原神 + textposts – liyue edition

Cassidy got his events mixed up

Water Lilies, 1917, Claude Monet

Water 7 has two main dramatic and narrative thrusts–the eruption of Usopp’s inferiority complex and Robin’s assassination attempt on Iceburg. Both storylines have some thematic similarities and end up with them leaving the crew. 

But where the Usopp storyline is peak melodrama, the truth surrounding Robin’s actions and motivations are a straight-up mystery. These two twine together to make the closest One PIece has to a thriller. And the mystery portion of that thriller starts here. 

(it actually started in Alabasta as Aokiji repeats some information we already knew, but this is Oda really bringing it to the forefront)

I believe I mentioned it when Robin joined the crew, but when laying out Robin’s past Oda never lies. Everything Aojiki says here is true, it’s just colored by the perspective of a marine agent. 

He says it best, Robin’s bounty was placed because of her danger to the World Government. On the surface that makes her seem like someone who is genuinely awful, that she’s a threat not to a single nation or ocean, but the entire world, but that’s because Oda has been careful not to reveal just how terrible the World Government is. We’ve gotten hints here and there of local corruption, but have yet to plumb the depths of how fundamentally broken the power systems of the world are.

At this point we are Tonjit. We’ve been conditioned to believe that, generally speaking, the Lawful Authority is good and the Unabashed Criminals are bad. The facts, as they stand, do not change.