This episode was the epitome of heart in One Piece. Despite the fact that I have started to resonate with smaller scale and less exaggerated stories which made me feel a little less excited about this horrifying flashbackception than I’m usually, this episode reminded me that even if we have horrors on the scale of this flashback, the personal is still very much there and as strong as ever. All of the Rocinante profile pictures I’ve seen through my life make sense in this one single moment.
What we got here was a story of a man with a traumatic past and a big heart trying his hardest to help a kid that he could relate to, and only truly understanding his sympathy when he felt like it was too late. From the earlier moments where we learned he was so abusive to the children as a way of scaring them off, or that montage of both compassion towards forcing Law to relive his trauma hospital after hospital and some comedy to top it off with his sweet anger towards the doctors. It all built up to where he emulated Doflamingo’s drinking problems to cope with his sadness, going down his chin and all, and it finally hit him. That this wasn’t just because he wanted to steer Law away from becoming a beast with Doflamingo, but more importantly, it’s because he feels sorry for him. He stumbled over to Law, thought to be asleep, and with a masterful voice cracking performance, cried over him, expressing how much he cared. How he knew that it wasn’t him who was hurt back when he got stabbed but this poor thing, and prior to that, his guilt over fruitlessly forcing Law to suffer this much. Again, despite the huge scale of the horrific events that went down, this became an intimate moment of human vulnerability, and in seeing someone care for him like that for the first time in ages, Law cried too and found some deep respect for Corazon. In the past he may have covered for him like how Corazon covered for Law but deep down, this was when they finally saw eye to eye and their feelings became realized. It was such a human moment filled with so much sadness and beauty that tears subconsciously started to trail down my face and that is a powerful effect.
Outside of that story, we got a lot of information about the D. family. There is a Mariejoi’s saying that a misbehaving child will be eaten up by the D. Further, the D’s are said to be seen as the sworn enemy of the gods, the gods being the Celestial Dragons as prior in this flashback had already proven to us. Further, a speculated purpose for the D’s is that they are here to destroy the world. This specifically showed us images of Roger and Saul and it gives us far more background on the will of the D. If you recall, Roger was involved with the blank century and the poneglyph’s, as far as I remember, he knew the history of the world. Law even used the same phrase to Doflamingo on the bridge to Green Bit, "D. will surely bring us another storm". I wonder if the D are the inherited will to fight against the system, whether it be in a good or bad way. Or much better said by fellow user @Strawberrycake48: “I'm guessing the "D" family exists to turn the tides, revolutionize the world and alter the status quo of any given era. So they're likely going to play a huge part in the dissolution of the Celestial Dragons later in the story.“
From this conversation we got a look into Corazon’s role here, he is positioned to make sure Doflamingo doesn’t go out of control. Unlike Doflamingo, he spoke of his parents as warm hearted, their naivety does not seem to make Corazon harness the same anger and blame towards his father. Rather, he views Doflamingo as a demon that was probably born as he declared revenge to the mob, a demon with brutality that only the top executives and Vergo know. Vergo being the first Corazon, which now makes sense to me as Law could have been the third if he didn’t betray Doflamingo. I take it Corazon was filled with sadness over the horrors of his past rather than an unquenchable rage, although seeing Doffy in this light is certainly sad. He’s a broken kid still trying to enact revenge for the experiences he had when he was a child.
Corazon actually worked as a secret commander under Sengoku but Vergo, sporting a look that’s about 70% less hot than he was in Punk Hazard, is on a secret mission to become a vice admiral which even Cora doesn’t know about. That should spell trouble. |