This is a One Piece post. There is a tag and an index for these posts. Spoilers up to Punk Hazard Arc follow.
Look, I thought I would be able to not write about One Piece at all for an arc I did not even like the first time around. Complaining about something you know is bad is not intellectually stimulating to me, nor do I enjoy talking about something that I like so much it becomes deeply personal and thus slightly embarrassing. (Year-end lists shall forever be the exception to this.) But not only did I end up enjoying the arc – now, to be clear, I find it a cross between, like, The Golden Compass (c’mon, children in the icy cold experimented on?) and Little Garden arc, especially with the way this is set up to more – I totally forgot about the body swap. Now this is where I am intellectually engaged. With this, I believe I can decisively answer a question: are Oda’s women — what Sanji calls ladies1 — well-written?
Whether a shonen mangaka can write good women is a common enough topic on what I would say “both sides” – i.e, the male-dominated double-sided coin of 4chan and Reddit as well as the more female/nb-domianted Tumblr and Twitter. I don’t need to tell you which side of the fandom cares more about it. It’s a vested interest, and the most popular post on this blog (that I don’t know what do with, due to the founders being stupid – if there’s a semi-decent newsletter/blog hybrid, let me know, otherwise I might just up and go to Wordpress?) is about the art of writing women that opens with a shonen manga, Chainsaw Man. The question, then as now, is as porous and as solid as ever. (First of all, what is good in a highly serialized format? What is a good character anywhere?) I believe I was talking something about how it’s not about writing women per se and more about getting at the humanity of the characters, which is exceedingly difficult and has nothing to do with the gender of an author. (If this topic tickles your interest, this essay by Namwali Serpeli on the New York Review of Books is a must-read)
What I have nobly tried to get at as a twenty-four year old was perhaps too lofty a goal. A little bit kumbayah. Here is the material truth: misogyny is everywhere and everyone is instilled these values to varying degrees of intensity, but only one can impose it to other women and still gain something from it. Walking boobily down the stairs is a symptom of the overall cause, meaning that how women are written by men not only tightens the corset around misogyny a little bit tighter each time a woman is only a means to prop up a man (whether dead or alive), but also reveals what the individual author thinks of women. So, why lie, I’m personally always interested in how a man writes a woman2. I’m personally always interested in what horrible ways a woman will be flattened by a male mangaka for a young boy demographic; there’s some old tricks and tropes that always prop up (and God help you if you’re a love interest to the protagonist, you will never be his homoerotic rival) and new ways to reduce her to less than what she is. A female anime character is always three-dimensional, in that she is always flesh before soul, boobs/butts before character. A male character can be anything – two-dimensional, deeply complex, a racist caricature, a stereotype, boasting a brilliant arc – and she is always a fetish.3
Is this part of the genre? Part of the demographic? How many more times are we going to sit here and regurgitate that one lie of young boy manga not having to be great with women because of its target audience when young girls read shonen manga just as much? It’s also an open secret at this point that a manga that don’t immediately treat a woman as walking boobs gets a sizable, and therefore very active (and paying!) female fandom. (Keyword: immediately. I mean, Death Note – dripping with misogyny like all the rest of that mangaka pair’s works – is an immensely popular animanga still.) Except, you’ll say, look at the girls in One Piece. And I’ll tell you yes. I’ll look at them. They’re hourglasses or blobs. The amount of boob shots that have increased in the anime since the timeskip are ungodly. Some movies even let these boobs jiggle (Nami’s most frequently) and I realize I’m far too grown for this.
This is not about character design per se. This is about the two moments in the anime where Trafalgar Law swaps bodies of characters to confuse them and kneecap their abilities. He does this with Chopper-Sanji-Franky-Nami (Sanji is in Nami’s body) and he does this with Smoker and Tashigi. So Sanji is in Nami’s body and Smoker is in Tashigi’s body. Smoker’s first order of business is to smoke a cigar like that isn’t in an entirely different body, opening several buttons and showing giant boobs. Sanji’s first order of business is to fondle boobs.4 Sanji, later, says that Nami’s body is much more sensitive (Nami says the opposite about Sanji’s body). Tashigi, returning to her body, covers her boobs up, shame reddening her cheeks.
Nami wants to save giant children because she too has been saved as a child (but Oda is a fool if I don’t see right through what he’s trying to get at with the female character wanting to save children). So a woman has motherly instincts, is dainty and fragile and things will be done to her body against her will, huh? Yeah… except. Imagine if I just watched out of my ass. The essay would be over here, my argument made, huh?
Later, Tashigi (in her own body) and Zoro fight Monet, big bad’s Ceasar Clown’s right hand woman, who is a Logia-fruit user wielding snow-abilities. Tashigi wants to fight her, but Zoro considers his fight interrupted. Tashigi has a bone to pick; Zoro, who previously spared her life in a match, is too pussy to be fighting women. He’s a misogynist!!
I have to back up before I come to this conclusion. I have to retrace my ways all the way back to East Blue, and I have to talk about Monet, the best character of this arc. And then we can go back and see what we can make of this mess. Actually, both these messes.
I can’t believe I now need subheadings. What have we become?
I. Burglars and Princesses
It is exceedingly clear that Nami in Arlong Park Arc is Oda’s best female character. This has two reasons: one, she has by far – and there isn’t much room for debate – the best arc with the strongest catharsis and the most heartwrenching past. She can call dibs on that. Nami, who we’re introduced as clever, with a temper, and always looking out for herself, makes the most interesting character of the entire early crew. Though not the strongest, her mysterious own goal is led up to brilliantly and resolved in such a satisfactory manner that had One Piece ended there, it would have still been a great ride.5 I mean… the woman that wants to do everything by herself, including saving her whole village? Turning to Luffy with tears in her eyes, saying “Luffy… help me…” CINEMA! DRAMA!!!! You see how there is little competition between her and Sanji, right?
From this, it’s an equally easy argument to say that Oda’s best female characters all happen up to Alabasta Arc: Kuina, Nami, Vivi, Robin. Kuina is an extension of Zoro, but I have to bring her up now for a later point and she informs Tashigi, who I’d also include in the good female category with what little she is given. What all these women have in common is that they have a fear, and from this fear a desire. We talked about desire recently here, and in addition to just having something to want, their desires give these women agency, i.e, opposing Luffy (or Zoro) to some degree. That is what is most important to a female character to me: do they act on the want, i.e, do they have an agency? All these characters can answer these questions with yes. In this, they are no different than the male characters, who also have their own agency and fears that informs these desires. Luffy fears losing the hat. Chopper and Sanji fear others dying, while Zoro and Usopp fear their own death.
Kuina, Nami, Vivi, and Robin all want something, and they want to do it on their own terms – the idea is that Kuina can outtrain her womanhood, that Nami can outsteal her debt, Vivi can outtalk an insurgency, and that Robin can weasel her way to the Poneglyphs. This want, and the moves that come with them, is faced with a lot of obstacles. That is a lot of goodwill Oda accumulates just with these four. Nami in Arlong Park Arc alone will save Oda from the misogyny allegations. Anyhow, the arc of all these women, different as they are, is the same. Each must realize they cannot solve their problem on their own, which is when Luffy swoops in.
II. “I Want To Live!”
What has happened to Robin is Nami the re-up, now with the stakes upped significantly: we’re talking governments, we’re talking genocide. Again, that slap of a face when she says: “I want to live!” The catharsis, it’s one of the strongest of One Piece. Sogeking burns down the flag. What does Luffy do? Beat the person that hurt Robin to this degree. Spandam, head of CP5, is too easy a target for that. Luffy goes for the strongest, always. In this case, this is Rob Lucci.
God. I hate Rob Lucci and I hate that fight. It is emblematic of a couple things that will plague One Piece. (We briefly discussed this for the Marineford one, and we will discuss this (maybe?) for the Katakuri match later.) But let’s keep our bird eye’s perspective. Luffy is the protagonist and saves every person that needs his help. He fights the big bad, period. This applies to male characters as much as it does to the female ones. The only problem here is that the female characters are typically far weaker than the monster trio. Sanji and Zoro put up a fight, and Luffy got the big bad later, right? That means you have positive examples and can therefore throw in an Usopp who is far too weak to defeat Kuro. Meanwhile, whenever Luffy has to save a female character, since not one of the women puts up a (proper) fight in their arc ever, there’s this idea that women, in general, need to be saved by all the male characters. Think of the strongest female character in the OP universe so far. We got Hina, the Marine superior of Kobi and Helmeppo. Most recently we had Boa Hancock, and would you look at that, the weakness of this vain, selfish, deeply broken woman is… being… in… love with Luffy. (Falling in love with a gay man? Billie Eilish can relate.) And she was a supporting role for Marineford.
We are about to have Big Mom, as far as I am aware the first female main villain since Alvida from way, way, way back, who I guess doesn’t need to be saved so much as she needs to be defeated. Again, Oda avoids the misogyny allegations, but by this point we can no longer deny that this man writes women with stereotypes that are horribly outdated and mindnumbingly staunch. (Big Mom is an undesirable woman, which we know because she is fat and therefore she has no hourglass form, just like Alvida and Kokoro, the latter of whom almost “ruined” mermaids for the male characters.) Which is all the more surprising considering Oda’s very progressive views on nonbinary and transgender people up til now.
(Necessary Ad Break) Re: Canonical Zoro Misogynist Allegations & Re: Tashigi / Kuina
Okay, short sidebar before we really unpack Monet. That thing Tashigi said. I mean, we talked about Zoro and his fear of death and Kuina before. Tashigi is the reincarnation of Kuina to Zoro; of course he spared her life. It is not necessarily sparing her because she is a woman, but because that is the only person Zoro wants to surpass. But from Tashigi’s perspective – sadly, we never get enough of her – she wants to be seen seriously, and this man with the cool swords does not, because he didn’t do what was honorable and just. She has just as much bushido as him, and doesn’t see that he sees. I can’t believe Zoro got the misogynist allegations before Sanji did. I mean, c’mon. Same arc where Sanji fondles Nami’s boobs and gets a nosebleed from it. Same Sanji who, when faced against Kalifa in Water 7, lost because he couldn’t fight against a woman.
III. Me and My Yukionna
Interestingly enough, Monet agrees with Tashigi. It is interesting not because the conclusion is a mystery – lol… – but because it means that Monet has a desire, which is to fight someone to the death. Indeed, she is the first character since Ace to die.
So let’s talk yukionna, and by talk, I mean I’m going to do that thing where I read way too much into a minor character as though I was a fujoshi fleshing out a minor male character who gets 2 panels at most just so I can justify my insane male x male ship. Monet is the first female character in a while that I would consider well-written within OP, and she is also the first in a while to be different than the four I mentioned recently. Because we don’t really know what she wants. We never get to find out. Her big reveal is that she’s really working for Doflamingo, as is Ceaser Clown. The reveal that interested me most (it’s never treated as such) is that she was once a normal human, and then agreed to let Clown alter herself to a harpy, so now she writes with her big wings and has talons / swords for feet. And on top of that, she is the Japanese mythical creature of Yukionna (snow woman), meaning she is a Logia user and cutting her down means nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Monet not only manages to defeat Luffy (that he has to escape says everything you need to know) with her abilities, but has to fight two opponents – one male, one female – to be slain. Even then, she is still around, still about to give the fatal blow to the entire cast. She is quiet and studious. She knows what moves the other ones, and she has the power to end them all if she chooses to. What is Zoro going to do, cut through snow? (He cuts through snow.) She knows more than her eccentric master and trusts her real superior to pull through. She is committed. I actually find it a shame that we never know what she wants. Perhaps becoming a harpy was what she wanted. Perhaps she wanted more power, and by more power would feel safer, or more worth it, in Doflamingo’s world of colorful and powerful underlings. Perhaps she considered herself most special, or wanted to take over him. Perhaps she was Doflamingo’s prophet like Zoro is to Luffy, and saw that as her motivation. What did she fear? Disappointing him? Zoro got that one too.
Clown kills her. I like that switcheroo, as I do the whole of the third act, but Monet gives me something I really miss with the female characters here and elsewhere, which is physical strength and mental fortitude. It is being taken seriously. I don’t think Tashigi was right about Zoro, but she is right if taken a meta way. Oda has made female characters the butt of a joke for far too long and we’ve direly missed some serious ones. That she dies, I don’t mind too much. Not only because it doesn’t complicate another man – it complicates her, actually – but because we also get Tashigi saving the children and Nami say “I have a thing for female marines. I can trust them.” It’s a return to the character that Oda always did best: the woman that he based after his own wife.
IV. Sanji Fondling Nami’s Boobs
So what do we do with One Piece when it comes to women? It should be considered a minor miracle that any type of character is afforded complexity in this stage of the New World. It is a major miracle that it happened to a woman here.
But I’m not going to sit here and act like I’m going to absolve a man for writing a woman like a human being. Also, even if the woman was written like a human being, I saw way too many shots of boobs and Sanji is fondling with Nami’s. Nami is a three dimensional character alright. There is the fact that it’s a lot of stereotypes for Oda. There’s the occasional mark of brilliance. This is it.
What the bodyswap revealed to me is that men are cool and they are powerful in Oda’s world, and if they’re not cool they’re funny, and if they’re not powerful they’re wimps that need saving. Women are not cool, and they’re rarely powerful, and they’re always harassed by at least two characters in the core team. I look at Nami and I wonder how good we would’ve had it if she was as strong as Zoro. If she didn’t run away from the fight. If she could fight like the boys, and I look at myself and I realize I’m falling to the Strong Woman Stereotype that is no more complex than the alternative – being boobs – and I realize One Piece is more often than not just a dick measuring contest, like all the rest of the genre. What makes One Piece so great is its occasional moments when it can rise above it, yes. But in the end, all the sand of an hourglass slides down to the same result.
Did you know there was a debate in Turkey to make men stop saying “bayan” (lady) and say “kadın” (woman) to women instead? Now you do.
I’m not so much interested in the opposite, to tell you the truth. I have a personal interest in how a woman writes a woman, for similar but not the same reasons as a man writing them, but a woman writing a man is either reinforcing heterosexuality/patriarchy or making a point about misogyny. Or neither of these things. A man existing in relation to a woman only makes me care about the woman.
It is for this reason (and a couple others, but this is a big one) that between anime and K-Pop, anime is the worse evil to me.
If that reminds you of anything, yes, I thought of that moment in Your Name too. It’s so funny how it’s always the man doing this on the female body, but the women never seem interested in fondling a penis, only in seeing the thing.
A woman’s character arc >>>>>>>>> literally any other narrative setup. Sorry if you’re new here, I can get hyperbolic.