Omg I’ve thought this for so long too!
I think they would relate to each other very well because they’re both money grubbers and I say that with all the love in my heart.
Both of them have an obsession with money and I don’t mean that in a malicious way. For the both of them, it’s a means of survival instead of greed.
Starting with Lucy, she came from money. Big money. She was an heiress to the largest railway company in Fiore, living in the lap of luxury, and was supposed to carry on the family business. However, my girl Lucy was not down with that and ran away from home to join Fairy Tail, because the one thing all that money couldn’t buy was love. The Heartfilia money meant nothing to her if she didn’t have a place to feel safe, welcomed, and loved.
But like I mentioned, she ends up with an obsession with money. After leaving, she had nothing to her name and nowhere to go, only her dream of joining Fairy Tail, which she eventually does and therefore finds a family in the guild. She’s still broke and needs to takes quests, so she joins a team, Team Natsu, which is fortunately one of the strongest teams in Fairy Tail. Unfortunately though, also one of the most destructive teams as well.
Because her team is constantly causing mass destruction and leveling towns while on the job, they often don’t get paid much due to deductions for repairs. And when they do get paid in full, Natsu and Happy end up eating all her food and running up the grocery bill lol. This leaves Lucy desperate for money because she needs to be with Fairy Tail because it is her home, her family, and safe haven.
Now most of the time, Lucy crying about having no money and not getting paid is just a running gag, but it definitely is one of her bigger motivators when they aren’t constantly saving the world from total annihilation.
Nami, on the other hand, grew up very poor. She and Nojiko were adopted by Belle-mère after she rescued them during wartime. They had very little income from the mandarin orange trees they grew and struggled to afford food at times. This caused tension amongst the three of them due to Nami being upset at their circumstances and wishing they had more money.
In my opinion, however, the reason why Nami is obsessed with money stems from the Arlong Pirates attack on her village. Arlong had demanded that everyone must pay tribute to him or lose their lives. Again, due to little income, they had very little money which was not enough for all three of them, so Belle-mère sacrificed herself for Nojiko and Nami.
That is already enough to drive the point home to a small child that you need money, or you will die. Arlong, of course, realized Nami had potential and decided to extort her. He made a deal with her, that if she brought him 100,000,000 Berries, he wouldn’t kill everybody in the village and set them free. She accepted and was branded as a member of the Arlong Pirates, to which her entire village shunned her for “betraying” them.
When we first meet Nami, she has spent over half of her life working to earn money to prevent everyone she loved from being murdered. That instilled the notion into her that money was the most important thing to have in life and absolutely necessary to avoid failure.
Of course, Arlong is defeated and the village is freed, which means she no longer needs to gather and hoard money. But after spending over a decade of doing so, it results in a running gag of being money motivated and loaning money to her crew mates. (I went to the One Piece wiki to confirm a few facts and just discovered it practically says the exact same thing lol)
In conclusion, the two of them being money grubbers is portrayed in the sense of a running gag, but there are deeper meanings as to how they got that way.
Thank you for coming to my TedTalk lol
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