#chapter 1073

Let’s talk Oda the film buff again, this one’s been a long time coming. Well class, who knows this one? One of legendary samurai flick director Akira Kurosawa’s most famous works. Rashomon. A tale about investigating a murder. It’s more famous for something you’ve probably seen at some point. (My favorite is the KotH Firefighter episode) The narrative structure it’s credited with creating, though the film was based on an older novel that did the same. What makes Rashomon cool is it’s the story of three different perspectives on the same event. The point of the movie is in the contrasts, trying to grasp at who’s trustworthy. It’s not exactly obvious. The three witnesses are all liars protecting their own image.

I’ve long wondered if we were doing a Rashomon thing in this love letter to jidaigeki. Our trio are the Noh actors. Kiku, Hiyori, Yamato. It’s their perspective on Oden and Wano’s glory days. Kiku was the type of person stifled by old Wano who’s well primed for a future she was thrust into. Hiyori a product of old Wano that endured, but one young enough she didn’t have a full picture of the past. Yamato one who’s enamored by the legacy and myth. 

So who’s Marco then? What I’m seeing is the fourth tale, the account of the woodcutter who serves as part of the framing device. Rashomon is a story about a peasant, a woodcutter, and a priest talking about a scandalous recent occurrence as they wait out a storm. The stories were the murderer, the victim’s wife, and the dead samurai through a medium as part of the trial. But the Woodcutter after the matter is settled offered up the “real” tale. One that made everyone involved seem absolutely silly. Oh, and there was this little hidden thread about a dagger that led to revealing the Woodcutter was there, but didn’t want to testify because he stole a valuable trinket!

All that to say, this is why I’m interested in Marco. If he just opened and closed the “play” with his arrival falling in the middle, that’s cool. But Wano ended on a weird note, Egghead has kept certain core themes alive and they’re raging around an element that left off on a very strange note. All while our main story hints at a very big, sharp twist. In this kishotenketsu structure, part 3 or ten should feel jarring. A shift in tone, setting, and/or characters. Doing that for this arc this way is a great route to take wrapping up this segment of the big picture. My hope is that we play with something like Rashomon to set up the conclusion to this dramatic turn. Dig back into this key figure’s perspective to lay the foundation for a wrinkle that will make a conclusion that wouldn’t make sense now seem like the only thing that could have happened.

This felt a little different than our other cutaways. Namely Mr. Narrator getting involved. That’s...pretty ominous and open-ended. Do y’all remember that “thought experiment” structure? We spiral, end on a big mysterious cliffhanger, weirdly cutaway to something else that takes a while to see how it ties in, but it’ll set us up to understand the conclusion. Especially with hopping over to Marco of all people. I’m getting him and Sphinx serving as our like, framing device for the play tomorrow but today it’s beating you over the head with the symbolic tie of dealing with literal clones in similar circumstances. Speaking of:

I feel validated and I get to enjoy a great old school Bond villainess. The only thing I’d add is maybe a cool classy lady spy gadget...nice. Is it part of the lipstick tube or is it like, mixed in with the makeup? Can she plant a Kairoseki Kiss? Nami, I know you don’t know this because you’re not a nerd but you know how in RPGs an encounter might sometimes have a really good one time item to snatch? Gurl. Words cannot express how much fun I’m having with this. 

That said...you know at the start of this arc I was just throwing it out there if CP0 and Drake were popping up early after Kiku had the weird ending that might matter. Now Law’s grown titties, Blackbeard’s mobbing around with perfect foil Pudding in the brig, Bonney’s given us an echo of the Kanjuro story and now there’s a literal classy devil woman triple agent with a trait that might make some say she isn’t a “real woman” who just so happened to pop up in that Tamataebako connection on the deck of the Sunny. That feels like my initial hunch wasn’t exactly wrong. Piling on at this point but she’s tossing in a heart motif and the zan in After Image is the zan in Lingering Snow and holy crackers that line to Lucci about not fighting them head on was a Monet callback, wasn’t it? Right before leaving us on a cliffhanger.