Saltey Takes On Manga

I'm reading One Piece from the beginning (again.) Hella spoilers, all untagged. Updated when I can, all posts queued @SalteyWater

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Did you see the new popularity poll? Are you voting for anyone in particular?

Yes, I did. I do like when they do the global polls because otherwise it's kinda hard for people outside Japan to vote.

Anon is talking about the character popularity poll:

The 2nd Global ONE PIECE Character Popularity Contest

The 2nd Global Popularity Poll is open, where fans around the world choose their No.1 from a total of 1,567 characters!!!

You can vote once per day (per device 🤫) until June 11th at 11:59pm Japan time.

I am not deeply invested in the character popularity polls so I did one round of voting for each Straw Hat and a couple votes for characters like Sabo and Pudding. I don't have any coordinated plan or agenda to try to boost my personal fave or anything.

However there were a couple things that stood out to me in the early results.

1) Luffy is far and away the most popular character globally, which is unusual for shonen manga. Usually there's another character that overshadows the main character (Kakashi in Naruto and Gojo in Jujutsu Kaisen stand out without checking, but there are a few other manga that I know had this happen - I just can't remember off the top of my head.) This is probably because the main character is usually meant to be more "relatable" and represent a sort of Everyman for readers to latch onto and get invested in. "Cool" characters who are stronger or have more complex motivations tend to stand out in contrast and become a more distinct favorite for readers.

2) Zoro is the most popular character in Japan. Which is super surprising! I feel like Zoro hasn't had much time to shine recently, and in all the previous character polls - which only ran in Japan - Luffy got easily half again as many votes as the runner up (which has usually been Zoro or Law.) I wonder if the fact people have multiple opportunities to vote is skewing the results. It's also been running for only about a week so I'm sure results will shift between now and June.

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Zoro looks like he’s teasing Usopp here, but really he’s just telling him it’s fine to be honest your weaknesses and limitations. Despite their gap in raw power, Zoro has a lot of respect for Usopp as a fellow warrior.

Nobody on the crew ever mocks Usopp for his fears, even if they don’t always take him entirely seriously.

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Usopp isn’t wrong!

I mean, it’s ironic coming from him but he’s still not wrong.

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This explains a lot about Dalton. When this is the country/law you have to work with, it’s no wonder he stayed with Wapol for so long. If the law says the king is the ultimate authority then (Dalton thought) his best bet to fix things was to try to get Wapol to change. It was probably also difficult for Dalton, who grew up with these laws and this way of thinking, to imagine any other way for a government to work.

This is also probably why Dalton asked “can this country be healed too?” The answer was NO. The entire constitution (lol @ they even bother to have a constitution) is based on the absolute authority of a single person and naturally serves the needs and interest of that person first. To heal a country like this so that it serves the needs of the citizens, rather than trusting the king to serve the citizens, it becomes a Ship of Theseus question. As long as the king exists (“L'État, c'est moi”) the country would never be able to truly heal.

Drum Kingdom needed to be destroyed so that Sakura Kingdom could exist.

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Of all the fruits we’ve seen in One Piece, I think Wapol’s powers are still the most body horror-inducing for me.

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Something I appreciate more about Drum Island arc is the way we’re reminded how long change can take. Even though it looked like Hiriluk died in vain, those doctors who saw him held onto the inspiration and hope he gave them for five years, just waiting for an opportunity to take action.

This happens again and again, where Luffy and the Straw Hats blunder into a powderkeg of a situation that’s been simmering for years if not decades and become the catalyst that finally moves people into action. Obviously for narrative reasons more stuff happens around Luffy because he’s our protagonist, but it also ties into his personality and character. The simple fact of Luffy’s presence seems to electrify people and spurs them to finally rise up.

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Up til now the Isshi 20 were rank after rank of people in surgical scrubs and masks and glasses, speaking and acting and moving in unison. One of the features of uniforms is turning groups of individuals into a homogeneous bloc. That in turn makes it easier to depersonalize and dehumanize, both the people in the uniforms and the ones they’re facing.

But here we’re reminded that behind the uniforms and behind these characters we gleefully cursed and hated for abandoning the country and supporting the king are just… a bunch of guys.

Oda’s ability to draw such distinct characters, even for background characters, is put to great use here to remind us of their humanity.

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One of my absolute favorite covers! It’s super dynamic and even though Usopp’s back is to us in a way that makes the scene feel more real. Normally a pose like this would be closing us, the viewers, off from the action. But instead it feels more spontaneous and less posed, like we’re running right along with them.

There are a some fun details in here. Everyone’s carrying a different type of backpack - Luffy and Zoro have bindles (because they don’t care about style) and Nami has a cute tiny backpack. Check out Usopp’s very stylish Swatch collection, plus his aloha print bandanna. I wonder what that long package is he’s got on his back?

I love the love that’s shown here. Luffy is having so much fun, and everyone is looking out for his hat for him. The reactions give you a sense for just how many fractions of a second ago it flew off his head and create a neat visual cascade.

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This whole sequence is super fun classic Straw Hat teamwork.

Sanji didn’t need to explain the plan - either to the readers or Luffy. He already figured it out in a second as soon as he saw Wapol eat Chopper. Luffy trusts Sanji enough to go along with what he says even if he doesn’t know the situation yet. And a moment later once he realizes what Sanji’s up to he adapts his own tactics and adds a spin to give himself even more power.

It makes perfect sense because we’ve already seen this sort of teamwork and trust amongst the crew, and it only gets better as they go on.

Oda could have taken out the page of Luffy and Nami talking to give Sanji an opportunity to explain his plan and maybe hype up the stakes. Instead he chose to include that and cut extra panels from this scene, which keeps the pace of the fight faster despite being interrupted.

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I love this very normal interaction.

It’s also good storytelling. It’s not just giving us an explanation for how Luffy gets a coat, (recall his old one was torn up to keep Nami from falling off his back while he climbed the mountain) it also tells us a lot about what is “normal” for the crew. Just a fight? Nothing to worry about.

There’s also some great subtle character development here, revealing the type of normal conversations they have and how they treat each other. Luffy may not care about fashion but he does want to look “cool,” and he’s happy to take Nami’s advice even if he doesn’t really understand it.

Oda spent a whole page on this in the middle of a fight, but it’s always been one of my favorite scenes.

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Chopper already fits right in.

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This is the part of Kuromarimo’s character that really makes me flinch. The fact that Oda designed a Black character with an afro isn’t the problem, but turning his afro into a gimmick is… kinda bad. Especially when the politics of Black people wearing their natural hair are so fraught.

Though the conversation is much more common here in the States, Japan has its own issues with racism, and people with curly hair in Japan face a lot of negative stereotypes. Things like their hair is messy, dirty, unprofessional, or indicative of poor character. It’s not limited to Black or mixed race people, either. There’s a lot of variety in hair color and texture among people with 100% Japanese heritage but people dye and straighten their hair to avoid these types of comments.

I’m not trying to condemn Oda here, but this is just something that is kind of yikes.

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Sanji just can’t keep his mouth shut.

This is one of my issues with Sanji. His treatment of women improves the more attractive he finds them. Because he’s not attracted to Kureha he’s protective, but only as much as Luffy or Zoro would be towards any other non-combatant. In other words, Sanji treats attractive women better because he wants something from them, which frankly I find pretty despicable.

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I can’t help but wonder how much of this is Kureha being a softy for Chopper or her using him as an excuse to hide the fact that she wanted to do something similar for Hiriluk. Either way, despite how she plays this down, I find this surprisingly sweet of her.

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Sanji is so delighted here. Is he proud or does he just think it’s fun? Either way, his smile is practically a mirror of Luffy’s in ch140 when he realizes Chopper can transform and decides to recruit him.

To Chopper “monster” has always meant something bad, but for the first time here someone is saying it in a way that isn’t negative. Despite being a “monster” Luffy clearly has friends who are important to him - so important he’d carry them up the whole mountain - and those friends feel the same about him.

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I love how insulting this is. Luffy just wanders off after punching Wapol in the face. Everything about this fight is designed to be as humiliating as possible for Wapol. For that reason it’s an extremely cathartic fight, especially after that flashback.

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This little shithead, look how happy he is. He’ll finally be able to relieve some of the frustration of not being able to do anything but dodge Wapol’s attacks when he was carrying Nami and Sanji.