In the manga, Kuina was afraid that the male students would soon overtake her in size and strength and that she'd be at a permanent disadvantage because of her gender, but the actors they cast were 15-16 years old and teen Zoro was already at least a head taller than her where it was the opposite in the manga with Kuina being older and bigger than little kid Zoro. Like yeah, that already happened, and you still beat Zoro in the duel regardless. Not that size would even matter in the One Piece world where regular humans can be like 15 feet tall for no reason, but this was in the first volume of the manga and the look and feel of the world hadn't solidified yet.
I totally get why they cast older actors who were presumably also martial artists- there was no way they were filming a 9-year-old and a 12-year-old dueling with full-sized katanas. I just think they should've rewritten the story to fit those older actors better.
I also couldn't help but notice that all the flashback scenes took place at a forest/park in daylight, presumably because wherever they were filming did not have a Japanese dojo or temple available. It just makes the scenes look noticeably bland and cheap in a show with otherwise excellent set design and lighting.
It was also paced worse than the manga where it goes straight from Kuina and Zoro making their promise to keep training to voices yelling about Kuina having died after falling down the stairs, and then showing her dead body at her wake and kid Zoro ragecrying while holding her sword. The abruptness and bluntness of her death is what gave the flashback its emotional punch but they drag things out over several kinda slow scenes spliced throughout the fourth episode.
A bit disappointed since I thought they really nailed Luffy's origin and it being revealed slowly over the first two episodes worked out great. Here's hoping they got the heartstring puller that is Sanji's origin right
I insist that it doesn't matter because zoro made up kuina regardless. Mihawk did zoros top surgery. Science proves this.
tfw you can't tell what's a bit because you haven't caught up with the manga
oh don't take me too seriously, this is my headcanon for why zoro has the least backstory. which is that he isn't smart enough to come up with a way to say that he was afab so instead he tells a story about his friend wanting to be the strongest, being a woman and so not being able to, and then falling down the stairs. it's a lens i think is fun because the stair thing is so banal, and it makes his relationship to tsushigi that much funnier.
Actually this theory is plausible if we consider that the revolutionary army commander Ivankov actually did visit Zoro's home island.
Ivankov could have used their devil fruit on Zoro to completely transfrom Zoro into the green haired stoic swordsman that he is today.
Plus Crocodile being a trans man is literally all but explicitly confirmed by Oda so I'm actually buying this.
finally, someone gets it
I cannot wait until the show gets to everything involving Ivankov. My brain is sparking and sputtering just thinking how they'll handle it in live action. God, just imagine the amounts of discourse it will bring
Please let the live action get that far 🙏
Fuck, just Mr. 2 from the Alabasta arc in live action would power Twitter for weeks
I have no doubt that if Oda had gone into Zoro's backstory later on it would have been much more fleshed out, but I actually like how mundane her death was and that she wasn't murdered by the world's third most evil pirate or something.
The gender thing never fully made sense to me though even as a kid given it's one of those anime settings where a guy can lift weights until he can punch a boulder the size of Uluru in half through sheer gumption. What would stop a lady from doing that
especially in a world where women are some of the strongest people around. it's part of why i like this headcanon. the more you learn about the world, the less zoro's backstory seems to make sense.
In the live action show it's almost comical since Zoro is already much larger than Kuina, but she easily defeats him anyway and is still sad that Zoro will become even BIGGERER or something.
"A girl can beat a boy but a woman will never beat a man"
yeah it's kinda wild. and then canonically, zoro is just a regular size dude whereas someone like whitebeard is literally taller than the fucking house i live in. so it's like...what's a few inches and little bits of muscle mass when the generic morphism is already extremely varied
Yeah, if they had to keep her insecurities gender-related it would have made more sense if whatever island Zoro's from was kinda shitty to women and didn't recognise their swordfighting talent or let them establish schools or styles whatever
Edit: lol, according to a comment I read somewhere else apparently in the anime they did exactly this