User blog comment:DancePowderer/What Are We Thinking?/@comment-3097081-20110223081236

It's not just about who's right and who's wrong. Some characters are right but not good, or wrong but not bad, you get what I'm saying? Sengoku and Garp, and even Akainu, are good, but they are not right. Garp let his adopted grandson be executed.He is a good person, who stands for peace and justice, and lives to protect the world from pirates. But Ace was not a bad or wrong pirate, and yet he let Ace be executed. Akainu is also good. He also stands for justice, and lives to protect the world from pirates. But he is wrong. He puts eradication of all pirates before justice. Sengoku... man, Sengoku has shown so many times that, even though he is good, he is absolutely not fair. That guy is so wrong.

But then, justice is also not so easy to see in this story. As in real life, justice is a point of view, and even from our point of view, marines are justice and pirates are evil. But any real fan of One Piece will by now have realised that the line is always blurred. Not all pirates are evil, not all marines are just, etc.

Who is right? Who is wrong? These are not the questions you should be asking. Anyway, eastern philosophy does not split everything into white and black. That's a western concept. Eastern philosophy is about balance, look at the taijitu, the yin-yang symbol. Within light, darkness, within evil, good. It's something you'll notice in all manga and anime. There are very rarely any pure characters, just as there are rarely any pure existences in life either. The marines are a force of good, but have been tainted. The pirates are still predominantly evil, but their are a few lights among them, like the Red-Haired crew, Straw Hats, Heart Pirates, etc... The marines use bad methods, but their mission is still good.

Man, I'm not satisfied with this post, I'm just like you Dancepowderer, all my thoughts run together, coming out all at once and it's very hard to arrange them and put them in the right words. I hope I made a good contribution to this thread, as I really, thoroughly enjoy this type of discussion.