Literary Analysis - Blog Posts

hey did you know that uhh

i. the monster's body is a cultural body

ii. the monster always escapes

iii. the monster is the harbinger of category crisis

iv. the monster dwells at the gates of difference

v. the monster polices the borders of the possible

vi. fear of the monster is really a kind of desire

vii. the monster stands at the threshold… of becoming

Princess Tutu and Grand Narrative

Once upon a time, there was a clumsy school girl granted the power to transform into the magical ballerina Princess Tutu.

“Once upon a time” is a familiar phrase used to connect stories that take place in lands distant and times different from one another into the same fairytale world. Each episode of the anime Princess Tutu begins with this familiar phrase and then proceeds to tell a story both known and new, where Hans Christian Anderson’s Ugly Ducking becomes Odette, the Swan Queen, from Swan Lake, thanks to the magic of the mysterious Drosselmeyer, who bares a striking resemblance to the character of the same name from The Nutcracker. Princess Tutu is not just a retelling of a handful of fairy tales, it’s an adaptation of stories across literature, ballet, opera, and of course, anime. Each piece of Princess Tutu’s narrative belongs to worlds larger than its own. The series challenges paradigms about typical narrative creation by weaving together multiple “grand narratives”.

While working as an editor for Kadokawa Shoten in the late 80s, Otsuka Eiji wrote a paper called “World and Variation: The Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative” in which he explains the idea of the grand narrative. An individual story only gives the audience a small glimpse into that wider world that the story is set in. This wider world is full of countless narratives told from countless perspectives that make up the grand narrative. Eiji uses the Gundam franchise to illustrate this concept where any given episode of the anime is a small snapshot of narrative within the larger universe(s) Gundam takes place in. Eiji explains, “Countless other [stories] could exist if someone else were the main character.”

Everyone is the main character of their own story. But most of these stories that make up the grand narrative of a world are hidden from view. It’s impossible to tell every story at once and have it be comprehensible. Instead we can only consume small bite-sized narratives that give us a snapshot of the (hopefully) interesting parts of a protagonist’s life. But who, exactly, is controlling these smaller narratives? This is a question faced by the characters of Princess Tutu.

The concept of shifting protagonists and expanding the audience’s view into the grand narrative heavily ties into Princess Tutu’s premise. The anime’s story is catalyzed by Drosselmeyer, the author of a fictitious book called The Prince and The Raven. The book’s ending is a stalemate between the titular characters so Drosselmeyer decides to promote the minor character of Princess Tutu to the role of main character to help the story move forward.

As you can probably tell by the name, Princess Tutu is heavily influenced by ballet. One of the show’s more significant influences is Swan Lake. Through the anime’s re-purposing of Swan Lake’s Odette as a magical girl, Princess Tutu continues to uphold ballet’s tradition of adapting the story for its own purposes.

Princess Tutu and Odette

The basic story of Swan Lake is about a prince falling in love with a girl cursed to be a swan from sunrise to sunset by an evil sorcerer. The sorcerer tricks the prince into confessing his love for his daughter, Odile, instead of the swan girl thus dooming the swan girl’s chance at true love and breaking the curse.

Amanda Kennell, an American scholar, outlines in her paper “Origin and Ownership from Ballet to Anime” Swan Lake’s production history and the evolution of the ballet’s narrative. The original staging in 1877 had the story end with the villain going unpunished and the two lovers drowning in a flood. In a revival staging from 1895 the villain was defeated and the two lovers reunited in heaven after throwing themselves into a lake. In a single scene production called The Magic Swan from the 1940s, the iconic “black swan” was introduced setting the precedent for the same ballerina to play the role of Odette and Odile in striking white and black costumes. And finally, another staging in 2006, not only adopted the White and Black Swan motif, but also changed the ending once again so that the prince kills the villain and he and Odette live happily ever after.

Despite each staging of the classic having significant differences, none of the variations are cast away as counterfeits. The value of the production isn’t in how close it is to the original Swan Lake but instead in the relative merit of each variation. In fact, it doesn’t really matter which you consider “the original” where the additions made by each carry their own merit and add to Swan Lake’s grand narrative. In this same regard, it would be acceptable to consider Princess Tutu another variation on the world of Swan Lake’s grand narrative.

There is terminology for this phenomenon in Kabuki theater. Eiji points out in his paper the similarities between the concepts of Sekai (world) and Shukou (plot) from Kabuki theater and his ideas of the grand narrative and the smaller narratives.

In Kabuki, Sekai represents the world a story takes place in and Shukou represents the story that is a product of that world. Each staging of a Kabuki play is its own Shukou derived from either a single Sekai or the mixing of Sekai. What matters in creating a good performance is not necessarily conveying the Sekai but instead the relative merit of the Shukou’s take on things. No performance is exactly the same and different actors bring different strengths to a performance and in turn provide a different experience for the audience’s entertainment. This of course carries over to more art forms than just Kabuki, classic ballet is in a similar position where entire songs are sometimes re-choreographed just to match the strengths of an individual ballerina. Ballet in particular has a long tradition of making minor and major changes to suit an individual performance. Whether it be tweaking choreography or straight up giving the story a different ending. The evolution of Swan Lake’s production is an excellent example of how productions of what are considered to be the same story can dramatically vary.

But Princess Tutu borrows from more stories than just Swan Lake. This brings us back to Kabuki and the idea of mixing Sekai in order to create another Shukou.

Princess Tutu takes pieces of classic stories and rearranges them to create something simultaneously familiar and completely new. Princess Tutu is not forging a new Shukou from only Swan Lake’s Sekai, but instead is connecting the canon of European literature and performing arts together into an even more extensive grand narrative.

Just look at the series’ opening for example, where Swan Lake and The Nutcracker are intertwined with one another as the anime’s titular character is dressed in the ballet costume of Odette and dances to The Nutcracker’s Flower Waltz to simultaneously combine the worlds of two ballets while producing an entirely new moment unique to the Princess Tutu anime.

The anime ends on the implication that if one person tries to control a story and the grand narrative it’s connected to, that person will fail. Princess Tutu is an excellent reminder of how stories are dynamic. Stories end up taking on a life of their own evolving, expanding and being reworked by both creators and consumers.

Eiji explains that once the consumers feel they have a grasp on the grand narrative they are free to produce their own small narratives from it. This is exactly how its creators forged Princess Tutu from the grand narrative of classic literature and performing arts. Just as mangaka can’t help it if a doujinshi adds to the narrative of their original story, Travosky can’t control the new life his ballets have taken on in Princess Tutu. Stories will take on a life of their own, abandon the need for an original and become a part to a larger grand narrative to be consumed and reworked over and over.

“Romantic Gothic deals with the tormented condition of a creature suspended between the extremes of faith and skepticism, beatitude and horror, being and nothingness, love and hate - and anguished by an indefinable guilt for some crime it cannot remember having committed.”

— – G. R. Thompson: from “Romanticism and the Gothic Tradition”

i think chuuya nakahara is truly the most human charavter in asagiri shows this purposfully in many mnay ways, ostof the time he is a stark contrast of dazai, bursting with energy and emotion and care. And he is the human light, the sun or the beaty of destruction that dazai finds so comforting, and that dazai teases him so chuuya can make dazai feel morw alive. since chuuya and dazais reuion during the guild arc that dazai hasnt tried to kill himself and thta througjout their shared past there has been a theme of dazai stopping his genuine attepts on his own life, and rather doing them to manipulate people like mori or to feel alive.

.... Sorry felt like yappin

Guys please ask me more questions i havent gotten any... I want someone to ask me what i think ab characters or series... :/

https://www.tumblr.com/join/3SN97yGM

Join.

Anyone have any ideas for a name? I cant figure one out rn...

I do definitly have to admit the anime has its moments - like in dark era, dead apple and the guild arc. However i dont think the current style of animation properly potrays the theme and moods of most shows. from my pespective, bungo explores mental illness and the lines and burrness of morality. I really would like if the animation potrayed that in its style like Evangelion or lain, but instead its smooth and sharp, a stark differnce to how most of the characters view the world around them.

Idk if im the only one who thinks this, but the Bungo anime wouldve gone so much harder if it was animated in the 90s style of animation, specificly the evangelion style. Or even like the Dadaroma, NANA, or Paradise kiss style of animation. I have a lot of issues with the current anime, and most are animation related...

When i say i relate to dazai on a extreme level i mean *this* dazai, not whatever nilistic bullshit the 99% of fandom thinks he is. Like We both yern to experince all corners of life and death to prove to ourselves that we are human. To prove to ourselves and others that are people, that we feel. If you think about it, dazais ache to feel the arms of death while in the ada does nothing to aid him in this, and i think he knows that.

I think he hopes while in the ada, he will feel he has finally expernced both sides of death and life to a point that will prove to him and others that he is human. he will never achive this feeling and will forever chase after it. deep down inside his doubt of his own humanity will always stand within his heart, it will boil in his head on rainy days and on sunny mornings; It will ask if he belongs amoung those around him, if he is truly a human, or simply some thing perfectly acting like one - to fool others and try to fill that abormally large hole in his heart that he knows will never fill.

Dazai Osamu will forever be greedy for proof of his humanity.

I need more people to read this page, PLEASE PLEAS UNDERTSNAD DAZAI ISNT JUST SUICIDAL PLEASE STOP MIS CHARAVTERIZING HIM

R*wling shows throughout the series that she believes that bad things are only bad when they're done by the Bad Guys. However, if one of the designated Good Guys does the same thing it's not bad.

For example, use of the Unforgivable Curses. When the Bad Guys use them it's horrific, evil, one of the Worst Things Ever. But when Harry uses them, with alarming frequency, it's fine. He's not a Bad Guy, so the things he does can't be bad.

Then there's Snape. He's awful. Just awful. He's an incel creep. He's racist. He bullies young children just because he can, and is outright abusive to them if he didn't like their parents (even when said parents died when the kid was an infant). And oh yeah, he's an incel creep who became obsessed with a girl who did not return his feelings, called her slurs, and was a-okay with her husband and infant son being murdered. You cannot tell me that he wasn't hoping to swoop in and try to manipulate her into a relationship when she was vulnerable due to extreme grief. But, because she for some bizarre reason unwilling to stand aside quietly during the murder of her family, he started working for the Good Guys, which totally means that he's a Good Guy and none of the horrible things he did actually matter.

And then there's Dumbledore! Oh boy, I could write at least an Order of the Phoenix sized book about all the terrible things he did. But I'll keep it short here. He knowingly left a particularly vulnerable child in an abusive situation, and didn't even bother to actually check in on him now and again to make sure that he wasn't being, you know, abused or anything like that. He also left the baby in a basket, outside, for hours, because that was for some reason better than knocking at the door? He then manipulated a young child into basically becoming his private soldier against an evil wizard so powerful that the entire magical world pissed themselves at the mention of his name. But all this gets glossed over and is forgiven as easily as if he had just lost a pen someone had lent him. Because, after all, he's the ultimate Good Guy. And a Good Guy can't do bad things. Therefore, none of the things he did were actually bad.

This got a lot longer than I intended it to be. The views on morality in this series really bother me.

Sometimes I just sit around and think about ways to improve the Harry Potter books. Not even in a fix-it fic way. Just like...there are some seriously dropped threads in Deathly Hallows especially.

Do y'all ever think about the thing with Griphook? Harry choosing to deceive him about the sword of Gryffindor? Well, I do. It bothers me that there are no negative consequences for this. Because oop- Griphook double-crossed them too! So we never have to think about Harry making that choice. And the characterization of Griphook is squicky, man. He relishes the idea of weak creatures suffering, he's obnoxious. We can't even REALLY examine wizard/goblin relations because Griphook is such an uncomplicated little asshole. Did Gryffindor steal the sword from the goblin king??? Harry is uncomfy about it for like two seconds and then oop--guess we never need to think about it again. It's a bad writing choice and when I think about a book like Terry Pratchett's Feet of Clay--a book that complexly and carefully and humanely examines racism--i feel super disappointed in the way the Harry Potter series just like...lets some things go.

This is, I think, one example of a handful of moments when Harry does a Bad Thing: lies, uses unforgivable curses etc. But there's no real examination of it. She nods at it a little like "harry was becoming as reckless a godfather and Sirius was to him" but then it just gets...dropped. There isn't even a "this is war; there is no moral high ground" moment. R*wling just seems to have no plan at all to examine any moral complexity in that final book. It makes me nuts.

I guess this is just what I do on this website now... 

Ok lets Go! 

One Piece, Law, and Femininity

Preface: Three warnings and a Request

Warning!!!

Let's get this out the way. I do ship Law and Luffy. That doesn’t matter to this particular theory/analysis but it's better to be upfront about one's personal biases. I don't think it's canon nor do I think it ever will be. But if anyone wants to use this for their own ship theories, have at it. 

This writing “theory” I have doesn’t apply to children because they kind of inherently fall into a third category. Their age tends to naturally make them more vulnerable and in need of assistance. When it comes to gendered writing children tend to get a pass. There are many reasons why but that's not what this is about.

Sanji is a newer and only other expectation to this “theory”.  More on that at the end. 

Request: If you don't think Yamato is a dude, this is not for you. The whole point of talking about feminism in this regard is to talk about how femininity is performed and perceived. Gender is a social construct and how we construct it is important to the feminine conversation. If you cant accept and understand that... read a few essays and come back later. Seriously I am talking about roles, behavior and presentations of gender here. Also I want to support my son (he’s older than me but, still). 

Part 1: Oda Writes the Backstories of Female Characters the Same Way he Draws Them.

A lot of people push back on the idea that Oda only knows how to draw the same female character by pointing at characters like Big Mom or Dandan. So I would like to change the phrasing. Oda only knows how to draw attractive women characters one way. When they're old hags, he's got options. But if they’re even supposed to be mildly attractive then he’s got one option in a variety of colors and accessories. He writes their backstories in roughly the same way. They have a lot of big differences. I can honestly say most important people in one piece have unique and interesting back stories and goals. But the skeleton of almost all the women are the same. I only say almost because One Piece has a stupid amount of characters and there is a 10% chance that some minor character from some obscure island in East Blue somehow flew under my radar. But this rule does apply to all the main women characters. Let's talk about it. 

1a. Oda Loves Taking Away Women's Autonomy. 

Seriously Oda cannot resist putting women in positions where they are either slaves, or working in a group that they are opposed to, or living under constant threat of imprisonment, or some combination of those. Nami was enslaved at a young age by Arlong, Robin had to join CP9 because she needed protection from the world government and then almost got imprisoned by enies lobby. Vivi joined Cp9 to save her country. Hiyori spent years living with and presumably fxcking a man she hated hoping that one day someone else would be strong enough to defeat Kaido to get revenge. There are countless cases of women, specifically women, being sold to Celestial Dragons for the sole purpose of sexual slavery. Like shows up so fxcking often. Aces mom had to hold her child in her stomach for an extra 15  months to him from the marines and probably died because of it.  If Oda is writing an important woman character who is relatively young you better believe she spent years of her life not being in control of it. And if she's older, she either a mom of some kind or was a badass and settled down because some man in her life died, or both. 

1b. Women Need to be Saved in Order to Achieve their Goals and Men Need to be Supported. 

This is gonna be a little hard to explain but it all comes down to how problems are solved, who solves them and why. Kinda. I think the best way to explain it would be to give an example. Lets look at the first two members of the Strawhat Crew. Zoro’s goal is to be the strongest swordsman. Simple enough. He tries to fight Mihawk the moment they meet, he loses and swears to grow stronger and defeat him.  Nami has two goals, or more accurately she needs to accomplish one goal in order to achieve her true goal. Nami needs to get out from under Arlongs control in order to achieve her goal of mapping the whole world. She also wants her family to be able to live in peace and not be broke. Unless she accomplishes that first goal, she cannot accomplish the other two. She needs to be saved in order to continue her story. Because she’s  unable to save herself. Which is reasonable. She's just a person and Arlong is a super strong fish demon man. So Luffy saves her. He punches her problem away real good and she is now finally free to do what she wants. If you know anything about Laws character I'm sure you can see where this is going . Robin is the same, Luffy punches away the people that want to control her real good and declares that he will fight the entire world to let her have the chance to live freely.  

I brought this up with my dad and he brought up a great point. Marineford. He said well Luffy lost pretty bad in the paramount war and needed to be saved by many people. Even costing him Ace. But, I would like to point out that the people who did that, Akainu and Blackbeard are still roaming free. Luffy needed to be saved in the moment but he’s still going to be the one to resolve the issue. Like Luffy, Zoro, Franky, Jinbei, and Brook have all needed saving at some point during a fight. But they always get to square up and finish the ones that are important to them. And their goals don't require them to be saved before trying to achieve them. The point comes down to who's allowed to deal with the finishing blow to their main goals/ problems. Luffy isn’t going to punch Mihawk for Zoror, or make Ussops dad respect him, or whatever the fuck Jinbei wants. But he did fight Arlong for Nami, Cp9 for Robin and Doffy for Law. 

1c. Girls got to College to Get More Knowledge, Boys Go to Jupiter to Get More Stupider

The women of One Piece are objectively smarter than the men. Emotionally and Intellectually. Women in One Piece are normally more patient, less stubborn and willing to retreat when they have to. They also don’t get as love sick as the men. I mean Boa lets her feelings for Luffy get her into insane shit, but that's the joke. Like One Piece women aren’t really known for having someone's looks  affect them. There's a reason there is a most Beautiful Woman in the world with no male counterpart. Like Smoker is Zaddy and no one cares. Most of the guy characters who are overly sneaky and plotting are villains or assholes. That's not to say there aren’t smart men characters, Franky is a genius at his craft. But being smart and careful isn’t part of his character or reflected in his behavior. 

 Part II: Trafalgar D. Water Law,  The Saddest Little Uwu 

I haven't loved Law since the first time I saw him. I have loved him since punk hazard though which is pretty fxcking long. His strong Emo vibes and general refusal to go along with any of Luffy’s bits seemingly for the sole sake of keeping up an image that not one present cared about really endured him to me. I’m pretty trad goth and he reminds me of those emo kids that refused to wear pink or be nice just because they thought it wasn’t hard core enough. Then as the show goes on he develops into one of those healthy goths who know that being an outsider is about showing vulnerability, kindness and maybe dressing in a lil pastel. I really like Law and his weird role in the story so far. Ok, my I love Law rants are done let's get to what we need to get to.

Law before One Piece:

Trafalgar D. Waterlaw was born in Fleavance. He lived a pretty happy normal life, a doctor father, nurse mother and cute baby sister. Until he was about 7 or 8? Around that time the town of fleavance started experiencing some unknown illness. I will say in our real world it is pretty similar to what silicosis actually does to you. Minus the Vitiligo and some other symptoms.  In the world of One Piece its called amber lead poisoning and its almost completely fatal if not properly treated Which is hard to do on its own. But it's even harder in Law's case since the neighboring towns and probably the world government didn't really know what amber lead poisoning was or how it spread either. So they said fxck it, burn it down, kill everyone and call it a day. Problem solved!

So yeah, Law's family is dead, he escaped Flevance by hiding among corpses, and now he is slowly and painfully dying. 

Then it gets worse, it gets so much worse before it gets better. He pulls a Tim Drake and forces his way into the DonQuixote Family by threatening to kill himself and everyone else with a bomb. Because seeing everyone you know and love die painfully and then have the government cover that up will do that to you. Doffy sees a lot of himself in Law and decides, “yeah, this’ll do”. 

Doffys’ nicer but objectively less cool younger brother Corazon also sees a lot of Doffy in Law and decides to immediately put a stop to that shit. He slowly and secretly teaches Law how to enjoy at least some aspects of life. Shows him the first and true affection he’s been shown since his entire village died. It ‘s great. And then, TLDR, Corazon decides to betray Doffy, gets caught, stuff the Ope- Ope Fruit down Law's Throat so he can cure himself and then get shot to Death after saying I love you to Law for what is seemingly the first and last time. Also Sengokou was there.

We don’t really have a clear idea what Law did after this but we do know a few things. 

He became a pirate with the sole purpose of taking down Doflamingo 

 He seems to have chosen a submarine as a pirate ship in order to better hide from Doflamingo and also make it harder to attack him. Because Doffy is a devil fruit user. Even though Law is also a devil fruit user and this puts him in extreme danger. Especially since...

 He made a crew of people who are seemingly doctors 1st, friends 2nd and fighter 6th. Like none of Laws crew members appear to be even mildly good at fighting. I’m pretty sure Chopper could take most of them. 

He names his crew the Heart Pirates after Cora. Which implies that Spanish, just like real world Spanish, is canon in One Piece. And that also reminds me that Law is talking like a nun in his flashback. Is Law catholic? Or was he raised catholic? Either way it adds to the uwu and the trauma of it all. If you know, you know.

 He started working with Caesar Clown, a man he fxcking hates. In order to get closer to Doflamingos secrety secrets.

Pre-time  Skip Law

I’m skipping when we see him in Sabaody because all we learn is that he's edgy and has a bear. When we see him again after Marineford it's actually kind of interesting because we learn he’s also first and foremost a doctor before being a pirate. He saves Luffys life because that's what doctors do and Luffy doesn’t seem like a bad dude. 

Now the good shit.

Post Time Skip Law 

My booooyyy! Love of my life, my sad lil uwu. Law is introduced as one of the coolest, coldest, scariest Warlords. He will literally rip your fxckin heart out. Evanescence playing in the background and all. Luffy immediately undermines thats by not thinking he’s any of those things and tying chopper to his head. But we got a whole episode and a half of thinking he was actually too cool for school. Like we all thought he Shanks when he’s actually just Mihawk. Like his cool but also pretty easy to bully if he likes you even a lil and will let you get away with a lot. It’s just hard to get him to like you, at first. So we get through punk hazard, see what a glass canon Law is and move to Dressrosa. 

In between those two points we also see how sad Law is and how similar he is to both Robin and Nami in behavior. He was Robins darks sense of humor (from the trauma)  and general introvertedness (trauma!?) with Namis greed (did i mention trauma). Which makes sense for the back story we learn about. 

Dressrosa: The Holy Grail of Uwu Law 

Law, Luffy and Doflamingo in Dressrosa is what happens when you put Nami and Robins backstory in a blender with crack cocaine and Katya (the drag queen). It’s just this sad tired uwu man,that came to commit murder suicide, trying and failing to accomplish that goal. Only to be figuratively and literally dragged along by a lunatic that barely knows him. Like Law went to Dresrosa not hoping he would die but assuming he would and not really caring. He didn't have an exit strategy because he didn’t think he was exiting. His plan was to use Luffy as a shield, Ceasar as bait and then murder suicide himself and Domflamingo out of existence. He was so desolate by the time his second fight with him ended. He had no hope, his plans had failed and he even dragged a bunch of innocent people into the crossfire. He would die, the people of Dressrosa would die, the Strawhats would suffer and maybe die and all for Laws’ fruitless revenge. Then Luffy stopped that foot. And Law decided to stay. And Luffy beat up Doffy. And Law was free. For the first time in over ten years Law was free. 

Wano: Then He Stayed

Because he didn’t plan to make it this far. I laughed out loud when Law said they were enemies after Wano ended. Motherfxcker who? Law you don’t want to be pirate king. You barely want to be a pirate! Frankly at this point I think the only thing keeping Law from a non-deadly early retirement is Luffy, his bounty, and pride. And he can get rid (ignore) of two of those things (you won’t guess which!).  Law fought and almost died in Wano to fulfill the deal he made with Luffy. Even though Luffy would not have begrudged him on reneging on that deal. Law told him it was made in bad faith and he had fxck all to gain from fighting Kaido. But he did it, he believed in Luffy and Luffy punched the problem away like always. 

And this ends the story of the Saddest Uwu Boi, Trafalgar D. WaterLaw. 

Part III: You Have to See What I’m Getting At. 

Law’ backstory and character development is just that of any main woman character. Sad thing happened when he was a kid, putting him on the radar/ partially in debt to a bad man. He spent most of his life running from this bad man by working for/ with people he hated. He met Luffy. He tried to fight the bad man and system but didn’t have the strength of heart and/ or body to defeat him. Luffy punched the bad man real good and told Law he was pretty without makeup, he didn’t need it. Law was finally able to move freely as a person and decided to support Luffy in his immediate goals (and probably his long term ones too. Let's be honest he has nothing else to do)  even though that puts him and his crew in even more danger. But now he knew, Luffy would punch that danger just as good as the previous bad man. 

Honestly I don't know what this means or what purpose this knowledge serves. Like, this doesn’t change my opinion that lulaw will never be canon. This doesn’t change how I view Law as a character. This doesn’t change how I view Oda as a writer. This only serves the purpose of excising these thoughts from my head and putting them permanently on a website filled with people who will call me horrible things for even admitting I ship Luffy with anyone. So that's something I guess. 

About Sanji:

Sanji is going through a weird, unexpected but good character transformation right now. His writing is becoming more Law/Robin-esque. Which is weird and unexpected but very good. I have thoughts on that but its for a different post. I don't think it undermines my point though because this shift is relatively recent, only happening in the Whole Cake island arc and not fully forming until near the end of Wano. This either means a shift in how Oda choses to write male characters or a shift in how he views Sanjis’ role in the narrative. Only time will tell. 

*This unrelated but I’ m realizing Law shows just as much tiddy as Robin and Nami too.*