make things a bit blurry, that's for sure.
