#op ch53

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gratitude has been a theme throughout the story starting from zoro’s introduction. zoro thanking rika for the rice ball was the clue that told luffy he was a guy worth paying attention to, when up til then he was pretty ambivalent towards him.

in the baratie arc, the theme shows up prominently again. luffy gets angry at krieg for being ungrateful for the food he received. gin’s gratitude towards sanji for saving his life manifests in complex ways when it runs up against his loyalty to krieg.

luffy cares a lot about showing proper gratitude for hospitality and, importantly, food! ‘toppling dictators for a sandwich’ is one of luffy’s iconic traits of course, but it speaks to the thematic importance of hospitality/gratitude throughout the story. the strawhats are always guests, going from one island to another, and it’s part of one piece’s championing of love and community to show them as being considerate and thankful to their hosts.

hence why luffy gets so angry at zoro here. whatever people’s thoughts and feelings on the luffy vs. zoro fight, whether it is in the story due to editor pressure or not, the conflict does make sense with their established priorities as characters. the fact that zoro’s introduction emphasizes his grateful nature and how important that is to luffy adds an extra layer to this — luffy trusted zoro in this respect, and probably felt quite shocked and betrayed at zoro’s actions since he thought they were on the same page about this value.

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once again, we see the theme of gratitude come into play. luffy really values gratitude. contrast krieg’s actions with zoro’s introduction — like krieg, zoro was starving and then got fed. he expressed his gratitude to rika, which is what clued luffy in to him being a cool guy. luffy now sees how krieg responds to a similar gesture — with entitlement, not gratitude — and it makes him angry.

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you’re one to talk, your ex-siblings have exoskeletons.

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guy whose shirt says “fight” really doesn’t seem to want to do that rn

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this is so childish of sanji, haha, it’s adorable. i can imagine a 10-year-old sanji pulling a face exactly like this.

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the existence of graphic t-shirts with specific jolly rogers on them implies the existence of custom print shops in the one piece world. i wonder where krieg went to get these custom krieg pirates shirts made.

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another bit of t-shirt text: “be walk.” i should start making a compilation.

oda has always been good at designing unique background characters (especially compared to what you get with most comics), but his skill has also improved since the start of the manga. compare the krieg pirates designs to the buggy pirates designs — the buggy pirate designs are very good, better than what you will get in 99% of manga, but the krieg pirate designs are better imo. more unique, more individual, more visually distinct from one another. you can also see the subtle art style change from early east blue to middle east blue. similar shot, but the characters are much more dynamic and the composition is less flat.

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more words on shirts — “acrobatic 4.”

also, krieg trying to rationalize mihawk’s power by saying he has a devil fruit is an effective bit of character writing. it shows that not only does krieg hide behind trickery and bluster, he expects everyone else to do so. he can’t take mihawk’s power at face value, because that would require him to own up to the fact that he just isn’t as strong (like zoro did) and that the only way to beat him is to work to get stronger.