Roronoa Zoro, Badass and Marytr
This is about One Piece's live action adaptation and its characterization of Zoro. Spoilers for both apply.
There is unequivocal good about One Piece, the live action adaptation. They PC’d the hell out of it, which is great because Alvida aged incredibly poorly, and in the long run that means I can finally enjoy Sanji1, who is an anachronistic dandy type in the live action now. Inaki Godoy is Luffy, just as much as Jacob Gibson is Usopp. Nami gets an update that works much better for the character than the comical exploration of a thief/gold digger that Nami was in the initial run. Making Zoro meet a Baroque Works agent chronologically rather than him explaining that in Whiskey Peak is a smart choice. And the early arcs of One Piece are near and dear to my heart, so that story receiving a wider audience fills me with joy. These are charming, exciting, hilarious, and also moving arcs; yes, Oda still worked out various kinks then, one arc at a time, but the foundations were all there as early as Romance Dawn, and strong ones to boot.
Then there’s the rest that I don’t agree with. But this piece will not be about the numerous shortcomings of the One Piece live action. (The biggest one by far is giving Coby this much screen time. Who gives a shit.) That is an easy game to play (and to think of the SEO boost that would bring me!) but I’m not a stickler for a pitch-perfect adaptation. They could’ve set this One Piece in the cyberspace for all I care lol, as long as the characters remain intact. What I do care about is that Oda oversaw the script and was okay with the numerous changes made. That means that the live action is in some kind of conversation with One Piece — the One Piece from before the time skip and the One Piece of now, with an Oda of now — and is in the unenviable position of balancing these two subtly different stories. More crucially, that means he was okay with what the One Piece live action did not just to Luffy, completely removing his early charm to something more quantifiable and boring, but also (and somehow worse) to Zoro. Which means we have to talk about early Zoro.
We hear of Zoro early in One Piece: a powerful bounty hunter who Coby considers a demon hound. Luffy wants him in his crew, on the condition of him being “a good guy”. But consider the very first image we see of Zoro in One Piece the animanga: those eyes, the intensity and ferocity, as if he really was a demon hound. Then the full shot: a green-haired man wearing a white shirt, a haramaki, and sleek black pants hung on a cross: bound with rope, his head hung low. He asks Luffy and Coby to untie him, and in return, he will hand them the bounty of the next pirate he hands over to the marine. He doesn’t want to eat the onigiri that a village girl hands him, telling her to leave; but when marine nepo baby Helmeppo destroys the onigiri and Luffy asks him to join the crew, he asks Luffy to give him that onigiri. “This is more shit than food now,” Luffy says. “You want to kill yourself?” Zoro doesn’t care. He eats it and asks Luffy to tell Rika, the little girl, that it was great. We find out that Zoro was imprisoned because he dared defy Helmeppo, who was terrorizing the village with his wild dogs.
After hearing the story, Luffy asks him to join Zoro’s crew in an iconic panel of Luffy standing opposite a hung Zoro on a cross. Zoro tells Luffy that pirates are scum of the earth he doesn’t want to be associated with; but with a bad reputation that he’s got, why think you’re any better, Luffy argues. Anyway, Zoro has no choice, Luffy says. Luffy will bring him his swords and he will join the crew, whether he wants to or not. “Either you join my crew or you die by marines,” he says cheerfully. Sound logic. Later, an untied Zoro holds off marines with his unique three-sword style. He tells Luffy that he’ll only join if he can live his ambition of becoming the world’s greatest swordsman. “If you stop me from my ambitions,” Zoro growls, “You will end your own life on my sword!” That’s fine by Luffy, who wants to be king of the pirates. It’s a fitting match.
Just from this alone, there’s so, so much to discuss, like how this early Zoro embodies a character trait Oda will later associate to Luffy and reinforce a million times — that of equaling the treatment of food to a moral compass — or how Luffy’s almost blasé attitude is transferred over to Zoro. Those are the kinks he ironed out. But let’s zero in on that panel: Luffy stands across a hung Zoro. Zoro is the only Strawhat that Luffy wants ahead of time.2 Zoro is one of two Strawhats that Luffy saves from sure death. (Vivi doesn’t count; the other is Nico Robin, whose death was a mid-term eventuality in Enies Lobby Arc). All other Strawhats are saved from a boring, maybe pained life, but they wouldn’t have died.3 Zoro would’ve died, literally, doing what he thought was right, which was helping a little girl, with his own ambitions cut short. It isn’t anything grand like being a genocide survivor. It’s a big price for an ultimately small action — one Zoro isn’t ready to pay just yet, because of his promise. Zoro is inherently guided by it; and just like it claimed Kuina, death circles on Zoro like a vulture, always present.
Initially, Zoro is saved only nominally, remaining loyal to his captain for likely selfish reasons. It is never specified and the story’s assumption is that the reader won’t care (tellingly, the live action has to reason as to why Zoro joins the crew, arguing that fighting with the marines makes the pirate-hating bounty hunter a wanted man — a slight cross against his character, who initially offered such trespassing to Luffy himself) But a character like him, who receives far worse injuries than all the other characters — even pre-timeskip, where everyone gets their fair share of injuries — will eventually have to face actual death. His bounty hunter title, he sheds away fully, while keeping a more animalistic instinct to defeat intact. But Zoro the lonesome hunter has to die, too, and so he does, at the hands of Mihawk in a duel he’s called for much too early. Forget, for a moment, how weirdly convenient that moment is in Baratie Arc4. Oda was still working out his kinks then, and that is a particularly poor arc in the East Blue Saga (on Netflix, it’s second only to Syrup Village, which sidelined Usopp wholly). Just accept that the actual strongest swordsman of the whole world, Dracule Mihawk, has arrived on Baratie, and that Zoro can challenge him prematurely. Zoro dies, and on his deathbed, he apologizes to Luffy. In the same breath, he is reborn: he becomes someone who would hang himself on a cross to be met and saved by Luffy, as many times as it takes. His dream slots itself under Luffy’s as though it was always meant to be there — he is one of two Strawhats where such thing would be possible, the other once again Nico Robin. If Luffy can keep his joy intact, it is because Zoro bears the pain of it. (That’s one thing One Piece the live action gets right: Zoro is First Mate.)
I am aware how homosexual this sounds. It also helps that Zoro has a rocky relationship with girls: he will carefully avoid them, and his one significant relationship with another woman happens to look like his childhood friend that bemoaned she’s a girl.5 But even if Luffy was a woman, Zoro’s appeal wouldn’t diminish: because it’s the overwhelming, underlying tragedy on such a stoic, badass, and bloodthirsty character that makes him so incredibly compelling. The incredibly lofty reward for such a high risk taker is to not only fulfill a dream of glory, but to also be of service to the Pirate King. The ambition underpinned by martyrdom. He will die for his dreams, and he will die for the man that enables him to keep dreaming.
Nowhere can one see this better than the moment in which Zoro puts himself on the metaphorical cross and literally bears Luffy’s pain: the end of Thriller Bark Arc, a moment so poignant it casts the rest of the arc in a faux-significant light. That image of Zoro with his pupils gone from his eyes, his arms crossed, covered in blood is an image so iconic that if Zoro were to drop dead no two seconds after that, it would still cement him as one of the most iconic characters of One Piece. That he’s not doing for himself, that this isn’t happening because Oda wanted to make Zoro look cool and badass (an urge he indulges in frequently and rightfully so) but for his captain is a payoff so incredible that an author could look at it and see a carte blanche to ruin Zoro’s character in any minor shape they liked and still keep the goodwill any reader would have for Zoro reasonably intact. Zoro once again dies. This time, there is no question of his own dream; it only matters that a dream is alive: Luffy’s. It’s sacrifice of a man that knows little else, who told Luffy he only has “his destiny”. It’s the cross with the stakes correctly matched, and the reader feels its every drop.
Lain out like this, Zoro’s arc isn’t one of the conventional wants-needs dichotomy that permeates so much of modern storytelling. (Within One Piece, a good number of the crew follow this line, with their need of Luffy enabling their want of some far-off dream; Robin is the most conventional take of it) It’s not like Zoro realizes he needs Luffy, or that Luffy needs Zoro, and you’ll notice within One Piece the animanga that Luffy never says the platitudes to Zoro that Zoro says to Luffy (that happens in Wholecake Island and Luffy says it to Sanji, which is post-timeskip, and that Luffy informs Netflix’s Luffy the most) It’s only that Zoro folds his want into Luffy’s want, and only that Zoro is the only character besides Luffy that will look death in the eye without flinching, and that means stepping up where all the other characters would fail.
Zoro doesn’t go from A to B. That’s Netflix Zoro’s thing, where he kills people (where that is his introduction), thinks of bounties as if he really did care about his job, has no bushido in him and is the icy, gruff guy. That’s an easy way to interpret Zoro, The Badass, who later becomes Zoro, The Marytr. Even though the whole time, as early as Chapter 2, Zoro is both The Badass and The Marytr, where we hear of the hound, but see the hound in chains. That’s a significant difference. Even the line, “I kinda have my own thing going on” in Netflix (to Garp) is not the same as “All I have is my destiny” in the manga (to Luffy) Manga Zoro is always A, and besides that big A, Oda adds a lowercase b and later boldens it, and that’s it. That’s all that Zoro needs from a storytelling perspective. The character appears to the reader in an immaculate form.6 And death will always circle around him, ready to dig its talons into Zoro’s chest, demanding another big sacrifice. Again and again, he will die; again and again, his glory will rise because of it. For if Luffy is God, Zoro is his prophet.
But in the live action adaptation, Luffy is just some happy-go-lucky dreamer guy with a comically stupid moral compass, and Zoro is just some gruff with a heart of gold. This is why the live action Luffy tells Zoro he needs him. And this is why I frankly don’t care about the apparent quality or deviations from the adaptation. It’s what creator Oda of 2023 thinks of his characters; he’s okayed these changes; the live action is in an unenviable position of imposing new ideas onto the old story. I respect that enough to not bemoan the live action too much. And it still has its merits! Just not when it comes to my favorite character.
The way these posts keep shaping up, I worry that we will eventually have to talk about him. Not looking forward to it, truth be told… it will get ugly (emotional). The actor, Taz Skylar, is hot though. I like the lightness and earnestness he portrays early Sanji with a lot.
Be very serious before you suggest Brook to me right now.
Tentatively including Nami here, though her life was in quite the limbo as part of the Arlong Pirates.
Once agan, the Netflix adaptation bends over in explaining why he’s there. And it makes sense… cause you can’t ruin what’s already a pretty bad arc… but comes at the expense of Gin showing up without a single continuation on his character whatsoever.
C’mon trans legend Kuina! Them changing the line in Netflix had me lol
That he’s apparently a descendant from a really cool and big samurai line is part of a larger problem I can only address if we talk about Sanji. Refer to Footnote 1 for this one. But it also adds to what I referred to with the carte blanche. Here, then, is a little cut into the carte blanche, and Zoro is still perfect.