Viola Riku’s Independent Narrative: An Analysis
Ok, to be honest, this isn’t going to be a particularly objective analysis; really, it will be more of a gush post, if anything. Because I’m just so happy over the fact that, for the first time in One Piece, a female character has completed her very own independent plotline and narrative.
For the sake of coherence, I will organize my analysis in two parts: what we know for absolute certain and what we can interpret from these facts.
What We Know for Absolute Certain:
1. Generally, a male One Piece character’s arc narrative involves the following steps: the villain has terrorized the character, the character develops to the point that they can physically confront the villain as retribution, and Luffy finishes the job. Examples: Wiper from Skypeia, Chopper from Drum Island, Law from Dressrosa, Kyros from Dressrosa, Franky from Enels’ Lobby, and Zoro and Sanji from the East Blue Arcs, etc.
2. Generally, a female One Piece character’s arc narrative involves the following steps: the villain has terrorized the character, the character develops, and… for whatever extenuating circumstance, they never physically confront the villain and Luffy instead does the entire job for them. Examples: Nami from Arlong Park Arc (she never got to fight Arlong), Kokoro from Water 7, and Nico Robin (her snapping Spandam’s spine doesn’t count… the fight was already over and he wasn’t really the main main antagonist of the arc anyway).
3. Viola Riku, after spending 10 years of her life being controlled and terrorized by Doflamingo, physically confronts Doflamingo.
What We Can Interpret from This:
Viola Riku is quite possibly the first female One Piece character to ever have her own narrative be completed in the same fashion that a male character has. During the entirety of the arc, she has spent each of her moments doing whatever she could to undermine Doflamingo’s power, from assisting Usopp in taking down Sugar to straight up staring Doflamingo in the eye and planning to kill him or stall him long enough for him to get taken down.
She got her own narrative. She got tortured by Doflamingo for years, and she gets to take him on on her own. While it coincides with and runs parallel to Luffy’s plotline, it’s utterly independent with its own buildup, culmination, and conclusion. You could cut out her plotline from every other subplot in the arc and it would stand on its own utterly fine as an uplifting, ultimately triumphant plot. In all senses, while she does get help along the way, she’s the hero of her own story in the same way that many male characters get to be.
And, in an arc where Robin got shafted from a solo fight three times and a woman got kissed without her permission, I’d say that that’s pretty damn important.
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