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xparrotOh bloody hell. Oda's made me cry again. ...not actual bawling, really I need the anime's voices and music to gut me like that, but...close enough. "It's me, I've gotten bigger, but don't you remember me?...you're really my mother, aren't you?"
Nami's story is heartbreaking, but this...and Olvia, we've only seen her for what, like 3 chapters, but you can so feel her pain as she's walking away, because it's all she can do...and then Robin shouts the one thing she shouldn't, the one thing those who love her would do anything to keep the world government from knowing, and you want to scream, even though you empathize with her so entirely that you know exactly why she says it, because she's just a child, after all, and you almost want her to say it, if only because her mother might turn around... That is just classic, classic Oda, one of those moments that is so perfectly constructed in its tragedy that it's breathtaking.
I hesitate to say Robin is my favorite female character of all time, but, damn...she might well be.
...Also, since everyone needs at least one impossible crossover crack from hell OTP - Robin x Kaiba, baby. Blue-eyed ice & fire - superintelligent, super-reserved orphans who went darkside to survive their brutal pasts, redeemed by their carefully hidden depths of love and loyalty.
...No, I have no idea how it would workbut man, would it be hot!
Nami's story is heartbreaking, but this...and Olvia, we've only seen her for what, like 3 chapters, but you can so feel her pain as she's walking away, because it's all she can do...and then Robin shouts the one thing she shouldn't, the one thing those who love her would do anything to keep the world government from knowing, and you want to scream, even though you empathize with her so entirely that you know exactly why she says it, because she's just a child, after all, and you almost want her to say it, if only because her mother might turn around... That is just classic, classic Oda, one of those moments that is so perfectly constructed in its tragedy that it's breathtaking.
I hesitate to say Robin is my favorite female character of all time, but, damn...she might well be.
...Also, since everyone needs at least one impossible crossover crack from hell OTP - Robin x Kaiba, baby. Blue-eyed ice & fire - superintelligent, super-reserved orphans who went darkside to survive their brutal pasts, redeemed by their carefully hidden depths of love and loyalty.
...No, I have no idea how it would work
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Date: 2006-01-08 11:52 am (UTC)No, really. She does. And it's weird, because you notice their coloring much more in the anime, for obvious reasons, and the animators went with blue for Robin... probably before they knew she was going to be joining them later. But every one of Oda's pics I've looked at recently, they've actually been brown. Hm.
Meep. Yes. I cried because I spent way too much time getting at the crucial point, what with my lousy Japanese and everything, and it was just... just... OUCH. Pain.
And again, Oda with the absolutely fascinating mother figures! Contrasting Nami and Robin's background automatically leads to a comparison between Olvia and Bellemere - neither of them perfect mothers, neither of them "typical" mothers in any way, but both of them obviously ready to do everything for their children. To die for them. And isn't it ironical how Bellemere could save her children's lives by claming them as her own daughters, despite that they weren't hers by blood, while Olvia tries to save her daugher by denying that they are family?
I love Robin. So much. And it's so much fun to re-watch the episodes after she joined up now, having read this! There are some things that just make so much more sense now... (Like her comment to Luffy as he lay dying in the sand after Crocodile impaled him - something along the lines of "Why do you always keep fighting, you with the name of D?" Since she mentioned Gold Roger after that, I assumed - as I think we all did - that she somehow knew something of him. But... no. At least he wasn't first in her mind.)
AND! I want to know what Yamaguchi Yuriko's theory on who Robin's dad might have been was...! She wheedled Odacchi for an answer, but he wasn't talking, and she didn't say what she had been thinking, just that she did have a theory, and... waaah! Is it another D-thing? She's the only one of the bunch old enough to have had Gold Roger as a father, so... it's possible, but... WAAAH, Odacchi's head, trying to speculate, it hurts! XD
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Date: 2006-01-08 06:51 pm (UTC)Interesting point about Olvia contrasted with Bellemere, one claiming and one denying...and the idea that Bellemere, the adopted mother, is the better one because at least she's there for her children. Though Olvia loves Robin dearly...she's like Yasopp, though, she has a higher calling. While as Bellemere's highest calling was motherhood... And oh I love Oda's women so much, they who have such callings and concerns and strength and love, great as any man...
Robin's father? Hmmmm. At one point someone mentions Olvia's husband? In a way that implies he's still alive...(though Gold Roger was, then...) but Roger isn't the marrying type, I'd think (but then I didn't check what the Japanese really was, might've been a translation issue) Robin does have the black hair...though not the D. Can women inhereit the D? She does have a last name...(though so does Zoro. Can't figure out how the names work in the OP 'verse...Robin inhereited the Nico, obviously but Monkey and Portgas?? And where'd Roronoa come from when Zoro's an orphan (maybe?)...or is that something Oda-sensei just does for fun and doesn't think about too much, other than the Ds, obviously...you can never tell!)
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Date: 2006-01-09 08:02 am (UTC)Mmm. I'm not saying Bellemere was a better mother, just because her choice was to claim her children... that was the circumstances. It's possible that it is even harder to deny your child in the way Olvia did (she obviously loves Robin very much!) than to show your love to them the way Bellemere did. It's just that they are the two most "active" mothers we've sees, and that their fates were so similar in some ways, and so diametrically opposite in others. And I find it fascinating to find such women in a shounen! Especially one created by such a young man! I mean, he IS a genious, but that he's a genious in this particular way as well... damn, but I love him.
In the translation I read it said "late husband", but... I don't remember what the original said. I didn't react to it as if it said "late husband", though, but like I said - I am much with the missing things when it comes to Japanese. Robin says about her dad that "there isn't one", which sounds strange to say to me, if he really was dead. I think women probably inherit the D just fine, but if there isn't anyone around to bestow that name on them, then they don't get it. I don't think the possibility is SO great that she is in fact the daughter of Gol D Roger, but... even if she was, there are plenty of reasons why she wouldn't have the D.
The Ds in general seem to have very interesting naming traditions! From all we've seen, they're pretty unique. Vivi shared her father's name too, Nefertari, right? So it would seem that's the most common, but then there are people like the Ds, who do whatever they feel like, and to hell with conventions! Which might be the case for a lot of these naming things... it is confusing that Zoro has "Roronoa" when Usopp has nothing. And Chopper - well, he was given two names! Ow. My head, it hurts... ^^;;; Which is to say, I have no idea what Odacchi is up to when it comes to the names.