He Only Appeared For Two Chapters But I Already Love Gaban

zoro and law were so unnecessarily rude to tashigi in punk hazard, and my first reaction was to be irked by the misogynistic aspect of it. oda’s treatment of tashigi’s character is questionable, but there’s actually more to it than her being a woman

as we know, zoro can’t stand that she looks like kuina while being a weak crybaby: she vindicates kuina’s fears that women can’t be strong warriors. being so condescending towards her is a way for him to assert that she is not kuina (because kuina was so much stronger than him)

law is trickier because he is a douche to everyone & has no particular connection to tashigi. but the words he tells tashigi also happen to be the philosophy of doflamingo, the man he hates most in the entire world.

why would he think the same way as the man who caused him so much pain? law is obsessed by revenge against doflamingo for killing corazon. in doflamingo’s own words, cora was a weak person; he didn’t get to choose how he died. the injustice of it fuelled everything law undertook for the second half of his life

so why is law parroting that philosophy? maybe because fighting against a clumsy, emotional marine reminded him of the person he lost, and why he lost him

someone who also happened to be a weakling fighting for a desperate cause, who cried for sick children abandoned by the world

tashigi is a character of her own with her own goals, but others keep seeing their dead loved ones in her: she reminds zoro and nami of their best friend and mother respectively.

not to say oda isn’t misogynistic (he is), but tashigi’s weakness specifically mirrors the fragility of other characters who unjustly died because of that fragility, and yet changed everything for the people in their lives

Happy birthday to the best boy and cutie, Sanji 😍

“Chuuya is the second choice”

Let me prove you wrong:

1.The flags

Went against the bosses orders to give chuuya a good gift (his past) and also risked their lives for chuuya.

2.Verlaine

“He would chose Rimbaud” bro literally shot this man just so chuuya would be safe.

3.Murase

Wanted to return chuuya to the world of light

4.Adam

Programmed himself to put chuuya before anything and risked his life for chuuya (he came back though, I’m happy)

5.Kouyou

I honestly hate when people say she would choose Kyouka as if she can’t love two people equally. Like are we reading the same thing? She cares about chuuya a lot.

6.Dazai

“But Oda....” no shut up

the relationship that dazai has with oda and chuuya are two completely different things. Dazai just fulfilled a promise from a dead friend. Dazai trust chuuya with his life.

but i don't know how to walk toward the past or future! — it's simple. feel strongly. that's what you do when you want to experience the past.

I feel like this is Oda poking fun at the parts of the fandom ragging on poor Jinbei for not guaranteeing an instant win for the Strawhats now that he's on their crew. Especially since Jinbei himself is pointing out how even a strong fighter is going to be hard-pressed fighting someone who can regenerate their entire head.

Cut the man some slack, y'all, he's doing his best!

Also watch it be revealed that Brook recognizes Gunko from her being the groupie for his Soul King tour always in the front row waving neon arrows like glowsticks

Low key the hunting dogs are so much further detached from humanity than I think we give them credit for.

Aside from the obvious dehumanizing of themselves to characters like Sigma or Kunikida, they also just treat their bodies like objects.

Teruko punctures her own eardrums without hesitation to protect her brain.

Jouno’s first thought when being lit on fire is using his blood to cool the flames.

Tecchou says that even if they knock him down from the helicopter, he’ll just use his sword to get right back up, not even mentioning the pain.

Tachihara stabs himself with his own ability to keep his cover. When the coin bomb explodes in his hand, he’s only mildly upset that it could’ve “messed him up”, before going back to what he was doing.

Fukuchi was willing to be the centerpiece of his plot for world peace, and intentionally took the blame. It’s no mistake that his plan included his death.

Beyond all that, Teruko describes them as slaves to society. Tachihara (and I think Fukuchi also does this) refers to them as the fangs of the government.

One of the translations of Fukuchi’s speech to Fukuzawa while he’s being interrogated is that the Hunting Dogs won’t rest until they catch their prey because that’s how they were designed.

Idk just something abt the silly dog soldiers and their own humanity. Not questioning it, that’s not their place. They already know that they’re weapons.

Damn, Asagiri must really hate father figures

Me, realizing there's gonna be a Storm Bringer manga adaptation and we're gonna get to see The Flags, Chuuya's party, them playing pool, Adam's pigeon impression, Murase, Hirotsu dressed as Mori, "You're filthy" "Kiss my ass" and Chuuya's punishment for Dazai:

Me, realizing we'll also see everything else that happens in Storm Bringer:

I will say that I'm glad the God's Knights aren't all serious bloodthirsty menaces like Gunko and Shamrock. They've got some variety and quirkiness to them the same as any new set of One Piece characters which is going to make their eventual displays of power hit even harder.

Kiringham in particular stands out with both his Devil Fruit and his personality.

He's all but confirmed to have a Kirin mythical zoan, but his hagoromo is pure white. Whereas every zoan user or apparent zoan user allied with the World Government has had a black hagoromo. We even see this most recently with Shamrock's Cerberus.

Meanwhile the awakened users with white hagoromos, Luffy and Yamato, have both been heroic and pure of heart.

Maybe this is hinting that Kiringham is the nicest of the God's Knights, or at least genuinely believes that he's a force for good? We know from the Donquixotes sans Doffy that there's still chances for Celestial Dragons to become good people in spite of the toxicity of their culture.

Between him rushing to duty after oversleeping and marveling at how big Elbaf is without any of the typical Celestial Dragon disdain for 'the lower realm', Kiringham's giving off the vibes of a new hire who hasn't set a single toe outside his backyard.

Perhaps in addition to his drowsiness, his running gag will be getting distracted by everything about the outside world that can't be found in Mariejois. Or he might have an "are we the baddies?" moment when it really sinks in just what they're doing by taking the children of Elbaf.