Oda I kneel.
Even better when you understand that Harald is a liberal reformer (bordering on comparador status) who tries desperately to get Elbaph to integrate with the World Government (imagine a large US flag).
It’s almost like the message is that reformists get taken advantage of by imperialists and that it can actually perpetuate further injustice of ones people (but I’ve been informed that One Piece is a universalist text of the human condition, so scratch that).
He’s not just ant liberal reformer. He’s from the country where the war between joyboy and imu was like 3-4 generations ago. The giants might actually know that the world government is ruled by an immortal eldritch omnicidal entity.
Even if the giants don’t know, Harold has every reason to know, since he is friends with rocks and had those magic circles in his castle and is implied to be friends with the God’s Knights.
Dude isn’t an ordinary comprador. He has a higher access to the inner circle of the world government than even the kings under it.
Oda’s "dig’ is at human behavior in general, never at any specific entity. Even if you can draw a parallel between someone in One Piece and in real life, Oda doesn’t want his story to represent anyone in real life 1:1.
Oda’s "dig’ is at human behavior in general,
Ah yes, the “Harry Potter” reading of fiction where fictional works become timeless, practically religious parables removed from the conditions they were written.
This is on the level of “it was all a dream” literary analysis
Oda doesn’t want his story to represent anyone in real life
First of all, without a source from Oda himself, don’t speak for him. Second of all, whatever he says doesn’t matter because he’s contracted by his publisher (Shueisha) as an employee and can’t just say “Death, death to the IDF” on Japanese media without having One Piece be taken from him (Oda doesn’t actually hold the full copyright to One Piece, Shueisha does, it’s very rare for mangaka to actually hold the rights to their work at this high level)
One Piece is a takedown of political hegemony and how that warps people’s selves. Nearly every one piece arc is about how tyrants in power circumvent the will of the people by insisting on their rank/status/propaganda rather than what the people actually need. Our protagonists are people who broke out of that cycle of violence to choose their own dreams and the dreams of their comrades.
Post Egghead One Piece spoilers
This has to be even more painfully obvious with how Egghead is a direct parallel to climate change affecting our world and how the world government (imperialist hegemon) would rather fight a genocidal war with “pirates” and capitalize on this mass death for their own power rather than work to stop it (because stopping it means worldwide cooperation).
There’s literally a “revolutionary army” whose leader declares that the revolution must continue and succeed to prevent people from killing each other for higher ground.
To say this isn’t a 1:1 connection to our world is to basically be politically uninformed.
Is it a massive stretch to believe that Oda knows about the journal “the economist” and knows enough about it to know what a rag it is and is familiar enough with western communist meme culture to make a dig at that magazine?
99.95% yes.
However! This goes against my agenda.
Oda having a portrait of Che Guevara in his office that he kept up for decades including his inteview with Netflix One Piece just a few years ago.
No, Oda just happens to be a fan.
It seemed like even the more liberal people talking about one piece understood “Innocent Battleship” even if they would easily fall for it irl but there’s allways one.
Yes the “human behaviour” he was satirizing was in all likelihood the tendency for the media outlets and think tanks of an oppressive force to paint their victims as aggressors to distort reality and justify their oppression.
I haven’t read One Piece at all so I don’t know what the exact context of this event, but notice the contradiction, “innocent battleship”, blatantly playing the victim.
The news outlet also uses this act of resistance as a way to undermine what I assume to be a peace process by pushing a reactionary conspiracy theory where the victim is “exposed” to be a violent actor who wants to subvert the nation’s stability.
Notice the name of the news outlet: “World Economic Journal Headline”, very similar to real-world think tanks, media entities, and organizations like the World Economic Forum and the Economist. Propagandistic outlets used to commit and/or justify the west’s atrocities.
For example, take a look at the title of this piece by the economist: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/10/03/has-the-war-in-gaza-radicalised-young-palestinians
Notice how the economist frames the genocide that pissrael committed against Palestine as a “war”, notice how they center the “radicalization” of “young Palestinians” as an issue they want to focus on instead of the main issue of the same “young Palestinians” being tortured and murdered en masse in the world’s largest open air concentration camp.
The evil that Oda satirizes and lampoons really exists today and is killing hundreds of thousands of people as we speak. I’d recommend supporting the local pro-Palestine action where you live, especially if you live in the west, in any capacity that you can. Good luck.
I haven’t read One Piece at all so I don’t know what the exact context of this event
-
There is the “world-government” that rules most of the one piece world. They are “USA coded” if you accept that one piece makes any kind of comentary on modern politics. Their ruthless empire is largely formed on the basis of treaties, but they will happily use coercion, interventions, information warfare and sanctions against anyone who threatens the flow of treats into their capital city called “mariegeois”. The world government also practices legalised slavery and discriminates against non-human races.
-
King harald is the ruler of the giants, famed for their war mongering and fierce independence. He wants to make the giants peaceful and part of the world government. He is, so far portrayed as well intentioned.
However, this is from a flashback, and it is almost certain that some point closer to the present, harald will start collaborating with the world government and even become good friends with the one piece world’s equivalent of the billionaire class. Like I’m talking “I have a helicopter pad in my lawn for when bill gates visits me with his private helicopter” kinda shit. Harald had an actual teleportation circle in his castle so that the world government’s top nobles can visit him anytime.
- In this specific event, harald is trying to save some innocent people from a world government unit that is doing some corrupt shit.
All in all, the current arc of one piece is the most interesting one piece politics have been in many years.
-
Everything is political.
all my knowledge of one piece that’s more recent than 15 years comes from cultural osmosis and I still guarantee you that guy’s an Anarchist
I don’t disagree, but that’s completely besides my point. What I’m saying is that Oda generally doesn’t make characters with the purpose of representing someone from real life.
He incorporates stuff from real people and real life to create his characters and events, but ultimately they become just characters in his story, completely detached from whatever inspired them.
I don’t think oda is literally making an attack on the economist as well. But I do think that the name of the journal “world economic journal” is very on the nose for a lot of western media outlets with very similar business sounding names that also print similar types of propaganda.
