Freedom Isn’t Always Peaceful: Rage and Resistance in One Piece and Attack on Titan
This is a reflection born from my work in antiracist spaces, my lived experience as a racialised person, and the fictional characters that help me think through resistance. What does it mean to fight oppression? And how do different people — and characters — answer that?
TL;DR: Resistance takes many forms. Some build, some burn. This post explores how different characters — including Eren — are shaped by the systems that oppress them.
When I was younger, I obviously believed peaceful protest, like Queen Otohime’s approach, was the way to create change. Otohime is optimistic. She believes in dialogue, in paperwork, in making herself heard by the World Government. She tries to work within the system, to gain rights for her people using the tools available to her.
We see something similar with Hange and Armin in Attack on Titan, trying to negotiate with Marley, gather knowledge, attend diplomatic meetings, understand the world in order to defend their people. Many of us activists operate that way too: petitions, peaceful protests, international law, NGOs, human rights discourse. As a racialised person, this was the path I chose when I began activism ten years ago and in many ways, I’m still walking it.
But the more I worked, the more I witnessed how violent oppression really is. Capitalism, neocolonialism, systemic racism, patriarchy, everything pushes you ten steps back. And at some point, you realise you're using the master's tools. And as Audre Lorde once said: "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."
That’s when my anger starts to mirror the one I see in characters like Fisher Tiger or Eren Yeager.
Fisher Tiger feels, in many ways, like a spiritual brother to Eren. Both come from violently oppressed groups. Tiger was enslaved. He escaped and chose to become a pirate — anti-system, free, constantly challenging the World Government.
"Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change."
Audre Lorde
There’s rage in Fisher Tiger, yes. But he doesn’t go as far as Eren does. He sees pain in others, like in Koala, and chooses compassion. And yet, when he’s dying, he refuses a human blood transfusion. It’s too painful to accept help from the very people who hurt him. That refusal costs him his life.
I see in him someone who refuses to become like his oppressors, who can empathize, but cannot forgive. That tension is powerful. But what happens when empathy isn't enough?
Eren, on the other hand, starts with a simple dream of freedom: to defeat the Titans and see the world beyond the walls. But when he finally sees that world, he realises it’s full of other humans who want to destroy his people. Something breaks in him. And in his anger and despair, he chooses a path of massive violence.
I understand why so many people dislike his character. No, genocide isn’t excusable. It’s wrong. But I can’t help but feel love for him. As someone who has experienced racism, who’s worked in activism for years, who’s seen racialised people beaten and killed, I understand that kind of anger. I don’t agree with his response but I’m glad the manga allowed that story to exist.
Because that kind of rage does exist. And fiction is a place where we need to see it, not glorified, but explored.
Because if we ignore it, if we silence it, it festers. And when it festers, it can lead to violence. “They’re killing us so we’ll kill them first.” That feeling… I think anyone who’s experienced systemic violence has felt it, even for a moment.
Luffy doesn’t talk about politics. His desire is simple, yet radical: to be free and to make sure others can be too. He doesn’t use paperwork. He doesn’t sign petitions. He punches oppressors in the face. He dismantles systems without theorising about them. Luffy acts on instinct — from joy, from anger, from love. As the embodiment of Nika, the Sun God, he becomes a symbol of liberation through laughter, through play, through irreverence.
He resists not by mirroring oppression, but by rejecting its logic entirely. His resistance is instinctive, fierce — and deeply joyful.
“Joy is an act of resistance.” Toi Derricotte
Luffy doesn’t have Tiger’s trauma, or Eren’s despair. And that gives him the clarity to fight for others without becoming consumed by vengeance.
In his book How Nonviolence Protects the State, Peter Gelderloos argues that nonviolence can’t be the only strategy when facing oppression. He explains how strict pacifism often ends up supporting the state’s monopoly on violence — something we clearly see in both One Piece and Attack on Titan.
Gelderloos also points out how nonviolence often reflects racial and class privilege. Queen Otohime can engage with the World Government because she’s royalty. She has a platform. Fisher Tiger, a former slave, doesn't. The tools of diplomacy aren’t available to everyone.
The same goes for Armin and Hange: they need powerful allies to even attempt negotiation. You need security, legitimacy, time and not everyone has that luxury.
Gelderloos doesn’t reject nonviolence but he calls for a diversity of tactics. Self-defense. Property destruction. Militant resistance. Alongside peaceful protest, not in opposition to it. History isn’t just made by peaceful speeches. It's made by many types of resistance.
We need an Otohime. A Hange. An Armin.
We also need a Fisher Tiger. A Luffy.
We need the dreamers, the rebels, and even the broken-hearted.
And yes — we need to listen to the anger of all the Erens.
We need to understand what creates them. Because that kind of rage doesn’t appear out of nowhere.
Any Fisher Tiger can become an Eren if the world pushes too hard, for too long.
And when that happens, the blame lies with the system — not with them.
“This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it.”
Babel, R.F. Kuang
