ya know, i find it fascinated as to when franky cries versus when he doesn’t. crying is a big part of his character, after all, one of the things that he’s known for, so it’s really telling when he doesn’t cry.
for instance, when he’s told that the franky family is dead, he doesn’t cry at all. he just…gets sort of quiet. he doesn’t cry until much later on, when he learns that they are still alive.
and later on, when iceburg is telling franky that he needs to forgive himself, you can see that franky is trying really hard not to cry. he doesn’t succeed obviously and ends up bawling like a baby, but it is interesting to see. franky doesn’t really try to hide his emotions (half-hearted protests aside) so seeing him hold in tears is significant.
it seems to me that franky doesn’t like crying for himself. he’ll cry easily for others, out of sympathy, but he always tries to hold it in when it’s for himself. that is to say, franky doesn’t cry when he’s hurting, but when other people are.
and you can see this in his backstory too. we never see franky cry as a kid, which is weird considering how easily franky cries now, and how many other characters we see cry as kids (including ‘i-hate-crying’ ace and ‘being-of-pure-evil’ doflamingo).
and he certainly has opportunities for it - when his parents abandon him, when tom is first arrested (and even happier moments, like when they finish the sea train). but he doesn’t. he always reacts with anger instead. we don’t see him cry until he’s an adult and things are going really wrong and he thinks that it’s all his fault. and even then, he still tries to hold it in. and when the waterworks do start, it’s way more restrained than franky usually is with his crying.
of course, as an adult, he (mostly) cares dick diddly about holding in his tears. we don’t really know what caused this change as we don’t really see it happen (though if i had to guess the whole thing with mr tom probably played a role). i’m curious in seeing it (in my never ending hope that franky will get another arc someday) but it’s not super vital.
but basically, franky’s withdrawn when it comes to things that hurt him, but expressive when it comes to others. in fact, he’s got a passion for other’s trouble - the way he reacted to tom’s initial arrest, how he helped the straw hats at eneis lobby, how he came to care for brook’s plight, his sympathies for the tottna’s at dressrosa, etc. he’s all about other peoples trouble but he often won’t extend the same curtesy to himself.
and i believe (tho it’s not hugely supported by canon, but that’s more because of a lack of content than anything else) that his parents, the pirates who abandoned him, were probably the reason for this. at the very least they (probably) caused the unwillingness to cry. the one piece world, after all, holds strength as the most desirable quality. pirates in particular value strength, especially pirates on the grand line. and crying is usually see as weakness, and i can’t imagine franky’s parents being too accepting of it. but hopefully (fingers crossed) we learn more about franky’s life before tom eventually.
but bottom line? franky cries a lot, but it’s usually for others and not for himself, he was an angry kid, and i have a lot of emotions about my boy.
thanks for coming to my tedtalk.
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