With the release of Chapter 1033 there was a lot of discussion about Zoro’s last sentence, whether he’s talking about Luffy and Kuina or Luffy alone. Here I explain why it is way more likely that the sentence is about Luffy and Kuina.
Firstly, here is the sentence:
そうだな…船長と…親友との 約束があんだ!!!
Rough literal translation:
That’s right… To my captain… to my close friend I made a promise!!!
Reasons why he is also talking about Kuina:
- 1-The promise. Zoro says that he made the promise of becoming the strongest swordsman, and this promise was made to two people, Luffy and Kuina. Not only Kuina was the first person he made that promess to, but she is also the actual reason he wanted to achieve this goal in the first place. how ridiculous would it be to assume that he doesn’t think of her or mentionning her when talking about his dream and promis?
- 2-Zoro uses two different terms. Captain and “dear friend”. Isn’t it weird to mention Luffy in two different ways in one single sentence? Why just not Captain or just “dear friend”? If Oda truly wants to talk about two different people, the phrasing he chose is the best way he could’ve done so.
- 3-The word Oda actually uses for “dear friend” is 親友 (shin’yuu). Not only this would be a weird way to refer to Luffy (usually it’s either Nakama, Pirate King or just captain/senchou as he did in this sentence), but it’s also a word that he only used once in the manga, in chapter 100, and it was about Kuina. Even Zoro’s card from the Vivre Card Databook uses this word when talking about his “dead friend Kuina”.
After knowing these three facts if you still want to claim that Zoro is only talking about Luffy, you’re assuming that Oda chose to elude Zoro’s dead friend who is the source of his dream and ambition when talking about a promise he initially made to her, while choosing to phrase the sentence as if Zoro was talking about two people when he’s just talking about one, while choosing to use a term he previously used only for Kuina specifically, and never for the Zoro x Luffy dynamic. Either that or Kuina is a part of that sentence, which makes 100% sense.
*by H-ga-suki
