Hey there. I'm back from a 30-hour-speedrun of trip to London. I don’t tend to write for the draft before and after a journey, so I wrote this instead. As I'm watching One Piece and keep having opinions, posts like these will crop up every once in a while. I have a tag for such posts now, if you'd like to peruse that. There's not much left to my novel draft, so please don't think The Turkish Rug has become The One Piece Essay One-Stop-Shop. At the same time, I don’t have the time/energy/motivation for deeper essays or the Dispatch. My apologies.
Today's post contains spoilers for One Piece: Film Red and discusses One Piece up to Wholecake Island Arc.
Music — and its perennial partner, dance — features early in One Piece's’s universe. As early as its first chapter, in fact: the Red Hair Pirates, helmed by Shanks, are of the free-spirited kind that value music, beer, and food above all. It’s one of those moments that Luffy, himself a singer on the occasion, looks back very fondly upon when he hears Brook perform many, many arcs later, saying “It’s the song that Shanks used to sing.” The song in question receives a name only then: “Binks’ Sake”, the song of pirates. And Oda, in his typical fashion of giving everything material and immaterial a tearjerking bond, the viewer finds out that that song is also one that Brook sang to his dear whale Laboon, one that he sang to his dying captain, and one that he sang literally as he died.
It was the first time the series used music as the immaterial that made the chosen family worth protecting, following the more readily available stuff on bushido, medicine, technology, and knowledge. And for a good while, music within One Piece was only ever "Binks’ Sake", representing a symbol of bygone happy times (with a hamfisted visualization of the musician singing it being a literal skeleton). In One Piece’s world, it’s STEMM with two M. But how deep music went in that world, Oda would elaborate on much, much later with Big Mom breaking out in song many times within Wholecake Island Arc. And, more crucially, he bent over canon to fit in Uta (literally named song), the centerpiece of the latest One Piece movie One Piece Film: Red, to codify the role of music within One Piece, both in its communal good and its solipsistic evils.1
One Piece: Film Red picks up where the classic "We Are!" introduction leaves off: "It's like a grand pirate era", the narrator says, having swapped his enthusiasm for a subdued attitude. In quick succession, we're shown the evils of piracy, specifically pirates that plunder, starve, and wreak havoc on innocent bystanders. The Marines are bad, but the pirates are worse; Uta is well aware. This is why, in the island of Elegia, a former nation known for its music that has now fallen to ruin2, she hosts a concert for everyone, forever, a conceit that will usher in a new era of happiness. This wouldn't be so big a problem if it wasn't for the fact that Uta, previously being adopted by Shanks’ Red Hair Pirates, has now come to hate pirates altogether, which is why Luffy not quitting his pirate life triggers her to trapping everyone into her hallucinatory world with the help of the Sing-Sing Fruit, a Devil Fruit that takes so much energy out of her just from maintaining that world that she has to take drugs (literally eating mushrooms) to stay awake. When this is not enough, she revives the Demon Prince through Tot Musica, an ancient piece of music that is so terrifying that it spans both the made up and the real world. Now the Strawhats must synchronize an attack with Katakuri and the Red Hair Pirates, helmed by Shanks, while the Marine is not above killing civilians to get to Uta. Things go boom.
As far as One Piece movies go, you could draw a comfortable spectrum of totally useless movies and the essential ones.3 Film: Red sits a comfortable middle, despite canon involvement from Oda. Sure, you get a solid moment with Usopp and Yasopp, but there isn't a new understanding of the Strawhats here, only, perhaps, a callback to Luffy becoming vulnerable at the thing he's always been vulnerable about (his straw hat). On the other hand, as a classic romp, this movie wouldn't overtake Dead End Adventure, let alone Stampede. Even though it features colorful visuals and quite a lot of music, it's not fun enough. Part of it has to do Uta, who is a character so outrageous that it borders on a parody on a One Piece villain. She demands drama at every point, but never moves towards a catharsis. (Compare and contrast with Baron Omatsuri, who reveals a bleeding heart underneath the display and increasingly violent means) Nothing about her really comes together, and even the idea of wanting to make the world a better place has no fully realized aspect to it. It is juvenile, but juvenilia doesn't have to mean lack of depth. Oda used to know this.4
Rather, Uta is a vessel for the thematic concerns of the movie. The pandemic looms especially large here, what with the aspect of an isolated Uta televising her singing through video transponder snails, and gaining popularity that way. (The singer voicing her, Ado, got her start in much the same way.) It's not hard to imagine Uta giving relief to a great number of people in the same position for whatever reason (the movie eschews the coronavirus and instead decides on pirates) and forming a parasocial bond with her fans — this is the bread and butter of K-Pop and idol culture writ large. That being said, though, what struck me is that the fans don't seem to ever be toxic towards Uta. Sure, there is a moment in which Uta suggests they all just remain here for life, and fans start arguing, but nobody is outright mean to her — rather, they are worried about her when she openly welcomes Luffy, a wanted pirate and The Fifth Emperor, and understandably shocked when she messes with a Millennial Dragon. Instead, it is Uta that uses and abuses them for her own selfish gains. She does not listen to her fans when they want to simply go home and turns them to stuffed animals, becoming more and more erratic as she revives Tot Musica just to avoid... Shanks? The reality of pirates existing? Things possibly going bad sometimes? The guilt of having destroyed Elegia? Take your pick. It's likelier that it makes more sense than the breakneck pace in which Uta goes from being trapped to reviving Tot Musica.
Some might say that this is standard One Piece villain fare, only this time it's with music. This is true. But it's the contrast that makes the theme of music's role pop that much more. In the same way as Thriller Bark Arc brought the role of medicine/science into stark relief as it introduced the Dr Frankenstein-esque Dr Hogback and contrasted him with the more idealistic Chopper, Film: Red now contrasts the more positive experiences of "Binks' Sake" and Shanks with Uta, or, put another way, a common song versus the artist's sole creation and owner of those tracks. It’s not too dissimilar to how Big Mom breaking out into song is meant to showcase her world of childlike pleasures as a grown woman, thus perversing both the purity of childhood and One Piece’s understanding of music (Big Mom’s many, many souls sing with her, never the ones around her).
In a line that the movie never draws explicitly, but remained on my mind on my third watch5, it may well be that Uta represents the whole of the music industry, or a streaming service, or both; simultaneously a commodity and its owner that does not seek to liberate people so much as to sedate them into passively enjoying music. Originally, in the flashback, Uta falls asleep after singing her song, and the Red Hat Pirates rejoice when it's Luffy's turn. At present, the tables are flipped: people fall asleep when Uta sings, which Uta neither seems to mind nor feels bad about. No, in fact, it is baked into her power to be a walking Jigglypuff.
On the other hand, it is Luffy, in his modern post-timeskip interpretation, who must always be the moral compass that shows the way forward. Not only does it make sense that we do not hear Luffy sing in the movie, but for him to be the one that defeats her alongside Shanks. After all, it is Shanks that taught Luffy the importance of music as a communal thing, where songwriters/original singers do not matter where everyone sings along to. Uta, meanwhile, has been sent off to learn how to sing and wow everyone with her skills, her vision. And that ties back to the original image of Uta, all alone, singing to a bunch of transponder snails. People do not sing along with her, ever; they are wowed by her. This is what she must be saved by.
It is a loaded message to draw out from a movie; perhaps Oda didn't want to take it that far, though the heftiness of such a message — that music need not be consumed, but participated with — naturally pulls the story into a dramatic orbit. Indeed, the post-credits show various characters enjoying Uta's final little ballad, rather than them breaking out into Binks' Sake. And rather than Luffy wondering if Uta is okay — we see the Red Hair Pirates stand over a coffin — the movie cuts there, features its credits, and ends with Luffy declaring "I want to be King of the Pirates" as though Film: Red wasn't tied into the canon but was just another One Piece romp. All the same, it is undoubtedly written by Oda, and adds to the existing ideas of community that grows together versus a tyrant ruling over all.
But I still can't help but feel like maybe the scope of the film could have been bigger, what with the ideas that could've been perused. It's not like Oda was the only person living through that pandemic. Especially those early months, I've gotten back into a boyband, and it had quickly consumed me and given me something to hold onto while I felt unmoored, uncomfortable with being by myself in my room to such a degree (which, truth be told, I still am) I've spent many lunch breaks having to buy bread from the nearest Turkish joint. That was a ten minute walk, and I spent a lot of those listening to The Boyz, Ungodly Hour by Chloe x Halle, Sawayama by Rina Sawayama, and Hot Pink by Doja Cat. Those helped me keep afloat on a day-to-day basis. Incidentally, Doja Cat is living the opposite of what Uta goes through; rather than want a better world for her fans, she is repulsed by her stans, who are similarly concerned about her well-being. The rebuttal of the parasocial link has resulted in the unapologetic fourth album Scarlet, perusing sounds that hew closely to hip-hop rather than capital-P pop music, in which she spends a lot of time talking about haters (that are stans) in it. How would such a case fit into One Piece's world? Does it not feature at all?
There is so much to talk about within the realm of music, and what music means to a listener, and what music means to a singer, that reducing it to a more simplistic point of view on its "use" and abuse may sort of miss the point overall. Worse, the movie attempts an argument on "good" and "bad" music. "Good" and "bad" science may exist. That's a question of ethics. But Tot Musica being "bad" music — not as a designator of quality, but as a genuine moral thing — doesn't quite hold up the same way. A song like "Somewhat Damaged" by Nine Inch Nails can mean the world to one person but simultaneously also be used as a torture tool in Guantanamo Bay. Does the latter reflect on the song? Does the former? Of course not. Music is art, not morals, whether it is one person having ownership of songs/concerts or Brook inviting all his crewmates to sing one last time for Laboon. After all, Brook was revived as a vessel for the song to reach to Laboon; such is the power of song. But Uta, too, has reached people. All by herself. It was what gave her the courage to shoot for a new era.
Who also happens to be Shanks' adoptive daughter, so, y'know.
Okay, one stupid question out of way: so Elegia is Austria, right? The music/opera aspect... past its prime... you know...?
And of these, even a useless/bad flick like The Curse of the Sacred Sword can show some incredible character work. In that movie, Zoro is robbed of quite a lot of speech, but it lends an incredible new angle to his character and his core tenets of loyalty and sacrifice.
I talked about this in the Water 7 post.
I’d like to come forward and say my first time seeing the movie in theaters was my personal worst time at a screening ever lol. The other one was with my friend. The third was indeed for this post.