I don’t ship Brook or Shuri, I’m saying that Loki and Shirahoshi is equally creepy and it’s massively hypocritical to pretend otherwise.
“Their relationship started when she was 14 and he was 20” is STILL underage, and no amount of mental gymnastics magically makes it less so. If anything, giants aging slower just feeds in to every awful “she’s mature for her age” excuse toted out by predators, as it’s basically just the inverse of the “this baby will grow rapidly to full adulthood in 7 years and be ready to enter a romantic relationship with her already adult soulmate” shit from Twilight that everyone rightfully boo’d.
On top of that, it makes zero sense for the Loki’s contact with Mosa/Shaggy to start so late into his imprisonment just by looking at the den den mushi he uses. It’s designed to withstand the cold. It’s voice activated. It’s literally tailor-made for his specific set of circumstances. Someone set this up for him, either because it was someone Loki knew before his capture or because one of the 3 people who knew the truth decided to introduce them as a result of his imprisonment. Shanks, Jarul, or Gaban going “hey, we know that you’re being wrongly imprisoned and we have someone in mind to keep you company, and we fully expect this to become a romantic entanglement, but because of that we’re going to hold off on actually connecting you with this person for 4 to 5 years so she’ll be slightly less underage” would pretty much be an admission that the age dynamics of these two characters are irreconcilably fucked and there’s no way to make them un-fucked.
"I don't ship Shuri or Brook"
Worse, you're assuming Oda would make such an inappropriate relationship canon despite no actual evidence in his writing to support it. With his writing actually saying the opposite. That's infinitely more annoying.
"excuse touted out by predators"
What predators? You do realize we are not talking about real people right? Nothing that happens in One Piece affects anything or anyone in the real world. You do understand that right? Why are you bringing this up when discussig narrative analysis.💀
I just cannot respect your intellect if you can't tell the massive & fundamental difference between a character having a relationship with a child as they age vs a character meeting a person who would canonically be considered age appropriate for the first time. Over phone. I really need you to actually think about what you are saying carefully. These two situations are very different omg. Am arranged royal marriage at that smh.
Oda has very clearly showed what he will and will not portray. Once again, Vander Decken is clear proof that he would never actually write child/adult romantic relationships in his work. You & me & anyone else uncomfortable by how he defines a consenting adult does not change this fact. It just doesn't, I'm sorry. You need to be able to sit with this uncomfortable truth if you want to be able to accurately interpret his story. If you can't do that, then you should probably drop One Piece because Oda has set his rules & you will likely not have a good time.
No amount of complaining will make the relationship between Loki & Shirahoshi canonically inappropriate.
Mind you, this doesn't even get into the fact Shirahoshi will surpass Loki in mental age in just under 10 years and will then forever stay older than him when he is still quite young as well. Age gaps between giants & non giants will always look weird because that is literally the only way they can have somewhat of a life together.
Shirahoshi also needed to be born way later than Loki because of the entire prophecy/endgame technicalities. All of these key players have to be born in a certain order for the pieces to fall into place. It's clear by this point that the romance between Loki & Shirahoshi isn't for romance sake, but a greater narrative thread in Oda's story. This all plays a factor into why the age gap between them is what it is, & it's really weird that you & so many others ignore that because you want so badly to get on your moral high horse. Especially since literally no one is forcing you to stay.
