There’s a Problem With One Piece...

There are a few stories that I would place in the same sphere as One Piece, not just in manga, but in all of the fictions and maybe even a lot of the non-fiction. I genuinely think that it is one of the greatest written works in human history, and for nearly 30 years, Mr. Storylord Eiichiro Oda has built a world that has inspired tens of millions of people, myself included, and there are very, very few series that can match its ambition and consistency of execution. However, there's a however, because no story is perfect. And you know what? I think that one of the best ways to appreciate something that you love ever, ever so much is with honesty. Honesty about the moments where this story doesn't quite live up to its own incredible standard. So, today I want to look at the rare occasions where One Piece disappointed me personally. Not because I think it's a bad series, but because I think it's capable of being the greatest. And to be clear here, we're not even going to include the most basic complaints. Stuff like Pell surviving or Straw Hats not getting enough attention post time skip. I don't know, we all know that that's an issue, and I'm not going to waste your time relitigating all of the that. Instead, what I'm going to waste your time with is the first disappointing aspect of One Piece to me being simply Smoker. I feel like this may also be a fairly common complaint, but one of my first taste of Oda's rare bitter writing was when Smoker disappeared for the climax of the Alabasta Saga after declaring that he was going to chase Luffy throughout the Grand Line and become his great smokesome nemesis. Smoker was the Garp to Luffy's Roger. This powerful Marine rival who made it his mission to prevent another Pirate King from ever emerging, and all of that just never goes anywhere. Despite the fact that it is still very much Smoker's mission, apparently. That's why he was waiting for Luffy in the New World and why he pursued the Straw Hats to Punk Hazard. But then Smoker gets beat up a bunch of times by four characters who are not Luffy, and we're back to questioning what purpose he even serves at this point. And I would say that it's looking more and more likely that Coby, lovable Koby, is actually Luffy's guard, which is an idea that does make much more sense as they're from the same generation and their journeys to the top are playing out in tandem. But, as wonderful as that is for Koby, I do think that there is a lot, and I mean a lot, of lost potential for Smoker. So much so that the only role Oda has been able to find for Smoker lately is delivery boy. We saw him in chapter 1,117 carrying a fun mystery box, which no doubt contains something important something much more important than Smoker himself because these two panels are the only time that we have seen Smoker in the past 11 years of One Piece's publication. So, the series very much feels like it can live without a Smoker, and it's a shame because he was Luffy's first great Marine rival. But, now Smoker is the kind of guy who I do definitely expect to see in the final war, but more as a cameo appearance in the background rather than some sort of integral active participant. However, I am well and truly open to Oda proving me wrong about that. So, that's the Smoker one, and there's some recency bias going into this next disappointment, but I do feel like this is also, I think, a common feeling, which is that I'm becoming less and less enthusiastic about Oda's writing when it comes to one specific type of character, just one type, and that type is flashback mothers. I think that it's taken the Elbaf arc to really illuminate this issue for me, but currently, as things stand, on Elbaf, we have been introduced to a whopping five flashback mothers, Yida, Estred, Ers Magnolia, and Candle. And of those five mothers, four of them more or less follow the exact same pipeline of being introduced for the purpose of being tragically killed off a handful of chapters later. Not that this is anything new to One Piece. In fact, this usually happens at least once per arc, but most arcs only feature this mother device being employed once. So, you see the same sort of story every couple of years or so, and it's not a big deal because by the the the next mother comes along, you've already kind of forgotten about the feelings of the last one, and it's it's sort of new again. But Elbaf is very different because we have the same device happening four times in quick succession. And before I really rip into it, the one thing that I will grant Oda is that all of his Elbaf mothers have had distinctly different personalities and have all been engaging for different reasons. I love Eda, I love Candle, and I hate Astrid, but I hate her by design. However, what I hate about all of them that I don't think is by design is how boring and predictable their story threads are. Eda, she was a fantastic character, but then she caught an unknown illness and tragically passed away. Astrid, she was also a very interesting character, absolutely despicable, but look, I'm not going to deny myself a solid villain in any story, but that doesn't matter because Astrid caught a mysterious illness and died. And then, I also really enjoyed following Queen Candle for all of 5 minutes before she caught a mysterious illness and died. And the most egregious thing isn't that Oda ended up killing the mothers, it's that he does so in the exact same way. And seeing it happen this many times in such quick succession does make it feel like very lazy and uninspired writing. It's as if Oda can't think of a better way to remove the mothers, and so he just keeps falling back on mystery illness. Although, to be fair, in the case of Candle, I believe it is implied that she fell to the toxic smog covering Asperia. So, it's more of a known illness in that case, but still. And look, the reason why I'm going on and on about this isn't just because of Elbaf, though. It's not just these three times. This has been the formula since the beginning of One Piece, since all the way back when Usopp's mother died of unknown illness. And there are occasionally some creative variants on this idea, like Sanji's mother Vinsmoke Sora incurring her own condition by taking drugs to humanize her children in an attempt to counteract Judge's experiments. Or Ginny, mother of Jewelry Bonney, is another variation of this, where she purposely inflicted with sapphire scales by that nasty J Garcia Saturn. So, they contracted their illnesses, mystery or no, but it still ends up in the same place. Sickly mother tragically passes away early from condition that cannot be cured. With the other option available to flashback mothers being their brutal murder, like Bell-mère with All Long, Scarlet with Diamante, usually pretty devoid of creativity. Cuz for example, in all of the cases I just mentioned, the mothers get shot and die in the same tragic way, often leading to Oda repeating the exact same funeral scene that we've now seen with Otahime, Estred Candle, and Scarlet. However, I should point out that Scarlet's funeral was actually fake at the time. She wasn't dead yet. Either way though, how many times are we going to replay these exact same beats and see these exact same scenes just reskinned? And the reason why this played out was once given to us in the SBS volume 78 when Oda was asked, "Why is it that there is an abnormally extensive number of characters in One Piece who have unknown or already deceased mothers?" And Oda's reply was, "That's because mother is the antonym for adventure." Which I understand. I do. All I'm asking is that we tinker with the process a bit more. I know there's the whole if it's not broken, you shouldn't fix it, but refreshing it every now and then I think would be pretty nice for a story that's lasted three decades. Especially if you're planning an arc like Elbaf, it might be nice to not have three unrelated mothers die in the exact same way. But hey, you know what? I've also got to give Elbaf the credit of, at the time of this recording at least, having Ers survive the flashback, one of the only mothers to ever do so in One Piece. So, at the very least, of the five Elbaf mothers, we only have four corpses. This is an improvement. Now, this next thing hasn't happened anywhere near as often as the mothers, thankfully, but the fact that it even happened once is a bit of a stain on One Piece in my personal opinion. And that is Oda having invoked the plot device of amnesia. Amnesia is a bit of a bane on all forms of storytelling and is a very, very tired trope. And I will say that there is nothing wrong with tropes. I love tropes. It's almost impossible to tell any story without invoking tropes. But what people, I guess I should say what I tend not to like, are poorly executed tropes. And amnesia is almost impossible for even the best writers in the world to handle without it feeling like a cop-out. Now, One Piece has two major examples of this. We got our Sabo and we got our Big Mom. Both of which were controversial amongst fans for different reasons. With Sabo, he already had some issues as a character to begin with. The idea of this secret, ooh, another brother of Luffy who appears out of nowhere, almost as if the author himself had amnesia and forgot to implement Sabo for almost 600 chapters. But the kicker is that in order to explain why Sabo hadn't appeared in the story until now, to do something like save his brother from execution, well, that was because he'd been afflicted with amnesia and he could not remember his brothers. And I do feel for Oda in this moment because I'm not sure if there's anything else he could have done to explain Sabo's absence. But what that means is that Oda dug himself into a hole and kind of had no choice but to use the emergency escape button. And invoking amnesia doesn't help build the story so much as it desperately plugs a hole. But it also creates some other holes that are better not addressed, like why Sabo didn't regain his memories when Ace became a famous pirate to begin with or when Luffy emerged as a famous pirate, perhaps say after the Enies Lobby incident when we see Dragon looking at Luffy's bounty. Or better yet, why Ace never came across Sabo's bounty or any mention of him given that he was a world-renowned criminal. He wasn't just any old Revolutionary Army member. He was the chief of staff, a man whose infamy is only dwarfed by Dragon himself. And a chief of staff who happens to have the same name, face, and outfit as Ace's childhood friend. And we know that Ace was religiously monitoring bounties because he was waiting for Luffy to emerge. But even if we discount Ace's vigilance, or lack thereof, I still have the question of how did Garp not recognize Sabo? Garp would be paying very, very close attention to the Revolutionary Army given that his son is the leader. But also, Garp knew Sabo as a child. And it's the sort of thing that could maybe be fixed by something as simple as Sabo not using his original name and outfit. Because if he has amnesia, yeah, maybe he's forgotten his name. So, for years, he's just assumed he's Jeff of the Revolutionary Army. And he doesn't wear the same clothes as he did as a child, cuz maybe Jeff doesn't remember who he is. And maybe Jeff wants to grow a mustache one day and take on a different hairstyle that ends up masking his appearance. Jeff, for all intents and purposes, becomes a completely different dude, which is why no one recognizes him until one day Jeff remembers that he is not, in fact, a Jeff. He is Sabo. And he actually really likes wearing noble clothing despite hating everything about nobility due to his childhood. In my opinion, amnesia is a bit too easy of a device to implement as an author. There's really no work involved. You just say that it happens. You wave the wand, and you can't really question it. But something so easy not only feels a bit cheap, but it also creates a lot of new little problems surrounding it. Now, in the case of Big Mom, she's quite different. Amnesia wasn't implemented to plug a potential plot hole. It was actually done as a building block to explain how Luffy breaks out of Udon Prison without needing to defeat Queen. And that, I think, is the great shame of it. It was a purely mechanical device, and not something that was designed in any way to serve Big Mom herself. And you know what? I actually remember being quite excited when Big Mom got amnesia, because she reverted back to the state that we saw her in during the Whole Cake Island flashback. Remembering that Charlotte Linlin started out as an innocent girl, she wasn't born evil, and had things gone slightly differently, she could have been an iconic force of good in this world. So, in my mind, right, I'm thinking that Oda has set this up as a way to eventually confront these aspects of Linlin to either give her the chance to change to become that force of good that she may have become were it not for that nurse destroying or to do the exact opposite to make her affirm how evil she is. Look, honestly, I'm not entirely sure what I was searching for, but I was searching for something, and what I found was nothing. As soon as Luffy was free from the Udon prison, Big Mom magically recovered, and this incident had no lasting effect on her as a character outside of that one moment with Tama during the raid on Onigashima. So, I suppose I have to admit it had a little bit of a payoff. A dinosaur got punched in the neck because of this amnesia incident, and that looks like it hurt. But, I feel like that would have happened anyway because of Oda introducing Big Mom's mother mode and the fact that she punched Page One for attacking a child regardless of her having a connection to that child. In the end, I just don't know if Oda had to activate something as desperate as amnesia. Big Mom could have made it to Wano, gone on a rampage in a random direction cuz she's hungry, and ended up at Udon because that's where the smell of all the delicious oshiruko was. She causes some trouble, and Kaido can be called down to take Big Mom to Onigashima where they clash, and then we're back on track, and nothing changes. However, for the sake of fairness, I should point out that I do think Oda has written amnesia well in the past, and that would mostly be in the form of Sugar. Her devil fruit causes people to forget her toy victims, and that is very satisfying amnesia simply because there is a reason for it. It doesn't happen conveniently. But, also, there is a payoff to it. The price for Sugar using her powers was that all of Dressrosa rebelled against the Donquixote family when they regained their memories. And there are other instances of selective amnesia being implemented fairly well, like what we're doing right now with Princess Shuri's memories on Elbaf and even Brooke's Asperia trauma. It can be done well. It's just a dangerous device because it usually isn't done well by any author. And we even have another example of it in the One Piece anime during the Ocean's Dream filler arc. The premise of which is that the Straw Hats, they lose their memories. And look, correlation it is not causation, but Ocean's Dream is one of the universally agreed most disliked filler arcs in the series and amnesia is the core element of it. So, but there is another trope that can be very difficult to handle and it's also very present in One Piece lately, which is something that I have mixed feelings about, but it is the chosen one trope. And you know, when I was reading the Big Three weekly in high school because I'm old, as Naruto and Bleach progressed, I recall thinking to myself, Liam, mate, at least Luffy's still a regular guy and not some sort of fated chosen one. But as it turns out, I spoke in my head far too soon. As Luffy has arguably well and truly eclipsed both of his contemporaries in that regard. Back in the early days of East Blue or even Alabasta, and you know what, all the way up to the end of Water 7, all of Luffy's victories and achievements, they felt hard-earned. Like this was just a boy with a dream who set out to sea and was making his way through the world with sheer willpower alone. And to a degree, that is true. I'm not going to take that away from Luffy, but that's one of the main things I feel is so inspiring about Luffy to any reader of any age, any country, any gender, any whatever. Luffy has this universal appeal. The fact that this boy came from absolutely nothing and was able to find a way to make his dreams come true. Everyone can relate to that dream. Which is why as hyped as news like this is, it becomes precariously close to undermining everything when immediately after the Enies Lobby incident, it is revealed that Luffy is not only the grandson of the greatest marine in history, but he's also the son of the most wanted man in the world. And this sense of nepotism, it continues as later it's revealed that Luffy's brother Ace is the son of the pirate king Gol D. Roger, and Luffy goes on to be directly trained by Roger's second-in-command, Silvers Rayleigh. Plus, every time that Luffy is in serious fatal danger, he's always saved by something something will of D. He's also naturally gifted with Conqueror's Haki, the voice of all things, and his devil fruit happens to contain the powers of an ancient god destined to liberate and remake the world. It's a lot. Like, I don't know how much more of this trope I could thrust onto Luffy if I tried. And I do sometimes struggle with what Luffy has become. It's much harder to relate to a being who has been chosen for greatness by some unknown cosmic force, especially because as One Piece spirals closer and closer to its conclusion, the presence of fate is only becoming more and more manifest. But whether he knows it or not, and I don't believe that Luffy has any awareness, he is fated to bring about the dawn of the world. He is fated to go all the way to the end of the JRPG, defeat God, and save the planet. And so, Eiichiro Oda is walking a very, very fine line with what he's doing with Luffy. And I think the primary factor of salvation here is that Luffy had no idea, but more importantly than that, even if he did, he would not care. From Luffy's perspective, he is still the boy in a barrel that we first met in episode 1. And at every step of his journey, he is giving 120% of his effort. He never takes it easy because he's thinking to himself, "Ah, the winds of fate are going to blow me in the right direction regardless." And most importantly, the focus of Luffy's adventure, it's not about liberation. It's not about saving people. It's not about changing the world. It is about having fun. And so, despite every step of his journey seemingly being predetermined, Luffy takes full control of his life by indulging in the fun of the adventure that he has been presented with. Luffy once famously said that he doesn't even want to know if the One Piece exists at all because the The goal is not the point of having the adventure, and it's the same for all of these dramatic meta elements going on around him. So, for now, that is what has miraculously kept Luffy rather grounded and relatable because as his destiny spirals into this grander and grander scale, Luffy is still thinking about purely what is one step in front of him. However, I am a bit nervous for the future because those themes of fate and chosen one-ness are only going to become stronger and stronger, and I do hope that Luffy can continue to be that same boy in a barrel all the way to the end. But, you let me know in the comments what you think about anything, ideally related to the video, but not at all necessary.