@theackwardstation said in Official Wano Thread:
@Ivotas But I agree with that. It's not a exact science, so we're not supposed to have a definitive and unquestionable answer for Jimbe's feelings from that dialogue (although Crocodile's prejudice is noticeable). It's vague and muddy, and not straightforward. And that's why I find it weird that you wanted to take that sentence at face value, and then put your coins on this dialogue being a decisive indication of fishmen and merfolk being at odds with each other.
It's not the statement by itself. It's the little bits and pieces that we got until this point that aling well together. If you remember, I said in the beginning that there is other parts that played a factor and that I cannot remember exactly where they were. But one thing is definitely what Daz just brought up by the readers first contact with each race. Then there's the SBS which shows a clear moral difference for both peoples. And then there's the Croc-Jinbei conversation.
All those three examples shoot in the same direction: fishman rowdy (first intruduction to the reader in form of violent racists; SBS says they want to dominate other sea creatures which comes after Arlong already wanting to dominate humans; Jinbei saying "yes, we are kinda barbaric) and Merfolk friendly (first introduced to the reader as friendly; want to befriend other sea creatures; not much on them in the Croc conversation though).
Add to that, that I haven't even addressed the big elephant in the room yet, which is them literally being called 'fishmen' and 'merfolk'. They use two different terms as labels to distinguish two groups with clearly different visual features. Everything I said above about SBS, Croc-Jinbei and their first appearances only adds further layers to the differences between the two. But even if we take all those layers out (which we shouldn't as they are added defining tidbits about both groups) the matter of fact is that they already are different both by appearance and by name. I don't get why I even need to defend this much why I feel they have not been portrayed to be the same prior to Fishman Island.
And I have to repeat this again, I'm not saying they are at odds with each other. If that's about argument I made about me saying that I think the conflict between the slums and the royalty, then I repeat that this is a completely different discussion. Yes, I believe that the difference between fishmen and merfolk might be a cause that led to this in entire conflict in the first place. But this is completely my own theory about the history of the conflict. It's a completely different point of discussion that shall not be connected to the "feeling of disconnect" discussion. All I'm saying is that there is more than one thing that showed fishmen and merfolk to be different. Not to be at odds, with each other. Not that they cannot befriend each other. Just that they are different. And when Den suddenly goes, "yeah, we're basically all the same and all the difference humans see in us are completely human-made" then I just feel a certain amount of disconnect with everything that came before.
I feel like if that were the case, Oda would have hinted at that from the relationship between Camie and Hachi, but they were just fine without ambiguities. On the contrary, Sabaody established a grudge between fishfolk (as a whole) and humans instead of one between each type of fishfolk. When Jimbe said that line to Crocodile, after everything we'd learned in Sabaody and Amazon Lily, I didn't have in me the feeling that fishmen were barbaric, and the fact that the sentence sounded so disingenuous only made me doubt even more of the possibility of taking it at face value.
Just as I said above, nowhere do I imply that fishman and merfolk cannot befriend each other. I'm having a problem with "yeah, we're all the same" when everything before said they are not.
And just one last thing about the racism thing between them. I repeat, that has nothing to do with the disconnect. But just because there's a racism on a bigger level between all seafolk and humans, it doesn't mean that there can't be racism on a local level. There's countless examples for this both in the real world and in fiction. But as stated already, this racism part is completely my own theory about where the conflict between the slum and royalty is coming from. It's a completly different discussion from me feeling a disconnect ever since Den openened his mouth. Let's not mix those two discussions up just because both involve differences between fishmen and merfolk.