Shimotsuki Kuina - Blog Posts

EXACTLYYYY

I feel like a lot of people really want/wanted Kuina to be Tashigi because they can't accept that all the potential she had was ruined because she had a tragic accident.

What makes Zoro's backstory sad isn't so much the scale of destruction, like on Robin's, but rather how down to Earth it is, as Kuina tripped, fell and probably broke her neck in a bad landing. It's that simple, and it serves as a good contrast to the larger scale backstories.

Today I was showing my nephew the second episode of OPLA with Usopp, and we've got to the scene when Zoro was trying to get out of the well, while thinking about Kuina. My nephew complained about how in anime Kuina died in an accident which he found lame, and I started to think about it deeper.

I came to conclusion that Kuina's fairly normal death via tripping accident is meant to be doubly tragic. She didn't just die young in a stupid, easily avoidable accident, while having such grand plans as becoming the greatest warrior ever; she didn't even die in combat. All of this happens some time after Zoro and Kuina promised each other that one of them will become The Greatest Swordsman in the World, so Kuina's ordinary accident feels like a cruel twist of fate. She didn't even die a warrior's death; she just tripped.

For some reason I truly fully believe that Kuina’s death wasn’t an accident. We know her dad was misogynistic and thought she would never become the world’s greatest swordsman. And that she was a skilled martial artist who could win fights against adults in the dojo with ease. We hear gossip amongst people at the funeral that she “fell down the storehouse steps apparently” which is just hearsay.

You expect me to believe such a talented young martial artist just slipped down the stairs and died?? No. I suspect foul play.

I refuse to accept that the canon is supposed to be an accident.

AU: Kuina lived and her father was supportive of her ambition. He sent her to Wano to learn the way of the swords so they meet again when Zoro arrived at Wano.

I just rlly wanted to design a giant Kuina after seeing how big Kiku is :)))

Hrm hrm today I’m having thoughts about Kuina and her overwhelming Lost Boy vibes and how like. You NEVER GET Lost Girls like that. Narratively, she is The Girl Who Didn’t Grow Up. She will always be eleven and perfect, immortalized in memory. In Zoro’s mind, she is forever just a little bit older and a little bit taller than him. Even now when he remembers her, he pictures her face from an upward angle. She will ALWAYS be “older” and yet she will NEVER be more than eleven. I want to know what was happening in Zoro’s head when he turned 12 and realized he was older than she would ever get to be. I just. All the vibes, give them to me. This is one of the things that just gets me every fucking time!!!

(Sabo is also positioned like this, and is a fairly straightforward example up until it gets subverted by him ACTUALLY GROWING UP. Sabo is what happens when the lost boy grows up and it’s fucking FASCINATING.)

I think the key thing is, in order to be a "lost boy" narrative and not just a tragically dead child character, there needs to have been an expectation of greatness. It's not that little girls don't die in fiction, or that they aren't mourned. But this particular type of narrative emphasizes the specific grief of the loss of incredible potential, which isn't a thing dead little girl characters usually get. They're usually narratives about the loss of innocence or the fragility of life and the injustice of mortality, and Kuina has a little of that - how unfair it is for her life to be cut short. But it's also the bit of, if you'll let me get lyrical for a moment, you could have done so much more if you only had time.

as people grow up, one of the things we have to deal with is the loss of the possibilities of what we could have been, because we can only become one of our possible selves. Even if you become great, even if you're happy, even if you made the best possible choice, you still have to make that decision that to become this I must give up on becoming that. Lost Boys don't ever get to become, so they are enshrined with all that potential still in them. All of the people they could have been, all of the paths they might have taken.

(A thing that drives me crazy: balancing the grief of growing up with the grief of not-growing-up. The tragedy of becoming and the tragedy of never getting to become. The dozens of ghosts of possible selves that every adult carries around with them. Not relevant to the current discussion, but still, a thing to think about!)

There's also the fact that she gets set up with a projected character arc - we can see how she might've grown and dealt with her insecurities and overcome the obstacles in her path, but she'll never get to do it. And Zoro can take their shared dream on himself and make that his responsibility, but he can't resolve her emotional baggage for her, because that's not how that works. And we don't know! Maybe she wouldn't ever have managed it! But Kuina-the-confident-adult is just one of the many possible people she'll never get to be.

Remember that Zoro, Kuina and Sanji au, well, I liked drawing a picture of them.The context is that Kuo was the only one who noticed this "sisterhood" between his daughter and the pair of quarrelsome kids, so he wanted a photo for the memory,I knew that Sanji would leave and never return to that island one day. Kou told Kuina that he wanted a picture, Kuina agreed and when he told the pair of children, they flatly refused to take a picture.with the other, starting to make excuses for some displeasure towards the other, thus escalating from excuses to argument and from argument to fight, kuina, annoying,I left each of them with a bump on their heads to calm them down, a comical moment that Kou and Zeff now each have framed.

HEY, A NEW AU! Zoro, Kuina and Sanji trio?! Siblings?

Well, this is an AU I've been wanting to draw for months.

It's about how, Zeff seeing that Sanji still didn't value his hands as a cook, punished him, forcing him to go to a dojo so that when he hurt his hands, he would really value them.

The blessed dojo is Kou's, where Zoro and Kuina are. Upon arriving, Sanji expresses his displeasure at being there, which annoys Zoro.

Over time, Zoro, Kuina and Sanji begin to get along better, to the point that the three of them began to train hard, unaware that they've gone from strangers to siblings. Kuina and Zoro almost always defend him from ridicule for his very thin body.

Sanji was present but hidden when Zoro and Kuina made their promise. On the day Kuina died, Sanji and Zoro bumped fists before Sanji said that he should fulfill Kuina's dream. at all costs, and Zoro told Sanji that he should become strong so that he would not be underestimated for his thin body. Two years pass, Sanji must return to the baratie, while he is on the return ship, Zoro yells at him from the coast to fulfill his dream and promises, Sanji yelled the same thing back.

Something I didn't mention was that the three of them had told each other their dreams, plus Sanji cooked for everyone at the dojo. Sanji uses two swords, but he uses them for blocking, not attacking. L The bandages on his legs are from kicking a rock for years until it broke. Sanji and Zoro fought a thousand times, Zoro won 501 times and Sanji 499 times, Sanji against Kuina simply didn't, Kuina won. the 800 fights they had. Sanji spent 2 years in the dojo.

Years later they met again in the baratie according to the original story and the rest, well, One Piece 👍

Fact that made me laugh but seems true and correct: I think Zoro was very short as a child which is why I said that Sanji beat him by 10 cm even though Sanji is originally taller than Zoro, and of course,Kuina is a little taller than Sanji, so you can imagine Sanji's teasing of Zoro, which is ironic since Sanji is currently 1 cm shorter than Zoro🤣

Am I the only one that thinks Kuina turning into a boy by Ivankov would be completely antithetical to her struggle & is lowkey sexist? Why would the happy ending for a girl suffering from immense emotional distress because she's suffering under misogynistic gender roles be her turning into a man? Wouldn't that just prove her biggest fears correct? That she really would only hold value as a swordsman if she were a man despite all the effort she put into her craft?

How could she ever be at peace with herself if she doesn't at least give herself a chance to achieve her dreams as a woman? Because wasn't it clear the reason for her discomfort as a girl wasn't because she genuinely wants to be a boy, but because she resents the limitations the world puts onto her gender??