I find this scene to be hilarious (note the sarcasm) because nothing Tristepin says is actually accurate!
First of all, you were not "barely older than [Flopin]" when you first met. You were in your mid-to-late teens. That's a full decade older than Flopin is during season 4! Even Yugo and Amalia were already twice his age when you all first crossed paths, and they both had reliable guardians. Amalia had Eva, her bodyguard; and Yugo had Ruel—who, for his many flaws, would never have let his best friend's son get hurt.
Flopin only has Madagaskan. A complete stranger who happens to be his grandfather and a dangerous former assassin.
Second of all, maybe Tristepin already had some experience travelling the world, but season 4 essentially confirmed that Eva, while an experienced fighter, spent her entire life alongside the Sheran Sharms in the Sadida Kingdom. Her entire childhood and early teens she was static in one place. That is the opposite of being an experienced adventurer by the time you met the rest of the gang.
This all ends up as an extremely shoe-horned and contradictory argument that is trying (and failing miserably) to distract us from the fact that ToT was too busy projecting his son leaving for college onto a literal child to actually pay attention to his own canon and realise this is all just plain false.
I've been saying this from the start, and I'll keep saying it: this entire storyline is an absolute mess.
Their six-year-old son says he's wanted to leave for a long time, which doesn't exactly paint his parents in the best light. But then the show throws in the classic "it's not you, it's me" line, as if that's somehow supposed to absolve them of responsibility. And let's not pretend the letter doesn't sound like it came straight from a middle-aged man having a midlife crisis.
The ironic part is that right after this scene, Eva and Pinpin drag their kids into a battle that could've easily gotten them killed. It's almost funny how desperately the show wants to convince us they're great parents when their own actions keep proving the exact opposite.
What's even stranger is that up until the Season 3 and OVAs, they were more or less reasonable characters. Then, seemingly for the sake of cheap drama, "epic" moments, and comedy, they were twisted beyond recognition. At this point, I genuinely see Eva as an awful mother, and Pinpin has regressed to a point where he's honestly worse than he was in Season 1.
We can also bring up that interview where everyone conveniently glossed over the absolute nonsense coming from he who shall not be named.
