He’s first introduced as a terrifying villain in the shadows who’s killing an entire country of thirst and orchestrating a civil war while posing as their hero. He runs a vast criminal organization while having immunity from the government. He’s viciously cunning and dreadfully powerful. The first time Luffy fights him, he never even touches him and very nearly gets killed. It takes him THREE times to finally beat him, and hardly. Just by the events in the Arabasta saga, Crocodile would’ve gone down as an amazing character and villain.
But then.
But then, like eight arcs after Arabasta, Luffy breaks into Impel Down, where Crocodile happens to be imprisoned. And he just. First he says HISASHIBURI DANA MUGIWARA in an incredibly deep and sexy voice that has me giggling and twirling my hair. Then he gets blackmailed by IVANKOV who knows A PERSONAL SECRET OF HIS and we’re all looking at him like
AND THEN Crocodile joins Luffy to break out of prison and go to war, but not before taking a detour through Newkama Land because god forbid Crocodile showed up at Marineford wearing dirty prisoner rags. On their way out they meet Blackbeard, who starts rambling about his evil plan and Crocodile is like “who” and Blackbeard says “me” and Crocodile replies “no, who asked you” and moves on because he really couldn’t care less about that mf.
And then. And then.
They arrive at Marineford. And Crocodile PEAKS at Marineford.
He shows up in this huge battlefield and he hates EVERY SINGLE PERSON on it. Fuck you, Whitebeard. Fuck you, Doflamingo. Fuck you, Sengoku. Fuck you, Mihawk. Fuck you, Akainu. He’s completely unhinged. An agent of chaos. And if he ends up picking a side, he does it because FUCK COPS THAT’S WHY and isn’t that the noblest of reasons.
And then he comes back over a decade of publication later to create a bdsm gay polycule with a sex dungeon along with a misanthropic swordsman and a clown.
One difference between the Lord of the Rings books and the Peter Jackson films that I find really interesting is what the hobbits find when they return to the Shire.
In the books, they return from the War, only to see that the war has not left their home untouched. Not only has it not left their home unscathed, battle and conflict is still actively ravaging the Shire. They return, weary and battle-scarred, to find a home actively wounded and in need of rescue and healing. All four launch themselves into defending their home and rousting those harming it, and eventually succeed. But their idyllic home has been damaged, and even once healed, is never quite again the Shire they set out to save.
In contrast, in the Jackson films, they return to a Shire shockingly untouched by the horrors of war. The hobbits of the Shire talk, in the Green Dragon in Fellowship of the Ring, about not getting involved with issues “beyond our borders,” and it seems those issues have not invaded their sanctuary. After having been bowed to by kings, dwarves, elves, and men alike at the coronation in Gondor, their only acknowledgment upon returning home is a skeptical head shake from an older hobbit.
One of the most poignant scenes to me in Return of the King (and there are a considerable amount) is the scene where Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin are sitting in the Green Dragon. The pub patrons bustle around them, talking loudly, clapping excitedly, drinking cheerfully, just as they had in the beginning of the story. But the four hobbits sit silently, watching almost curiously at what was once familiar but is now foreign to them. Their home has not changed. But they have.
Which is the deeper hurt? To come to your home to find it irrevocably changed, despite all you did to keep it untouched and the same? Or to return home but no longer feeling at home, because it is only you that is irrevocably changed?
As an Australian, I can’t help but wonder if Jackson being a New Zealander affects this. Although he’s obviously too young to have done so, New Zealanders and Aussies fought in the two world wars that inform the writing of the Lord of the Rings. And where Britain was bombed during WWII on night raids, Australia and New Zealand were largely untouched.
A British soldier returning home in 1949 would have had a vastly different homecoming to a New Zealander returning home from a war half a world away.
