I know that Conis is not everybody’s favorite, but please don’t undersell the gigantic balls it took to make this declaration. Right now Conis is guessing--it’s an educated guess, but a guess nonetheless. If she’s wrong about Enel being too busy to care about a little blasphemy then she gets blitzed by lightning and everyone she loves and cares about will die.
Hell, there’s a chance that they might kill her anyway. She’s just put down her bazooka and is literally defenseless. She’s not a fighter like the Straw Hats. She’s not even a diplomat like Vivi. She has no friends here. The people of Skypiea are afraid of her, or even hate her, and she’s running out of time.
You can see the exact moment Conis makes peace with the idea she might die trying to do the right thing, and when that strike doesn’t come...she kind of collapses. Because she just made the biggest gamble in her life, and she won.
Don’t forget, as far as she knows, Conis thinks her dad is dead. She’s just lost the person that means most to her after learning the local tyrant with a god complex intends to nuke the entire country, and not only does she not fall to pieces, she has the inner fortitude to try and save as many lives as possible.
So no, Conis isn’t a fighter, but she is undeniably a badass
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Image ID: From right to left: chopper, sanji, usopp, luffy, zoro, nami in their outfits from enies lobby. A red, spiked dialogue bubble shows luffy shouting to robin, “Now, leave everything to us!!”
I love how people complain about whenever Natsu and Company one-shot their opponents, yet, I hear absolutely no one bat an eye at how Elfman zero-shot Bacchus...
Whether that goes to show how that's a liked moment or if that's how unpopular Elfman is, I really don't know.
I know there are people who don’t like how Oda handles some of the conflict in the flashback between the traditions of the Shandorians and perceive Noland as an example of the white savior trope, but what Conis is doing here is essentially the same thing to a more Western-coded religious system. In the end, I see it as more as Oda being consistent with his theming over the course of the arc.
I brought it up a little when going over Little Garden and again at the start of the arc when Conis betrays the crew, but Oda doesn’t seem to disparage religion in and of itself so much as the atrocities people do in the name of their beliefs. It’s a very people first, God second way of looking at things, and repeatedly throughout this arc and beyond Oda has a very negative view on those who sit back and let things happen to them rather than being proactive about their problems to the best of their abilities.
Do y’all remember during the Syrup Village arc when the Straw Hats said they were only helping Usopp fight Kuro because Usopp had already committed to the battle and was clearly going to get his ass kicked? Do you remember in chapter 2 when Luffy only stood up for Coby after Coby told Alvida what he really thought of her? Do you remember when Belo Betty and the Revolutionary Army refused to do a pirate-stricken town’s dirty work for them, but instead gave them the tools they needed to combat their oppressors?
The point being, all those people were individually too weak to change their circumstances by themselves, but at least they tried. What the Skypians are doing here is not trying. They want to pray to a god that clearly doesn’t have their best interests at heart and hope their problems go away. The same with the ancient Shandorians--they relied on barbaric traditions that weren’t helping and in the end only caused more death rather than search for an alternate solution, and when progress came knocking on their door their first reaction was to try and kill it.
It’s not an accident that in One Piece concentrated willpower and ambition is a literal super power. It’s not an accident that over 1000 chapters into the series every being presented as a god or shown with godly power has been incredibly, painfully mortal (Enel, Shirahoshi, the Celestial Dragons) or made by mortal hands (Pluton).
But when it comes to the Shandorian’s actual ancestor-related worship and their cultural beliefs about the spirits living in the trees, Oda is very sympathetic and the whole thing is coded as value positive. At the end of the arc, the Skypieans still call their leader God. The theocracy, as it is, remains relatively unchanged.
I said it before, but was not at all surprised when Oda put in an SBS the he’s not religious. I don’t think a religious person could write One Piece with the theming that it has, just like a non-religious person isn’t going to write the Lord of the Rings the same way Tolkien did. But on the whole, I do appreciate that Oda doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and allows for nuance and cultural differences to be presented even if that’s not what he personally believes.
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This is an absolutely iconic panel, and with good reason, but somehow in all my times reading this I never noticed the white beret was coming at her with a knife
I think I mentioned it a little at the beginning of the arc, but it’s really messed up how fear of Enel has completely warped the Skypiean’s thinking. The day before both Conis and her dad were pretty well-known, well-regarded members of society, presumably quite liked and accepted as good, law-abiding citizens. Now, they’re literally running away from her because as far as they know, they’re about ready to be caught in the blast radius of a divine bolt of lightning.
