#ch224

Mr. Kornich presents Anna to Baron Bethlenffi, and the baron basically calls her plain but sturdy, adding that his last wife was (lovely but) so frail she couldn't bear him any children. Anna is shaking and sweating.

Modri is incensed that the baron would be so rude to Anna. It's bad enough she doesn't want this marriage to begin with, and now her intended fiancé is treating her like he's window shopping for an incubator. Truth be told, that's just what he's doing.

Modri makes a fist and moves to punch the baron, but someone steps forward, reaching out a gloved right hand to stop the attack. The mystery man asks the baron to introduce Anna to him.

I'm not sure if it's simply because the mystery man calls Anna "lovely", but Modri seems to fall under a spell. Anna is still nervous, but now she's clutching at her necklace. The baron realizes who has just shown up, and he introduces the man as his consultant, a financial advisor from Vienna.

The consultant goes on to give his name and specifies that he travels around the (Austro-Hungarian) empire and that he assists "distinguished families" with their "sensitive interests". This leaves his position open to interpretation as more than just a financial advisor.

He puts out his left hand now, also gloved, while essentially saying he might be of service (to Modri, Anna, and/or Mr. Kornich) if needed.

He appears to have blond hair, and that's about all I can see. When he states his name and shows his face, we still cannot see either. Is Yana-san covering those up for a reveal later... or has she decided his face and name don't matter, so perhaps she never decided on his assumed name or appearance?

Just like how the Romantic movement of literature and philosophy emerged as a critique and response to the Enlightenment, the Realists came after the Romantics. A particular subset of the Realist movement was the Naturalists, which really emphasized scientific observation in describing the world as it “really” was. 

Taken at face value, nothing Bellamy says is wrong here. It’s not really the main focus of the series, but the world of One Piece is going through a period of rapid technological change--at least in certain places. The ship that fell from the sky isn’t all that different from the Going Merry despite the fact there’s 200 years between them. Yet on the other side of the world Vegapunk is developing fully functional cyborgs with laser cannons. 

The advent of scientific progress has a tendency to take the shine off of myth and fable. The Knock Up Stream does regularly blast ships--even parts of islands!--up into the sky. In all likelihood it is responsible for some of the debris Bellamy is referring to. When the needle of Nami’s log pose pointed up, her initial response was to guess that it was broken--because that’s the logical response. The Straw Hats have nothing but Robin’s word and a possibly-fake map as proof that Skypiea exists. They’ll hear more evidence when they meet Noland, but that’s not for another couple chapters

 At the same time, nothing Bellamy says disproves the Sky Islands, either. It’s not as if he’s flown up there and checked for himself one way or another. 

So the question becomes, what will Luffy choose to believe? What will he put his faith in, a Romantic ideal or the more scientific Naturalistic explanation? 

And, more importantly, will he choose to stay true to himself and the beliefs he already holds, or will he allow his idealism to be corrupted by an outside force? Because if he doesn’t have the strength to believe in his own dream, what does Luffy have left? Bellamy states he’s superior to Luffy because he doesn’t believe, but seeing how this scene plays out, is that really true?

Of course not, because One Piece is a series where Romanticism is the ideal. There are plenty of stories out there where Bellamy would be in the right, and Luffy would be the foolish dreamer who gets himself killed for no reason.  

adhfgkjashdfgkjashdgfkjashdgfkjashdfgkjahsdgfkjashdg

I did a Google image search of the icon pendant and asked which saint this is, and I got a pretty good AI response.

I checked out the Wikipedia page for him, and it includes two images that suggest this is the correct identity.

It's the same Saint Nicholas whose gift-giving tendencies spawned the Santa Claus/Father Christmas/Père Noël (etc.) stories that still continue today. He is the patron saint of many things and people, notably children and toy makers... and icons of him are common in Eastern Christianity. So, it would make sense for Modri to have a pendant icon depicting him. If our earl were into saints, I should think the protector of children and toy makers would be a favorite.

In ch224, I suspect that the consultant/demon's name and face are scratched out not just in the panels but also in Modri's mind. Altered cinematic records, rather poorly edited.

It strongly reminds me of a scene in Harry Potter in which he's using the Pensieve, but the memory has been edited to remove what would have been incriminating evidence. It was Horace Slughorn trying to keep anyone from knowing he was the one who explained something about horcruxes to Tom Riddle. (Corrected on 3/18/26.)