Tales of Kater

1. After thinking it over, I decided I still wanted to fill in this story's gaps and couldn't bear to give up, so I'm reposting it. This story pairs Shanks with a woman in the Revolutionary Army.

2. This Miss J is not that Miss J. See "On Love's Insouciant Eve."

3. Both Miss Js are doubles or incarnations of Hoshino Sai, the heroine I created. One embodies her more Hamlet-like side, the other her more Don Quixote-like side. As I've said, there are two eternally great prototypes in Western culture and literary history: the melancholic, contemplative Prince Hamlet, and Don Quixote, originally named Alonso Quijano, who is immersed in dreams of chivalry. Many of the characters in One Piece, in terms of their vitality, owe a great deal to the knight Don Quixote created by Cervantes. I wanted to write a person who had both Hamlet's brooding nature and Don Quixote's fiery passion, and that is how I came up with the heroine Hoshino Sai. But someone who is as skeptical, sensitive, thoughtful, and metaphysical as Hamlet, while also as energetic and idealistic as Don Quixote, with that sort of vitality, would very likely bring to mind Milton's Satan: the kind of villainous boss Lu Xun described as someone who must be both powerful and skilled in battle, open-minded, and capable of deep thought. To avoid confusion, I don't want to put it that way. I'd rather say, in a more complicated way, "She is both Hamlet and Don Quixote."

4. Compared with her prototype, Hoshino Sai, the Miss J in this story is not a fully realized politician, in the narrow sense of having achieved political maturity. She doesn't have that kind of ability, which really just means she's more lovable.

Theme: A person's fulfillment and liberation.