Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today, my friend Riki Hayashi, our new co host, and I are diving into the question of can pirates be heroes? Can piracy be a victimless crime. We're doing this all through the lens of the one piece show, both the anime and the recent live action, and we're gonna have a lot to say about that. But first, as I said, we love listener feedback, and Riki, we got a great piece of feedback from our one of our friends named
Rachel, and she wrote Rachel here pronounced she. They First off, I wanted to say thanks for your amazing podcast and your super speedy and in depth coverage of Avatar. We did two episodes a day for four days, so I'm very glad to know that was appreciated. Overall, agree with a lot of what you have what you have said. I think the casting has been brilliant across the board, and they absolutely nailed Momo and Appa. I love getting to see scenes we never got in the original. The highlight to me
was Zuko's agne with his father. I wanted to email specifically about the gender presentations and intentional choices to remove some of the misogyny from the show. As you mentioned, wanting some femin perspectives, we very much doo, so thank
you. Overall, I've been really on board with a decision to remove Socca's overt misogyny from the show, and I don't feel that this was a key ingredient to the story by any means, but all in caps, I feel that in taking this out, they've also been inadvertently or intentionally taking out all of the traditionally unseen and underappreciated women's labor that Katara did growing up in Wolf
Cove. In the animated version, it's a key point that while Soaka has dealt with the pressure of protecting the village, Katara has been raising children, cooking and cleaning literally Sokka's underwear, and doing invisible emotional labor for the village the whole time too. This goes on to be a key part of her character in later seasons when there's an arc about how her motherliness and the fact that she feels such a responsibility to be a caretaker because that's the role responsibility
she had to take up at home. So while I really like the work they've done on Soccau, I really feel like they could have removed his overt misogyny without also removing aspects of the patriarchy that really actively shaped Katara's character. In short, I think they improved Snacha's character at what I think was a totally unnecessary cost to Katara's. This particular rewrite has a real, written by
a man vibe to it from my perspective. Having said that, I really love the show and I've already watched it twice and will likely watch it a bunch more. Sorry for the length, don't worry, we love all our thoughts. Just had a bunch of feelings to share, and thanks so much for all you do. Love the cast and keep it up. Rachel. Awesome, Thank you so much Rachel for that in depth feedback. And hello Matthew. Yeah, good to be here again. Good to see you too.
Yeah. What do you think what Rachel had to say? I want to I want to briefly. I want to briefly touch upon what they mentioned at the beginning about Zuko's agney kai, and I know it's not the main point, but I agree that the action was good, and I think they replaced an agne kai between Zuko and Joo with having more action in that one, but it was It was interesting to me because in this version, in the live action version, Zuko holds first off, holds his own and it's
actually appears to be defeating Ozi and then stops because it's his father. He's like, he's not going to do like this, not killing blow, but you know, very harmful blow and that, and Ozi takes advantage of that and strikes back, and then that's his lesson, right, like weakness, you can never show weakness. And in the original animated version, Zuko doesn't even fight. He just supplicates himself, bows down and says, it was not my intention to dishonor you father, please, like, don't do this.
And it was much I don't know, it seems like that version seemed harsher. Yeah, that so it's a balance. I'm not sure which I like better. I know, I've heard opinions both ways. They're but they're very different. And how they portray that relationship between the two of them. Yeah, I think if they had just switched it to do something different would
have felt weird. I think Zuko and his father's relationship is just overall quite different, and so I think that this fit that interpretation and you can decide which one you like more. To Rachel's main point, though, I really love it and I think you're right for me, at least I think as
a masculine person, someone raised as a man. It is something I totally missed, and in particular, we do see in the live action at the end of the season that the women at first feel like that they shouldn't be fighters and the guitar shouldn't be a fighter because they have a role to do too, and that they're they're sort of perspective of like the men fight and we do the teaching, and they're both equal, and why is katar A
getting so upset about this? And that was an interesting take on it, and I think still is a very kind of sexist way of looking at it, in patriarchal, but just with a more like, you know, separate put equal kind of thing, which is bad but different than the purely hierarchical. But I think that it definitely was missing something and I really love reach to the point because definitely that mothering aspect that she has to take on,
and also just her frustration. I think that Sokka, we spend so much time talking about all the pressure that was on him, but no one really looks at the pressure that was on Katara is such a big part of her character that, Yeah, I think it's unfortunate that that kind of got left out as muchs it did. I completely agree with you and Rachel. I think Katara live action Katara is probably the character that was done the most dirty
in this version in terms of all of it. I mean we talked about her the lack of showing her development as a water bender, right, I mean they only showed very brief glimpse, and they left out the whole her helping to train Aang in water bending, which leads to her growing in her mastery. So the whole scene where she confronts Zuko at the end and he's like, I see you found a master and she's like, yeah, it's
me. It was like a girl Boss moment as written, but did not feel earned because we did not get the sense of her becoming a master. I mean it just kind of like was very rushed and all of that. I think, like Sokka's lack of misogyny in the live action is a part of that, because seeing her grow through his lens and his respect for her change, and his understanding of her change was it was all part of that. So no, you don't need him to be like as overtly misogynist.
But I think by taking that out, by ramping that down, they have inadvertently just again like done Qatar dirty as a character in terms of her development. Yeah, it's like it's kind of ironic. I it also takes a lot away from his dynamic with Suki, you know, because again, it doesn't have to be that he's overt about it in any way. It can just be that he's internalized the teachings of his home, you know. So yeah, and it's not he was like animated Sokka. Yes, like it
is a noted part of his character. But I think it was just like with Suki, was a couple of lines like oh, like women can't be warriors or something like that, and then she like throws them to the grounds like oh okay, wait maybe they can. Yeah, and it was it was pretty quick. I think, I believe like their interaction and his turn because you know that their interactions were kind of brief, but it's I mean, yeah, I don't know, I feel like it was missing and it's
not important to his character, but it was a part of it. So yeah, I think I'm more okay with not having it there. But I think that, you know, as Rachel points out, like there's knock on effects there that we just don't wind up seeing. So thank you Rachel for the great feedback. We love something like that. Please keep sending more. We'll probably do a full feedback episode at some point on Avatar. But now
on to our main question. But now on to our main episode. As we talked about, as we talked about a bit last week, one thing Ricky and I have really wanted to do is bring the focus of these episodes a little more back to specific questions that was the focus for a long time. More recently, I think we've gotten into more kind of like review type stuff, which is still fun. We still may do that from time to time, and we will probably have some more review type comments about the live
action one piece in our bonus member sect. But I think what we're gonna be trying to do more often is take a central question of that often is very inspired by one particular piece of media and kind of go with that. And so today we want to talk about this idea of kind of be a hero. Can a pirate be a you know, there's kind of quotes around all these terms, and were talking about how we understand these terms, but
can a pirate be a good guy? I will be doing this a lot through the lens of One Piece, because it's bazificly and asking us BASILICI when I was watching One Piece, that was something I said to Riki a couple of times, who had encouraged me to watch it. Was I would quote lines from Loofy about how he doesn't want to steal or hurt people, and you know, pirates don't have to be bad people, and I was like,
does does this guy understand what a pirate is? And I think that joking question came this very much more serious discussion that we want to have of because I think the topics of piracy and heroism and how we define these things are kind of fundamental to a lot of the media we talk about. Soriki, let me just start by why was this the a topic you were excited about and the lens you wanted to look at One Piece through? Well?
First off, because I love One Piece. Yeah, and if you're looking for a review, my one sentence or you is it's amazing, go watch it. But in terms of this question, it's always fascinated Like pirates in media has fascinated me for a long time, and particularly in One Piece, Like clearly Loofy is a the protagonist and be the hero, right, because
those can be different things. Yeah, And in fact, like he is probably one of the most heroic, altruistic protagonists we've ever seen in a in an animated product, like I I can't it's hard to think of someone who is like more fundamentally good than Lufy at his core, just like his innate trust in people and belief in them. It's infectious, and I think that
is one of the things I love about the product. And the character is at the end of this all, you know he's going to find the one piece, Like it hasn't happened yet, but like we know that now that we know, we know that's how the story has to end, right,
But there's a real sense that it's going to be. The whole meme of the real treasure was the friends he made along the way, right, because that like already, like in the first season of this live action you can see how important his crewe and his friends are to him and that, like, it's fundamental to his character. So yeah, I he's he's good, he's a good pirate. And it's like what And I started asking myself,
like what does that mean? Right? And then in particular, in contrast with in this world, in this universe, we have bad Marines, right, The Marines are supposed to be the law of the see of the there's a world government. I don't know that if there are any other nations beside the world government, that there are like individual kingdoms, because there are kings and stuff, but I think they are all under the authority of the world
government. So it's one central authority. And their military arm is the Marines, and they purport to uphold justice in the world in the Japanese at Segi, and they literally have the word written on the backs of their uniforms. Oh it's interesting. Yeah, and that gets on Yeah, yeah, please, I would say, And that gets and that gets in all the questions of who gets to define what justice is? And I think that's what we've
really talk about. I just want to hype. I just want to focus a little bit more first on this question of what do we mean by a pirate being a good guy? Being a hero or a good good woman.
You know, I mean kind of the media term good guy there, because I think we do often get movies about pirates and any kind of you can say larger you know, criminals who are protagonists and are the people we root for but are not necessarily heroes, are heroic and certainly not necessarily people we think of as like super altruistic, you know, people like Jack Sparrow to take specific pirates, or Blackbeard in movies where he's the focus or kind of
pulling a wider lens, someone like The Godfather, or really the protagonist of most movies about sort of mafia types or you know, criminal organizations where the one group that is our protagonist is kind of our hero and we see them like that you know, they're maybe not as bad as all the others, or that you know, we understand and sympathize with how they got pulled into this life of crime. But there's still not people would think of as like
Captain America moral paragon type things. And so let's kind of get into this idea of what exactly do we mean by the word pirate and reak, because I think one thing we also have to remember is that we're talking about pirate, Like I think, let me start that again. We're talking about the word pirate. It also has a number of different cultural context you know.
I mean today people use the word piracy to refer to like you know, Yemenese sailors who are interfering with ships in the Red Sea and the golf down there, to people who download software that they haven't paid for, to copyright infringements to you know, I know a lot of people in the transgender movement who've talked a lot. I know a lot of transgender folks who talk to themselves about like gender pirates and all this kind of thing. And so there's
so many different definitions of pirate for you. And I think one thing also is that we, as English speaking people are talking about a English language story, the live action that originally comes from a Japanese language anime that comes from a Japanese language manga. So Riki is someone who has grown up in both of those contacts that I love to to start from. You, what does the word pirate mean to you? So In the Japanese, pirate is translated
as kaiso ku, which literally just means sea bandit. Yeah, that's the characters it uses, and then it contrasts with Sanzoku is mountain bandit, which
I guess is just like a land pirate. I guess like or just we would call it a bandit, but it's like to me like kaizoku and pirate are the same thing, and especially like in terms of one Piece, the visual esthetics the technological level of this universe are clearly based on like sixteen hundred to seventeen hundred's like pirate era, like the Golden age of pirates that we think of, and so like in that context, like a pirate is someone
who sails on the sea and basically like interrupts commerce by stealing from other ships or from you know, landing on an island or a coastal town and stealing from that town. And the interesting thing for me is historically piracy I think would be something basically between nations, and of course we get the more direct example of privateer who were state sanctioned or state sponsored pirates, like literally like England would take go to pirates and say hey, we want you to work
for us and only attack Spanish ships and villages. Yeah, So in the context of one Piece, it's weird because there's only the world government. So yeah, like the pirates we would think of traditionally probably disrupt the commerce of the world government, you know, steal from them, fight the marines, and and so like they are bad, bad guys, you know, villains from the perspective of the world government. So what does it mean to be
a good pirate? I think it's essentially pirates who take from other pirates, right, the idea, like you steal rob from other people who are doing harm. Yeah, you're not ever hurting innocent people, right exactly. And that's a term that does come up a couple of times in the live action one Pieces Innocent people. I think Loofy has a conversation with Kobe, the young man who wants to become a marine and eventually does, and they talk about in This Is Kobe is like, I want to be a marine to
protectness in people. And I think there's a conversation they have discussing a bad, bad marine, and Loufy's like, he's not protecting innocent people. It's like, you're right, Like he's he's he's not a he's not a good marine, right. And Kobe, we also learned from his first meeting he has internalized this idea that pirates are inherently bad. At one point, he says, when he first met Loofy, and Lufy has said, I want to be a pirate, and Kobe says pirates are scum, they are thieves
and murderers, and Lufy says, not the pirates I know. And I think from at the very beginning, they're really trying to say, this is not your grandfather's piracy. This is not the kind of piracy that people think of necessarily. And there's there's like two instances where the idea behind a Loofy as a good pirate, I think is defined as like what what does he want? He wants freedom and he wants adventure, and I think those are
also outlined kind of in the intro and they talk about gold Roger. It's like it opened up an era of the age of pirates, of adventure and freedom. And that's and if you look at Lufy's mentor figure Shanks, you
know he would be another example of a good pirate. Right the scenes, we are shown he fights against the in the manga it's a sanzoku, it's a mountain bandit and saves Loofy and saves like the the bartender of this bar that they frequent, right, and he's never shown taking from the village that
they stop at. And in fact that it seems like they engage in like completely legal and up and up commerce with that that I resupply there, but somewhere somewhere out there when they go out on their adventures, they're presumably stealing from someone because because he's presented as a good pirate, probably from other pirates, from bad pirates who have been taking from other people, right, And I do think he's not perfect about that, which is little discussed later,
but just taking on this idea for a bit, one of the things that I think is really essential to this version of piracy is the idea of you know, what does it mean to have a moral code when the law of the land is actually not moral? And so that where you know, the difference between do you follow the rules or do you follow your understanding of what you think is right becomes really stark and in that regard, and in that
regard, one of the things that comes to mind from me. Although the word pirate isn't really used very often, I think at one point they may describe themselves as such is Malcolm Reynolds in the cast of Firefly, where for him that he has very similar desires. He wants to be free, he wants to be able to do his own thing, to do what he wants without someone else looking over him. And I think he is a little more morally gray than Lufy is, but a lot of it is the same.
It's a very oppressive system that wants to tell people what to do and say you can do this, and you can do that, and nothing else, and he just wants to be able to do his own thing. Like there's giving an American context, which is very much true Firefly, but it's very much I think the romanticism of the Old West or of you know, some of those other ideas that you know that the end, every man is his
own captain, every person gets to do their own thing. Yeah. And I think one of the things that at least I have not really gotten out of one piece is why the world government is so bad. M hmm.
That's right. I think there have been hints of it, of it being kind of there's like an aristrata, aristocratic class who has shown to be like very classist and racist and oppressive, so that that's something that comes in later, but at least in terms of like right now, it's like, I don't know, like we identify with Loofy because he's the protagonist, and by extension, we kind of are supposed to hate the world government and hate the
Marines, right, although we're presented I think we're presented with good examples of marines in this season, Like we get we get bad marines, we get axe Hand, and then we get Nezumi is like bad marines, and then Garf is presented as an example of a good marine. And I really love their interactions because Garf is Loufy's I mean spoilers for the show, right, Garf is Lufy's grandfather, right, and always wanted him to become a marine
and opposed him becoming a pirate because of his own code. But by the end of the season, like he sees that Loufy is honoring that code to some degree lets him go because of that. Yeah, part of how I saw it is that, I mean, I kind of saw it through a superhero lens, where often our hero is someone who has to go outside the law, in part because the actual government is either unable or unwilling to deal with the problems and so our hero feels like they have to do it.
And that could be everything from something where the government is fairly benign to like Spider Man, to something where the government is you know, outwardly corrupt,
especially the law enforcement like Batman. Both of those are criminals. For both of those are to somethinger and other heroes, And I think I kind of saw and again I've only seen the live action Eureki, have much more experience of the manga and the anime, but I think I kind of saw the primary falls of the world government is that it kind of like Jonah Jamerson or you know, Commissioner Gordon early in the story, in that they see Loofy
and the much more evil pirates, Well, they're both breaking the laws. They're both equally bad. And you know, when you talked about kind of the end the change that Gart makes, to me, it feels a lot like what Commissioner Gordon goes through becoming to understand in some versions of the story that some like Lufy or Batman is acting outside of the law, but he's not doing harm and it's actually doing a lot of good in a lot of
ways. That they the sort of more establishment law enforcement types can't. And just to be clear, I want to say that, like a lot of what I'm saying here is very vigilanteist. Some of them think, how I'm describing Loofy as kind of libertarian, I'm necessarily saying I'm in favor of all of those things. I'm saying that this is I think the moral argument the show is making. Well, yeah, I would absolutely classify Loofy as a
libertarian. Right, the idea of freedom, like personal freedom, and then but the way that he projects that, like with his power, is that he never uses his personal freedom and his strength as a as a fighter or as a pirate crew to oppress other people. And in fact, he only uses his power to fight against oppressors, whether they are marines or pirates. Yeah, and yeah, in terms in terms of like the what the world
government is doing, that's bad. I think what they're they're doing, or that they're not doing, is they're they're not handling the pirate problem, right despite everything, a like their own forces aren't strong enough. So the the character of Drakul Mihawk, the Greatest Swordsman, is called one of the Warlords of the Sea, the Seven war Lords and he is essentially a privateer. He is someone who has been contracted by the world government to hunt down other
pirates. Right. And then on the other side you have the example of the I mentioned Nazumi, the marine who basically takes brad vibes from yeah, I mean he does. He takes bribes from our long the Fisherman pirate to turn the other way. And so like that's a clear example of where the
world government is failing. And then Garb comes along and finds all this corruption and Lufi has like dealt with the pirates and it's like you kind of did my job for me, so I'm gonna let you go right well, And this is I think really interesting because one of the questions that I kept coming
up with is who gets to define who is a pirate? Because reading through a lot of the history both in kind of the Western like you talked about the Golden Age of piracy, and I think when we're talking about that, we're mostly is talking among Western nations. A lot of it's in the Caribbean, a lot of it's off the coast of Spain and England. There is some of it, you know, in the Far East, but mostly like the history of banditry and on the sea and stuff like that. Is in
Japan and China. There's different words that are used. And this great article I'm gonna link to in the show notes about all that and one of but one of the things that one was reading about, there's a word I'm not
gonna be the translated properly. I think it's wahou in Mandarin, but it basically was a word that was used specifically to refer to and because if you search for piracy in Japan, this is often will come up first because it specifically was a Chinese word and then a Korean version of it for raiders who they associated with coming from the Japanese archipelago. And the article goes into how that often wasn't correct and at times it was maybe only thirty percent of the
people were actually from Japan and a number of the things like that. But one thing he talks about a lot is that it would be the people who felt like they had been attacked would call people this word that you know is understood to be pirates or not seed bandit the word you used. And as for example, they talk about how like people who came as merchants, but
then later people felt like they'd gotten a bad deal out of it. We were often referred to as pirates and things like that, and so kind of what I see happening in this world, looking at this lens of this question of who gets to define what a pirate is, it feels to me like what has happened is that there are people who are what we think of primarily as pirates in terms of the bad usage of that term. They are, you know, raiding villages and stealing from other ships and hurting people and killing
people all that stuff. The world government in that sort of like you know, attacking a fleet with a warhammer kind of idea of painting with a very broad bush brush, starts calling anyone who is not obeying the world government completely, who's you know, working for their freedom instead of their authority and is
connected to the sea in any way a pirate. And so for someone like Loofy, it almost feels like he's kind of reclaiming the word like the way like you know, a lot of like queer communities have reclaimed that word specifically or other words like that, where it's like, yeah, I want to be free and I've grown up learning that that means I'm a pirate, And so he's kind of like redefining the term in a lot of ways and saying, like I can be this People were originally saying pirate means outlaw and bad
persons. But in this world where any kind of freedom is outlawed, then I yeah, I can be a pirate too. Yeah, absolutely, Like Loofy is not just redefining the word, but he is redefining the world,
right. I mean, that's the scope of this character ultimately. I mean it starts off small, but I think it's gonna I don't I don't know how it's gonna end, but somehow, like he's going to come into conflict with the world government, right, Like I don't know if he's going to topple it or change it or just like beat the beat their strongest warriors and walk away. Right that that seems like kind of maybe what he would do. It's like, yeah, I'm just gonna to be your strongest warriors because
you're impeding my freedom. And then one I defeats you, like I don't want to be king, Like he wants to be King of the pirates, but he doesn't want to be the King of the world right. He doesn't want to govern, He just wants to be on the sea. There's another great article I read that'll also link in the show notes called freedom, Heroism, and the Definition of Pirate in One Piece by Sean Atchinson, and I think he wrote. It's on crunchyroll dot com and I think this was written
before the live actions. It's mostly talking about the manga and anime, and he writes to explore, to see new places and experience new islands, meet interesting people, salety unknown, eat new foods, make great friends. These are the things Loofy wants, and finding the One Piece and becoming King of the Pirates is just the endpoint of his thirst for a venture and freedom. Lufy says as much in chapter five oh seven, episode four hundred of One
Piece. Riley asks him if he can really rule as a pirate king, and Lufy responds with I'm not going to rule anything. It's the freest person in the sea who's king of the pirates. And I really appreciated that because I think that is one thing that I was confused by by the show, because I can sort of get under the idea of a pirate who is not our definition of pirate. But then I kept hearing him say I want to be king of the pirates, and I would think, so, does that
mean you don't want any freedom for anyone else who's a pirate? Like, if you're a king, aren't you a ruler? Don't you have some authority over them? And so it's interesting that again it feels like he's saying it not in the king as in the actual ruling monarch of this world of piracy, but more like the way you can say, like you know, someone is the king of lightsaber sales, or someone is the king. You know, it's it's to be the best, to be the epitome, to be
the pinnacle of that particular thing. And that's what he means by king. Yeah, the way I imagine him ruling is that he's he doesn't conquer anyone, but people follow him because they admire him so much, right, Like that's how his character is built, That's how his crew has been built, Like he kind of forces them that he his crew. At first, he's like, you're going to be on my crew. I was saying, like, one of the freedoms he doesn't really believe in is the freedom of other
people to say no we're not a crew. But the conceit, the conceit of his character is that he's always right, right, and that's just something you have to accept. But it is also like he is right in an inspiring way, like he inspires his crew crewmates, right, he liberates their crewmates in some cases, like from their past shackles and trauma. It helps them and says, I am going to support your goal if you support my
goal. Right, the Zoro's goal is to become the greatest swordsman. He's like, well, I'm going to help you do that, like, because you know you're my first mate. If you're not the greatest swordsman, you can't be my first mate. Yeah, And that's I think that's what I love about it, And that's what makes this end goal of King of the
Pirates kind of interesting because yeah, like obviously he's the protagonist. He's going to end up becoming King of the Pirates, but it's not going to be as you say, like he's not going to be like this warlord who controls everything. He's just going to be out there still like the same person having a good time. And as long as you are having a good time and not I guess impeding other people from having a good time by stealing from them,
He's okay with them. Yeah, And it's an interesting philosophical ethos because if everyone follows that, we're good, right, right, and in fact we're bored because then there's no one left to fight. If no one is stealing from anyone, then the good guys don't have anyone to steal from and fight. But you know that we're never going to be in that idealized world.
There will always be bad people for Loofy to fight. Is kind of the point, And there's a lot there that I want to unpack because I think that that's both a lot of what I love by his character and also what kind of makes me fearful of him in the same way I'm fearful of Libertaranism in general, as well as anyone who claims to believe that they know what is objectively right or wrong or good or bad, either in general or for specific people. But first, I am curious. We talked a bit
about the word pirate. Talk to me about the word king in Japanese. Because I'm by no means an expert, but in my study of Japanese history, I often see reference to an emperor or other times a shogun or other kind of leaders. I've never seen much discussion of there being someone that is translated to king, and I'm just kind of curious, like what is the
word that you do? Do you know offhand, what is the word that's used that he wants to be and is is it just kind of like the Japanese word for how you'd refer to Henry the eighth or is something different and kind of what's that concept like coming from a Japanese perspective. Yeah, I mean the word they use is kaisa ku ol the kaisaku pirate, and then ol is from osama, which is just king. Okay, you're right, I don't I cannot think of like a historical example where a ruler in Japan
would have been in ol sama. So it could be a word that is just used to refer to outside nations kings, even though like it is a Japanese word, it's not like a word we took from as far as I know, from another language, because there there's kanji for it. So yeah, that's interesting. I never thought about it that way, but yeah, old sama and then the sama is just the suffix the honorific suffix. So ol is king. I'm not really sure what to think about that right now.
Yeah, Well, and certainly if other people are listening and they have more thoughts on this right in, because certainly you're telling us that it is the Japanese word for kings specifically, does help I think a lot, and that it does not only at least that that king is an accurate translation there, but yeah, to me, it's an important thing to think about about how these things can be in such different contexts and stuff like that, especially,
you know, because I think pirate is also a word just like that. So let's get back to this idea of the philosophy of it of and again pulling out at the larger and then talking more specifically about loofy in general. How do you tend to react to characters who will say everyone else's idea of right and wrong is they don't understand. I know what's right and wrong, and so I'm gonna follow my own lead do what I think is right, and if someone tells me I'm wrong, I'm not gonna let them stop
me. Sorry. What was the original question, Oh, just your reaction to characters who have that kind of a perspective reaction is that they they better be good. Yeah, And I think I've mentioned attack on Titan in the past with you, but that that protagonist just goes off the rails and is like a bad evil. It's an evil character, and yet he's the protagonist.
And I think that's what makes Lufy magical is that he has always been good, Like He's had some interesting quandaries and moments, but they are not related to him being evil or bad or they pertain to his lack of character as a captain like that, I think that is the place where his ethics are questioned the most in his story is that he does something that maybe hurts someone, like hurts a member of his crew emotionally sometimes physically, like they
fight all the time, but he has to do it because that's captain's responsibility. And I think that's that's the most bad or evil like his character is portrayed as and other than that, like he's just this paragone. And I think with a character like this whose ethos is I just want to be free and I want everyone to be free, but just don't do bad stuff like he has, he has to be like almost perfect, right, like morally
perfect. Otherwise that doesn't work. Otherwise other people are not going to follow him willingly. It's like, well, I kind of disagree with you on this like type of thing. And it's it's very black and white, but I think it's done in a it's done in a well written and beautiful way. Yeah, in a lot of ways. I see him a lot like Captain America and that scene from Civil War and she says, you know, even when everyone else says you're wrong, you know you're right. You know
you say you move. And I think I have kind of the same reaction to him that I have to Captain America, which is, yes, I believe that you are enough of paragon of morality that I trust that you are going to be right. And most of the time, in Lovie's case, I think he actually makes him real. He has some real sort of gaps in his moral wisdom that we'll talk about in a little bit. Papa, I think, is getting a lot better about that, and we've seen CAP's
evolution about it in earlier movies. But part of why Captain America terrifies me when he says that, and I have a similar reaction, I think to Loofy is, like you said, it's not only that the people who follow again, like you said, the people who follow him have to be just as moral or not even to follow him in terms of being part of his crew. But the other people who say, oh, Loofy can do whatever he thinks he's right, Well, I'm going to do the same thing too.
And yet what they think right is that they be well taken care of. So if someone has stuff that they want, well they should take it, you know. I think in many ways that's how you see Loofy is and opoint. Also, I have a bias in that Lufy is portrayed in the live action at least, and I don't think this is true in the other versions as a kind of character that I don't think is bad or wrong, and I think I don't think people are bad or wrong to enjoy it.
I personally don't find it pleasant to see on screen the kind of super exuberance, the like yelling and screaming every time he does something good, the naming his moves, and you know, the just like yep, I've at our confidence. I don't care what anyone else thinks. I don't'm gonna do it I just don't like people like that, either in person or in the stuff I watch. So I have that bias, and that's my own bias. And you know, maybe you're the therapy will help me fix it,
who knows. But the actual failings that I think I see al most often with Loofy, that I think I also see a lot. And this is where for me the libertarian comment comes in, is it feels like a lot of the time he's not aware of who he might be hurting because I think you're right, he wants to steal from bad people. He wants to steal from institutions and things like that. You know, to give just one example, I think stealing food for subsistence, Like, that's not something I'm ever
going to come down on. But one episode, he takes his crew into a fairly fancy restaurant and you know, orders a huge amount of food for he and his friends, and uh, you know orders you know, the most extravagant things on the menu, and he has no idea how he's going to pay. He's like, I don't I don't have any want to pay.
What's the big deal? And that well, no he sees he says, put it on my treasure tab I think is the phrase they use, right, because you think he has this idea that he's going to have all this money one day and so everyone should believe him. Yeah theory, right, like if you're a pirate and you frequently find treasure and yeah, like, hey, I don't have any right now, but you know I'm good for it, right, But that only works if anyone has any reason that
he's good for it, and he does, right. And it's weird because he's very much not a person who has privilege, but I feel like he acts in a way as though he acts in a way that feels like he's been very spoiled and very entitled in terms of he always assumes everyone around him is going to be just as hopeful as he is, or even more important, that they're gonna believe that. And to me, and that's just stealing. Like the restaurant seems like it's a decent place, Like I mean,
I'm not supporting big business here, it's not. But it's not like a huge chain that's oppressing people. It's just a restaurant with a pretty awesome guy who was the chef there and the assistant chef, so It's just one example, but I think that's the kind of thing where it felt to me like for Loofy to make sense, he has to have, like you said, he has to have that perfect moral compass, and I felt like at least in season one and he doesn't have that yet. And maybe that's the point
is he gets that and that's awesome, but there's that. Another example to me is where we got a joke before, we kind of talked a little bit before about how he tells everyone they're gonna be on his crew, and as you said, it's because he winds up being right that that is what they want. Well, maybe or that he actually doesn't incredibly strong personality and
can talk people in anything. Because again, to me, when someone says I know what other people want better than they do, so I'm gonna get them to do it, that that to me is not something that leads to
good places. Well, I think in terms of the way his character is portrayed or written, he does seem to have the perfect humpass in terms of reading people h whether either whether whether it comes to joining his crew or just punching their lights out, I can't remember if it's portrayed in this one, but I recall in my head something where he just like punches someone and it's not even fully established yet that the person he punched is a villain. But
it's like, why did you do that? And he's like, I don't know, they bothered me. Yeah, So I mean that's the manga side of it, like it's comical, and they play his naivy tae to comedy a lot of the times. I want to go back real quick to what you mentioned about Captain America because it struck a nerve for me. I don't know it struck a nerve, but it rang a bell for me when you
compare the Loofy to Captain America, right, the quote you said. And then in Civil War the movie, his personal failing by the end of it is that he lied to his friend Tony Stark about Bucky being the assassin that
killed his parents. And I think, like what I mentioned about upcoming Loofy stories, like not going to spoil the specifics, but like that's his moral failing is like when he holds something back from his friends, right, And I think, like, I don't know, like that just made a very interesting contrast of like I never thought about Captain America and Loofy as parallels. So I appreciate that. Yeah, well, I think it's awesome because,
like for me, I'm I wasn't even thinking about that. I was thinking just of the conflict at the beginning of the movie, where you know, it is this question of should someone have moral oversight or should ethical or legal oversight over the Avengers and his position is no, we know best what to do. And you know, and I've spoken a lot about Captain America and my thoughts about other places sys I don't want get into this with everly,
but yeah, I think you're right. I think what you're getting at there, I think is maybe a better way of kind of pulling this back to the philosophy of all. Of course, I love freedom, of course, I love the idea of everyone getting to do exactly what they want. But you know, there's that old quote that the freedom to swing my arm ends
when my arm hits your face. And I feel like the problem that I so often have with people like Loofy or libertarians or whatever you want to call it, is how areware are they of the actual harm they're doing to others? And so I think that's why I kind of have a knee jerk response of being very critical of it, and it even if it's an idea that like someone like Captain America or Loofy is that paragon who can do it. Loofy seemed to believe that everyone can do it and that to be just fundamentally
wrong and that every one should be free. Is that what you're saying, Pree in the way that he thinks in terms of like there isn't any overarching authority or structure of I guess to me where I kind of come And this is now kind of getting into political philosophy, but I think it's kind of
where we're going with the whole show. I'm a strong believer that the idea of when does my freedom become an infringement on someone else's freedom is such a complicated question, with so many things that any individual person might not see or might not want to see, and so many dangers of individual bias coming in that I tend to lean towards thee Like if the extremes are everyone decides for
themselves and one world government decides for everybody else. Both of those I think are awful, but I lean a little bit more towards community and societies and cultures coming together to help everyone understand what's the best way to see freedom is not imprinting against someone else's freedom rather than all being individuals like Loofy. Yeah, I don't. It's hard. It's hard to paint with such broad rushes
with this product. I mean, because it's it's very simplistic, right, And for me, that's the point, and that's why I enjoy it. I know, like there are other things we talk about and watch where characters
are more complicated and nuanced, and that's interesting to discuss. But again, like I'm you have the the narrative of one piece is set up in such a way that you you have to have trust in Loofy, right, right, and at least to now, to over like eleven hundred episodes that I believe that trust has not been broken, right, even though like there are moments where he struggles and fails, Like, I don't think the trust has been broken in terms of like the goodness of his character, and that to
me, like is an important part of some I guess heroic journeys or heroic narratives, and maybe like maybe this goes to like why Paul has such a problem with the last Jedi, and the way that Luke is portrayed is that he feels like that some of that trust was broken by showing Luke despondent right, not necessarily like that he failed, like I think heroic characters can fail, but that he turned his back on it like that moment I can understand,
like in this context, now I can understand like why that would feel like the betrayal of a character that has been built up as the hero. Yeah. I think you're will make very good points, and I want to say two things. One is, I do agree with you in the specific world of One Piece, I do think we're supposed to just trust Loofy.
And also kind of see it as a like, we're not saying that someone like Loofy would work in our own world, but in this world where someone like Loofy can be such a moral paragon, but also where the government is so fundamentally authoritarian itself, and like you said, where the point is to have a fun story, not necessarily a perfectly morally complex and nuanced story.
I agree with all that. I think I was more trying to say, well, but let's it's still an interesting question to take and apply to our own world and larger things like that. I think, though specifically with one piece, and here again, I really want to hear from listeners. I wonder if I would have a very different perspective on this if I had grown up or just you know, at some point had a lot of experience of
the manga or the anime. Because I feel like, and I rewatched the first three episodes just this morning, and it confirmed for me, I don't feel like the show ever gives me a reason to trust Loofy, particularly because the first person he tries to free is Kobe. He meets Kobe very early on. Kobe is the kid who, as you said, wants to eventually
become a marine. It does become a marine. Kobe is the kid who wants to become a marine, who he meets in the first episode early on, But at this point Kobe is basically a pirate for Avina I think it's her name, Avita Alvida Alvida, thank you, and not by choice. He feels like he can't get away. He has to do these things or else he's gonna get punished. He does not have freedom in this situation, but he also was very scared to challenge that freedom because he, I think
somewhat rightly believes that the consequences would be pretty dire. And so when comes along and just very cavalierly says, no, just be free, just don't do that. That's fine, there's no problem, and then specifically kind of Outsloopy uh, specifically almost outs Kobe in a way that Kobe has in no way consented to, and makes up thinks like he extrapolates kind of what he thinks Kobe is thinking, but tells the pirate leaders like, oh, yeah, Kobe was calling you stupid. He was, you know, trying to
piss them off and start a fight that Kobe wants no part of. To me, that's an incredibly reckless and that made me significantly not trust him because he winds up putting Kobe into lethal danger and yes, because of the rules of comic book fighting and stuff like that, they wind up surviving. And maybe the point is that he just knew that would happen. And maybe that's what my failing is. I haven't read enough comic books because I just can't.
To me, I am going to start a fight on half of someone else that puts them in danger because I'm so confident that I will win, and so they're not actually in any danger, which it doesn't work for me. And there's other stuff like that, But I think for me, that's the point is that I don't by the end of it, I do have that trust. So I'm very curious to see where second season will go.
But for most of this first season, I just don't trust Loofy the way you're saying you do, well, yeah, I mean, I would say that that is a central concept of a lot of shonen stories, is the openess of the protagonist, especially in the beginning, like One Piece, Dragon Ball, Bleach, like oftentimes, these characters are like supernaturally stronger than just about everyone around them, and they kind of defeat the like average, you
know, villain pretty easily, and I think that's used to establish, you know, establish their power level and use that as a storytelling method, or when you know, the stronger villains show up, like in this first season arc ar Along, the Fishman defeats Loofy initially in his fight and that's kind of like a big moment, and then he has his his rematch and Zorro
loses the fight. That shows he's not the greatestwordsman of the world. And I think one almost guaranteed that same guy again at the later point, well someday maybe the final battle like that. I don't think that's happened yet, because that is that is one of the most interesting storytelling decisions I've ever seen, is to have Zoro say I want to be the greatest swordsman, and then very early on meet the person who is acknowledged is the greatest, the
current greatest swordsman, right and lose to him right that. I can't think of another story where you just like immediately get the final boss like so in your face, like final bloss for Zoro at least. Yeah, And I think it's what made I mean one of I sometimes have this with you know, main character syndrome and stuff like that. This is definitely a show where I really enjoyed every other character except Loofy and Zora. I think was one
of my favorites. Positingly my favorite in part because of that, because I feel like, whereas Loofy has this incredibly unfounded, no reason for it, hyper confidence, but because of you know, his fighting ability and sheer luck and all these other things he hasn't fallen yet. Zorro is the exact opposite.
Zoro is someone who has incredible hubris and sense of himself, but he gets knocked down and then the rest of the story is about him first getting back up onto his feet and not just saying Okay, well I'm the worst, so I'm a failure, but also saying no, I'm not the greatest yet, but I will be one day, and I want to work towards that. That's interesting that you think of them so differently, because to me,
like, that's the same. I guess what what you're saying is, Like the difference is that Zoro has failed once, like in a major way. More important, he's learned, he accepts that he has Like but they're but their characters are the same to me, Like they both have like this goal of the highest thing I can achieve within my career. You know, my my place, and I'm going to do that no matter what, and
nothing's going to stand in my way. Like those that's that they have the same thing, right, I want to be the king of the pirates. I want to be the greatest swordsman in the world. Like those are the pinnacles of their things right, and it's it's different from like the other characters, like Sanji wants to find the all Blue, which doesn't it doesn't make him the great. He doesn't want to be the greatest chef in the world.
He just wants to find this mythical place where all the ingredients and all the fish can be found, right, and to cook with those ingredients, which is still like a highly unattainable goal because no one else in this world is like, yeah, like all Blues is like they all think it's a myth Oh, but he doesn't say so, I can be the greatest chef in the world right what I'm doing. But to me, like Zorro and
Lufier are the same in their goals, I think there really are. It's that I think that Zorro's confidence feels like it has a lot more basis in fact than just in pure hubris, and Zorro has learned a lesson, Like I think if the end of that first episode had been Loofy's saying to Kobe, you know what, I was wrong to think that I knew what was best for you, and I got us into a fight that I never should have gotten us into, and I'm sorry. And if you think it's better
and then gotten to the same place. If you think what was best for us to be a marine, you go be a marine. And we'd seen him then be a little more cautious about telling other people what is best for them. I think I would like his character a lot more and to me,
then he'd feel a lot more like Zorro. It's that Zoro had that moment of you know, there's a lot of jokes online about like, you know, if only all of us had the confidence of the you know, underqualified, you know, the confidence of the underqualified, basic male who thinks that he's so much better than he actually is. That Loofy really hits that bone for me, you know, and that there is no reason for him to have all this confidence, all this hubris, and when he's shown that
he's wrong, he doesn't learn anything from it. And I think that's where I feel like him and him and Zoro are so different. Okay, Well, I think I disagree. That's fair, that's fair, and mainly like I disagreed just because of the conceit of what a manga story is is that the main character in the end, by the end will succeed the time right right, so to me, like his confidence is not unfound, it's just kind of like comically curated, and we're just waiting for the rest of the
people to realize it. Well. And like I said, I think for myself, not knowing much about manga i'm and also not having read it or seen any of that, I'm only going by the what Netflix shows. Uh and here again, listeners, I'd really love to know you know more what you think if other folks have only seen the live action I'm curious, you know, are you closer to when I am or close to Whriki is, because I don't know. I don't know if I'm an outlier in that regard
or if this is something that you know. Sometimes I think what can happen? So I think has happened with Ahska to a large extent. If you know a lot of the other versions of the story, it's easier to kind of fill in some of the gaps that people who aren't only seeing it for the first time in live action don't get to fill in. And so I maybe that and it may well be that for the overall character, You're completely right. All I can talk about is just because that's that's the limited thing
that I've seen. Yeah, for me, like I just finished another series called Hunter Hunter, and again, like the main character gone is the very headstrong, somewhat naive but like very well meaning, like like this is gonna
happen because like it's what has to happen type of character. And there's actually like very interesting moments where he fails, but every time he has that anime protagonist moment of like we're just gonna do this, Like, yeah, I've rolled my eyes one hundred percent roll my eyes, but I also believe they're just gonna do it. Right, Yeah, that makes sense, That makes sense. You know this maybe it should the place on a crimodgeon, you know, in the same way that like Paul is always y only get me,
Like, no, it's comic book physics. You know. Head injuries don't work that way in comic books and comic book shows. It's just again where I have trouble believe in it. But that's fair. We've been about an hour. I want to start wrapping up. So it's been about an hour. I want to start wrapping up. So Riky, let me just kind of pulls back to the original question. Having this discussion, I think we both agree that Lufy is a good guy. I I think he wants
to be a good guy. I don't think he's as good as he thinks he is. But I think we both agree that he's definitely not the malevolent pirate. He's not even the sort of you know, anti hero. He's definitely a hero in this world. Do you think outside of this world? Not to say, like in our own world, although I think there's an interesting example in our own but also like in general, does a pirate have to mean a bad guy in other stories? In other stories and other stories
are or like in the real world. I mean, like I'll give a real example right now. There are people in Yemen who ride out on boats with weapons to interfere with shipping that's happening in the area around like the south of the South Arabian Peninsula peninsula. We all call them pirates. Most to my knowledge, they have not killed anybody, or not killed very few people, and most of what they're doing is interfering with shipping that's going to Israel
because of their understanding of what's happening in that conflict. So to me, that's an example of like where people are labeled pirates, and I think many people kind have a negative view of them. Some might have a more positive view of them. Uh So I'm kind of asking for you, like either in our own world or just in stories in general, like what do you think of the central question? Can can pirates be good guys? Good people?
No? I'm gonna say no, my, Like the way the definition of piracy is set up, it is literally like people who are breaking the law, so to me, like that's that's not good. And then you have to ask a question of like well are the laws just? Is are the people in power just? And that gets more complicated, and I think
you just have to go to like specific examples. But it's uh, I mean, and like the specific example you cite like is at a certain point, like iracy is just war is just undeclared war in my opinion, Like historically too, like what we were talking about between England and Spain, Like between those empires they did also like declare war several times during that period.
But then like during the times of supposed peace, a lot of this fighting going on, the piracy, the privateering was just those nations like trying to get at each other and like steal their resources and stop them from having bigger colonies, right, and and like that, it's just get into broader questions of like are wars good and like again like no, but specific examples of
like why wars are being fought and like who's fighting them. It's it's complicated, but like I'm fairly comfortable just like on a broad basis just saying no, pirates are bad, Okay, I think when me really come down to who's defining the pirate, you know, and I think by the strict definition of a pirate, who is robbing and stealing for their own benefit. Yeah, I think I'm with you, pirates are bad. I think when we look at it more from the perspective of who are other people defining as pirates?
And that you know, as definitely happens in this world, but I think happens in our own world. It is a lot of those kind of people, but also people who have much more you know, altruistic goals or even just you know, what they think is justice for their own people goals, what are doing where the law isn't perfect or where are the authorities corrupt? Or things like that. I think is a lot of more grayness. So this was a great question. I'm really glad that you kind of brought
this up with One Piece. I'm glad you encourage me to watch One Piece. I think I'm coming off very negative because I really it's a philosophical question I really care about. But you know, none of this is to say that I think One Piece is bad or wrong. It's just not one that I the central Conceit is one that I don't necessarily wrap my head around.
But that's you know, it's not a criticulous show, but any means, it's just I mean to wrap up going back to one Piece, I think even like Loofy's version of piracy like stealing from people who have stolen from others, it's is wrong, right, and he does like a robin Hood thing
like often of redistributing that wealth to the people who have been oppressed. But if we look at his like end goal of like everyone's free, like but don't steal from other people, right, Like, if that's the end goal and no one is stealing from other people, then Loofy, like I said, has no one himself to steal from. So I think that kind of points to like, on a very broad perspective that even his version of piracy is wrong, and once you reach the quote unquote perfect world becomes unnecessary.
Yeah, I mean, and that's drawing that comparison. Like I said before, you know, Batman in a lot of the versions of the story wants to do enough to bring you know, the bad elements of Gotham under control that the actual government and police can you know, re established themselves enough that he's not needed anymore. Right, Yeah, And yet and the ideal world Batman is not needed, right, it's the idea that he's he's trying to reach, but never will because that story, well I was just gonna say,
because that story will never end, right right. That's the other thing about manga stories is that they do end, unlike American comics. So even though like dragon Ball is trying to change that, I say, one Piece hasn't ended either, right, One piece hasn't ended, But there is an end. There's going to be an end, and Oda Sense has started talking about it like that we're getting close and he's like finalizing his final ideas. What I was saying about dragon Ball is that it ended and then came back.
So I don't and that's something we could talk about about franchises in a future episode about you know why they never end, et cetera. But I'm not sure what's going on with dragon Ball because especially now that tordyemosense has passed away, like who who writes the stories? Like who owns this property? Who controls this property? And what will it become? Is? Yeah, I said for a future discussion, Yeah, definitely, all right Oriki,
Thank you so much. As always, this is a great conversation to our listeners. Thank you so much. As always, there's a lot of As always, there's going to be bonus content for our members. We'll have a little bit extra after this episode. We're gonna start doing bonus member full episodes here on Superhero Ethics. We've been doing them on Star Wars generations. Please become a member only five dollars a month, fifty five dollars a year.
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