Political discourse loves quotes.
At the podium, references, tributes, winks and other dialectical courtesies burst forth, drawing at every turn from the historical and literary repertoire, French and foreign.
We invoke Plato, we recite La Boétie, we gloss over Tocqueville and we divert Simone de Beauvoir.
Nothing could be simpler to smash such a minister or defend such a policy.
The same is true in the last pop quote slipped by Emmanuel Macron: a volume of the
One Piece
manga slipped alongside the General and Hélène Carrère d'Encausse.
A calculated maneuver.
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On Monday, the President of the Republic's social networks broadcast a photograph praising the extension of the culture pass to 15-17 year olds. An offbeat communication object, summing up to a
post-it
placed on the presidential desk. On the right of the plan, the presence of the hundredth volume of the Japanese literary saga is not immediately obvious. The volume slips away, almost, under the pile formed by the
Memoirs
of General de Gaulle,
Hope for France
, Hubert Germain and
Centuries of Immortality
, the history of the French Academy written by its secretary perpetual. But fans of Eiichiro Oda's manga, published since 1997 in Japan, were not mistaken.
"Mdrrr the volume of one piece hidden for young people to vote.. you won't get us Manu"
,
"He thinks he's baiting us"
,
"Stop this despicable recovery"
.
Many detractors at the start of the week immediately seized on the reference slipped into the presidential publication, sometimes with surprise, sometimes with spite.
This did not prevent the keyword #OnePiece from being propelled into a Twitter trend on Monday, a sign of a clear buzz.
Among the comments, several people questioned themselves, more broadly, about Emmanuel Macron's relationship to the values conveyed by this story of pirates.
In other words: is macronism accountable with the libertarian – even anarchist – ideal of
One Piece
?
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An adventure against the institutions
"
(Emmanuel Macron)
does he at least know that Luffy
(the main character of the manga, Editor's note.)
and his crew are fighting guys like him, at the heels of the ''celestial dragons'', the oligarchy, which maintain the population in injustice, poverty and violence?”
, was scandalized a surfer on Twitter, who suspects the president of playing on the feelings of young readers who will not have understood the essence of the manga.
“Have you ever opened a
One Piece
?”
, asks another fan.
“You are all he fights…”.
“
One Piece
is about team, friendship, adventure, love and justice against monstrous injustices!
You
, is indignant finally a third Internet user.
The consternation of some readers is not entirely gratuitous.
Like the other great manga of the past twenty years, such as
Bleach,
Naruto
or, more recently,
Demon Slayer
,
One Piece
is an initiation story.
The young captain, Monkey D. Luffy, sets off on an adventure across seas and oceans to get his hands on a legendary treasure.
But his odyssey is not easy and he takes advantage of the trip to overthrow the rigid order established by different groups of pirate lords, powerful corsairs and admirals limited to the boot of a corrupt World Government.
Faced with his factions, Luffy takes the lead of a
"revolutionary army"
whose stated goal is to overthrow the world order.
And the famous Celestial Dragons mentioned by Internet users, a nepotic clan reigning over the manga universe.
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Youth culture and voting pass
Very discreet and not very talkative, like all renowned mangakas, Eiichiro Oda does not seem to have directly commented on this anarchist, or at least revolutionary vein in his work.
This does not remain less transparent for part of the readership.
Voters - actual or in the making - who are thus surprised to see the President of the Republic parade with a manga which is, in the end, no less seditious than
V for Vendetta
or
Fight Club
.
Two other anti-state works - very popular with teenagers - which are not likely to end up in an imaginary Elysian museum anytime soon.
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Real or not, Emmanuel Macron's attachment to
One Piece
represents above all an attachment to the success of the culture pass.
The device launched in 2021, which offers 300 euros of cultural consumption for all young people aged 18, was marked by a general rush on manga.
Cultural products that are immensely popular with young people and whose sales have seen a marked upturn since last summer.
This growth has benefited
One Piece
, whose French publisher, Glénat, also organized with great fanfare, in December, the release of the canonical volume 100 of the manga.
A winning combo for the title which was already the best-selling of its kind in France.
A few weeks after the launch of the culture pass, the president had in any case echoed the extraordinary success of manga sales during a trip to Japan, by sharing on his social networks a drawing offered and autographed by. .. Eiichiro Oda.
“Passionate about
One Piece
, I share with you this original drawing offered by its author”,
rejoiced Emmanuel Macron in July 2021. A communication which already sowed doubt, among fans, on the real interest brought to the work by The head of state.
