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rallamajoopThus far my One Piece binge has got me to the end of the Water 7/Enies Lobby arc (episode 335 to be exact) and still very much in the honeymoon period of my love affair of every last one of those wonderful Straw Hats. How Oda managed to pull off the dynamic of what should, by all reason, have quickly devolved into a Ranma Half-style traveling sitcom the occasional endless shounen battle scene I do not know. God, but I could watch that merry band of dipshits mess around on deck just about forever without it getting old.
I think that a lot of what makes it work is that as easy as it should be to split the crew down lines of smart/dumb or strong/weak, everyone gets their moments of subtle genius, and everyone falls victim to their personal blindspots (be it women, money, or ability to follow simple directions) frequently enough to mess things up. Everyone can be scared, everyone has their moments of bravery; everyone screws up or gets a face full of seastone and needs to be bailed out once in a while and everyone might be that last crew member left on their feet or the one person in the right place at the right time to make the difference. They'll bicker and bitch and have to physically hold Luffy back from punching sleeping giants in the eye, but even the prickliest members of the team really don't have to be pushed all that far before Zoro and Sanji have ditched their latest argument and are working like a well-oiled machine, and Nami is telling Usopp not to worry about the money. Because One Piece, at its heart, is a story about nakama, and the wealth of affection everyone on that crew has for everyone else is never far below the surface, but it goes a long way down. They all complement each other and compensate for one another's weakness, and add up to a whole that is infinitely more than the sum of its parts.
On which subject, even beyond the Straw Hats themselves I feel like there’s a remarkably strong theme about the families you create running all through the story. For all the family the crew leave behind as the join the Straw Hats and all the childhood tragedy that seems to be prerequisite for candidature, hardly anyone’s birth parents or genetic siblings have any major role. I kinda like that; I’d be hard pressed to think of any other story where adoptive relationships are consistently given so much weight.
So I'd like to take this opportunity to take a quick run through our cast of heros and share a bit of squee and a number of happy surprises.
Luffy: is probably the one who's provided the least surprises, being pretty much the distilled essence of the shounen hero whose specialities are (in no particular order) eating, fighting, keeping promises, going to the ends of the earth for his friends, and just occasionally – despite all signs of having the intellectual development of a six-year-old – demonstrating a stunning ability to cut straight to the centre of a complex and difficult issue and figure out exactly what needs to be done. On a bad day it will take the entire crew to hold him back from making a catastrophic mistake; on a good one, you'll actually see him apologise – earnestly and with minimal prompting – for a mistake he made in the heat of the moment. Luffy is the heart and soul of the crew and an utterly wonderful creature. No more needs to be said.
Zoro: Let's face it, Zoro is not the brightest member of the crew. Worlds ahead of Luffy, sure, but still the second least qualified to function in polite society or deal with problems much diverged from his comfort zone (fighting and, secondarily, understanding Luffy well enough to tell when to ignore his inanities and when to follow an order that may sound crazy but actually makes sense on a level everyone else hasn’t spotted yet). That said, Zoro does hold the position of the crew's resident suspicious, cynical bastard, and given the right opening just occasionally gets to prove himself willing and eager to play every bit as dirty as his enemies. Case in point: his glorious approach to dealing with Baroque Works at Whiskey Peak, his plan to deal with Bon Clay's shapeshifting, and by god given half a chance he can smack talk with the best of them. He doesn't get to be smart very often, but it's worth it when he does.
Nami: I... I was really unprepared for how utterly I was going to fall for Nami. I didn't even think I was going to like her based on the early episodes. It's like she's looked every lame cliché that should apply to her – the backstabbing femme fatale, the smart-but-weak one, the love interest, the damsel in distress – right in the eye, decided she didn't like the look of them and kneed them in the nads. She's never looked back. She is amazing.
Usopp: Oh man, if ever I needed just one example of the use of humour to blindside the audience against something dramatic and terrible building just under the surface, Usopp would be it. His lying coward schtick is played for humour until it genuinely grates, and then suddenly – even though I knew it was coming – the whole question of his role in the crew has come to a head in some of the most powerfully effective scenes I’ve ever seen shounen produce.
Sanji: So, we all know Sanji: he's the third of the Big Three powers on the crew after Luffy and Zoro, and he's the ridiculously cool one who goes to pieces at the first sight of a pretty girl. That said, if Zoro is the cynically suspicious bastard, Sanji is the sneaky clever one. Case in point: the Mr Prince routine during the Alabaster arc, the sabotage of Enel's ark, and him being the first and only Strawhat to make it on to the train out of Water 7 on his own steam. To make up for it he seems to get fewer big battles to his name than Luffy or Zoro, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Sanji also perhaps deserves some sort of prize for being the single most efficient character at the fine art of Luffy-management, combining just enough actual brainpower with just enough ability and willingness to kick him in the head when he goes the wrong way.
Chopper: I don't think it's even possible to hate Chopper. I for one would not dream of trying.
Robin: I get such a ridiculous thrill whenever I realise Robin's about to get to take part in one of the big fight scenes, not just because it's one of the girls up there with the big guys, but because her power set allows some of the most fascinatingly creative ways of dealing with her enemies I have ever seen. In all my years reading manga and every foray into western superhero comics, I would be hard-pressed to think of another power as visually distinctive and original. If I get started on everything else I love about Robin we will be here all day, but I have to give special mention to that scene in Skypeia where she willingly risks life and limb to protect a historical ruin, then curb stomps that fucker into the dirt the moment they get clear. There is nothing that is not awesome about this sequence.
Franky: Goddamnit, I was so prepared to not think much of Franky. What happened? I only wish it wasn’t quite so obvious to me he’s got Bon Clay’s voice actor. What has been heard can never be unheard. D=
The supporting cast are frequently just as wonderful. I think I speak for a whole lot of fandom when I say I would watch the hell out of a spin-off solely about Ace. Ditto for Smoker, and only more so if Tashigi was a regular. The shipwrights of Water 7 included so many colourful characters that the mystery of just who the next addition to the Strawhats was going to be stayed mysterious for a good long while, and as each new nakama makes the choice to join the crew, you know you’re going to miss the family they’re leaving behind nearly as much as they will.
It’s certainly not flawless, or something I’d automatically recommend to just anyone. Watching poor Vivi fail over and over was an exercise in frustration – I don’t know that it ever really sunk in with her that she was supposed to trust the Strawhats. It’s a rough call to be someone who defines herself by her responsibilities stuck in a universe that runs on dreams and friendships, and while she had her moments, in the end it was a relief to see her go. The shounen filler problem is out in full force and some of the battles drag beyond all my patience. (I would not be getting through this show nearly so fast were I not so willing to lean liberally on the fast forward button.) But there's a refreshing sort of genre-saviness in the way One Piece goes about navigating the rapids of shounen cliché, and that goes a long way.
On shipping in the age of pirates
By this point in my fannish career I have more or less made peace with the fact that as much as I hang on worldbuilding, characterisation and plot, there’s really nothing that gets me invested on that level that goes right down to the id like finding someone to slash. That said, I think in One Piece there is an unusually good argument to be made in favour of gen interpretations, mostly being that the Strawhats are all so obviously fond of each other that you really don’t get so much of those moments where someone loses their shit beyond all sense of proportion over the news of one particular friend or rival in danger, being the stuff of which so many of the great slash ships are made. Nakama remains the mission statement behind the whole affair, and it really does go the extra yard to sell all the major relationships on that level. I think that when you get right down to it, most of the ships (het or slash) that are popular in OP fandom have less to do with characters A and B being obviously more than friends than they do with the way you can see how the dynamic between A and B would work if they were. And even then, I am already finding that much of the most enjoyable shippy fic out there gives all the crew screentime, and whatever is going on between the couple is only one part of the fun.
Of course, these impressions are all little more than conjecture at this early stage, and I am entirely prepared to go to considerable further research into the subject. >D
On Zoro/Sanji
I think it was pretty much a given this was going to be an easy sell. History sends a clear message that I am nothing if not easily sold on the juggernaut slash ships of fandom, and while I feel the fans may be a little guilty of overstating how much ambiguous tension there is between these two, gosh but the way they get under each other's skins provides a wealth of possibilities. I would challenge anyone with slashy interests to watch Sanji’s antics in the presence of a pretty girl for more than a few minutes without contemplating the fun to be had should that guy suddenly have to deal with being attracted to a man. Zoro, meanwhile, shows all signs of having about as much interest in women as he does in landscape gardening.* They work for basically everything from the occasional drunken encounter or 'gentleman's agreement' upwards.
As a bonus, there seems to be quite a good deal of good fic for the pair - and without too much tendency to reduce them to seme/uke stereotypes. Fanfic!Zoro instead seems to fall anywhere from total sex fiend to complete virgin, while Sanji vacillates between 'would just about eat his own leg before willingly admitting to interest in men' and 'any port in a storm'. My only real complaint is that I don’t think I’ve seen a single version that uses my own mental interpretation of Sanji, which posits that it is painfully obvious he has never gotten laid in his life. I mean, I can see why writers would shy away from that, but as far as I’m concerned it's entirely plausible that Zoro actually has more sexual experience than Sanji (mostly in the form of the occasional one night stand with another guy when he feels the urge and nothing he feels is worth making any kind of big deal over) and c’mon, can’t you just picture Sanji’s reaction were he to find out? I know I can and oh fuck I just had an idea didn’t I goddamnit
*proving my own hypocrisy on this account, I will say I think there is some interesting potential in Zoro/Tashigi – not least because OP made the surprising decision to barely more than hint at the possibility before largely opting to ignore it and leave Tashigi to develop in her own direction. Though I think I’d be just about as thrilled to see them develop as friends, for much the same reasons. Mostly I’m just really looking forward to when we next get to see Smoker and Tashigi again.
On Luffy/Usopp
My whole experience with this ship to date can be summarised thusly:
Me: So I gather there are a few Luffy/Usopp shippers around? Well, putting aside the obvious Kaya problem, yeah, I can see how that could work. Unlike Luffy/Nami and most of the other possible Luffy ships, at least they’re on roughly the same intellectual level, and somehow it’s a little easier to imagine Luffy favouring Usopp over the rest of the crew when they already spend so much time being total idiots together…
Me: …
Me: …they
Me: …OMG they would be the most ridiculous thing ever. It would be fantastic!
Me: Imagine Luffy getting jealous. He’d end up striking out at some random islander paying too much attention to Usopp’s stories and then have no idea why he did it!
Me: Kaya doesn’t even have to be an obstacle! Luffy wouldn’t mind sharing if it was her, Kaya’s like Usopp’s personal nakama! Oh god, imagine Usopp trying to explain to Luffy why he can’t just be in love with both of them at the same time. It’d be hopeless (and not least because Luffy might just be right).
Me: Poor Usopp, everyone on the crew would have well-meaning advice for him, and virtually none of it would be any use.
Me: It would be the most crack-addled angsty polyamorous ship-fic ever written.
Me: …
Me: …I just did it again, didn’t I? >_<
On femmeslash possibilities
Me: Seems to be a fair bit of Nami/Vivi or Nami/Robin around. Guess that stands to reason – if you wanna write femmeslash for a series like this those are gonna be pretty much your only options.
Nami: *is totally uninterested in Sanji*
Nami: *is similarly uninterested in every other guy on the crew or anyone else they meet*
Nami: *and yet, is utterly gay for Vivi on a level that Zoro/Sanji fans could only dream of*
Me: ...huh
Robin: *shows up to join the crew under tense and mysterious circumstances just as Vivi leaves and Nami is on the rebound*
Me: Okay, I am not used to femmeslash doing this thing where it writes itself.
My brain: Also: ROBIN. Robin’s abilities, and terrifying ability to keep a straight face. Think of the possibilities.
Me: Well I sure am now.
On Smoker/Ace
Me: So I gather Smoker/Ace is kind of A Thing in fandom? Iiiinteresting, I wonder where that comes from.
One Piece: *provides, somewhat grudgingly, a few minutes of conversation and a short fight scene which, while quite literally smoking hot, ultimately reaches a stalemate somewhere off screen*
Me: That's it? Okay fandom, I'll give you one more chance to convince me.
Fandom: *convinces you*
Me: … holy shit
Me: why are there not more people writing this
In conclusion: Apparently I slash everyone. And really need to do some more poking through fandom to see if all my ideas have been written already before they get any deeper entrenched in my mind. Recs, anyone? =D
I think that a lot of what makes it work is that as easy as it should be to split the crew down lines of smart/dumb or strong/weak, everyone gets their moments of subtle genius, and everyone falls victim to their personal blindspots (be it women, money, or ability to follow simple directions) frequently enough to mess things up. Everyone can be scared, everyone has their moments of bravery; everyone screws up or gets a face full of seastone and needs to be bailed out once in a while and everyone might be that last crew member left on their feet or the one person in the right place at the right time to make the difference. They'll bicker and bitch and have to physically hold Luffy back from punching sleeping giants in the eye, but even the prickliest members of the team really don't have to be pushed all that far before Zoro and Sanji have ditched their latest argument and are working like a well-oiled machine, and Nami is telling Usopp not to worry about the money. Because One Piece, at its heart, is a story about nakama, and the wealth of affection everyone on that crew has for everyone else is never far below the surface, but it goes a long way down. They all complement each other and compensate for one another's weakness, and add up to a whole that is infinitely more than the sum of its parts.
On which subject, even beyond the Straw Hats themselves I feel like there’s a remarkably strong theme about the families you create running all through the story. For all the family the crew leave behind as the join the Straw Hats and all the childhood tragedy that seems to be prerequisite for candidature, hardly anyone’s birth parents or genetic siblings have any major role. I kinda like that; I’d be hard pressed to think of any other story where adoptive relationships are consistently given so much weight.
So I'd like to take this opportunity to take a quick run through our cast of heros and share a bit of squee and a number of happy surprises.
Luffy: is probably the one who's provided the least surprises, being pretty much the distilled essence of the shounen hero whose specialities are (in no particular order) eating, fighting, keeping promises, going to the ends of the earth for his friends, and just occasionally – despite all signs of having the intellectual development of a six-year-old – demonstrating a stunning ability to cut straight to the centre of a complex and difficult issue and figure out exactly what needs to be done. On a bad day it will take the entire crew to hold him back from making a catastrophic mistake; on a good one, you'll actually see him apologise – earnestly and with minimal prompting – for a mistake he made in the heat of the moment. Luffy is the heart and soul of the crew and an utterly wonderful creature. No more needs to be said.
Zoro: Let's face it, Zoro is not the brightest member of the crew. Worlds ahead of Luffy, sure, but still the second least qualified to function in polite society or deal with problems much diverged from his comfort zone (fighting and, secondarily, understanding Luffy well enough to tell when to ignore his inanities and when to follow an order that may sound crazy but actually makes sense on a level everyone else hasn’t spotted yet). That said, Zoro does hold the position of the crew's resident suspicious, cynical bastard, and given the right opening just occasionally gets to prove himself willing and eager to play every bit as dirty as his enemies. Case in point: his glorious approach to dealing with Baroque Works at Whiskey Peak, his plan to deal with Bon Clay's shapeshifting, and by god given half a chance he can smack talk with the best of them. He doesn't get to be smart very often, but it's worth it when he does.
Nami: I... I was really unprepared for how utterly I was going to fall for Nami. I didn't even think I was going to like her based on the early episodes. It's like she's looked every lame cliché that should apply to her – the backstabbing femme fatale, the smart-but-weak one, the love interest, the damsel in distress – right in the eye, decided she didn't like the look of them and kneed them in the nads. She's never looked back. She is amazing.
Usopp: Oh man, if ever I needed just one example of the use of humour to blindside the audience against something dramatic and terrible building just under the surface, Usopp would be it. His lying coward schtick is played for humour until it genuinely grates, and then suddenly – even though I knew it was coming – the whole question of his role in the crew has come to a head in some of the most powerfully effective scenes I’ve ever seen shounen produce.
Sanji: So, we all know Sanji: he's the third of the Big Three powers on the crew after Luffy and Zoro, and he's the ridiculously cool one who goes to pieces at the first sight of a pretty girl. That said, if Zoro is the cynically suspicious bastard, Sanji is the sneaky clever one. Case in point: the Mr Prince routine during the Alabaster arc, the sabotage of Enel's ark, and him being the first and only Strawhat to make it on to the train out of Water 7 on his own steam. To make up for it he seems to get fewer big battles to his name than Luffy or Zoro, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Sanji also perhaps deserves some sort of prize for being the single most efficient character at the fine art of Luffy-management, combining just enough actual brainpower with just enough ability and willingness to kick him in the head when he goes the wrong way.
Chopper: I don't think it's even possible to hate Chopper. I for one would not dream of trying.
Robin: I get such a ridiculous thrill whenever I realise Robin's about to get to take part in one of the big fight scenes, not just because it's one of the girls up there with the big guys, but because her power set allows some of the most fascinatingly creative ways of dealing with her enemies I have ever seen. In all my years reading manga and every foray into western superhero comics, I would be hard-pressed to think of another power as visually distinctive and original. If I get started on everything else I love about Robin we will be here all day, but I have to give special mention to that scene in Skypeia where she willingly risks life and limb to protect a historical ruin, then curb stomps that fucker into the dirt the moment they get clear. There is nothing that is not awesome about this sequence.
Franky: Goddamnit, I was so prepared to not think much of Franky. What happened? I only wish it wasn’t quite so obvious to me he’s got Bon Clay’s voice actor. What has been heard can never be unheard. D=
The supporting cast are frequently just as wonderful. I think I speak for a whole lot of fandom when I say I would watch the hell out of a spin-off solely about Ace. Ditto for Smoker, and only more so if Tashigi was a regular. The shipwrights of Water 7 included so many colourful characters that the mystery of just who the next addition to the Strawhats was going to be stayed mysterious for a good long while, and as each new nakama makes the choice to join the crew, you know you’re going to miss the family they’re leaving behind nearly as much as they will.
It’s certainly not flawless, or something I’d automatically recommend to just anyone. Watching poor Vivi fail over and over was an exercise in frustration – I don’t know that it ever really sunk in with her that she was supposed to trust the Strawhats. It’s a rough call to be someone who defines herself by her responsibilities stuck in a universe that runs on dreams and friendships, and while she had her moments, in the end it was a relief to see her go. The shounen filler problem is out in full force and some of the battles drag beyond all my patience. (I would not be getting through this show nearly so fast were I not so willing to lean liberally on the fast forward button.) But there's a refreshing sort of genre-saviness in the way One Piece goes about navigating the rapids of shounen cliché, and that goes a long way.
On shipping in the age of pirates
By this point in my fannish career I have more or less made peace with the fact that as much as I hang on worldbuilding, characterisation and plot, there’s really nothing that gets me invested on that level that goes right down to the id like finding someone to slash. That said, I think in One Piece there is an unusually good argument to be made in favour of gen interpretations, mostly being that the Strawhats are all so obviously fond of each other that you really don’t get so much of those moments where someone loses their shit beyond all sense of proportion over the news of one particular friend or rival in danger, being the stuff of which so many of the great slash ships are made. Nakama remains the mission statement behind the whole affair, and it really does go the extra yard to sell all the major relationships on that level. I think that when you get right down to it, most of the ships (het or slash) that are popular in OP fandom have less to do with characters A and B being obviously more than friends than they do with the way you can see how the dynamic between A and B would work if they were. And even then, I am already finding that much of the most enjoyable shippy fic out there gives all the crew screentime, and whatever is going on between the couple is only one part of the fun.
Of course, these impressions are all little more than conjecture at this early stage, and I am entirely prepared to go to considerable further research into the subject. >D
On Zoro/Sanji
I think it was pretty much a given this was going to be an easy sell. History sends a clear message that I am nothing if not easily sold on the juggernaut slash ships of fandom, and while I feel the fans may be a little guilty of overstating how much ambiguous tension there is between these two, gosh but the way they get under each other's skins provides a wealth of possibilities. I would challenge anyone with slashy interests to watch Sanji’s antics in the presence of a pretty girl for more than a few minutes without contemplating the fun to be had should that guy suddenly have to deal with being attracted to a man. Zoro, meanwhile, shows all signs of having about as much interest in women as he does in landscape gardening.* They work for basically everything from the occasional drunken encounter or 'gentleman's agreement' upwards.
As a bonus, there seems to be quite a good deal of good fic for the pair - and without too much tendency to reduce them to seme/uke stereotypes. Fanfic!Zoro instead seems to fall anywhere from total sex fiend to complete virgin, while Sanji vacillates between 'would just about eat his own leg before willingly admitting to interest in men' and 'any port in a storm'. My only real complaint is that I don’t think I’ve seen a single version that uses my own mental interpretation of Sanji, which posits that it is painfully obvious he has never gotten laid in his life. I mean, I can see why writers would shy away from that, but as far as I’m concerned it's entirely plausible that Zoro actually has more sexual experience than Sanji (mostly in the form of the occasional one night stand with another guy when he feels the urge and nothing he feels is worth making any kind of big deal over) and c’mon, can’t you just picture Sanji’s reaction were he to find out? I know I can and oh fuck I just had an idea didn’t I goddamnit
*proving my own hypocrisy on this account, I will say I think there is some interesting potential in Zoro/Tashigi – not least because OP made the surprising decision to barely more than hint at the possibility before largely opting to ignore it and leave Tashigi to develop in her own direction. Though I think I’d be just about as thrilled to see them develop as friends, for much the same reasons. Mostly I’m just really looking forward to when we next get to see Smoker and Tashigi again.
On Luffy/Usopp
My whole experience with this ship to date can be summarised thusly:
Me: So I gather there are a few Luffy/Usopp shippers around? Well, putting aside the obvious Kaya problem, yeah, I can see how that could work. Unlike Luffy/Nami and most of the other possible Luffy ships, at least they’re on roughly the same intellectual level, and somehow it’s a little easier to imagine Luffy favouring Usopp over the rest of the crew when they already spend so much time being total idiots together…
Me: …
Me: …they
Me: …OMG they would be the most ridiculous thing ever. It would be fantastic!
Me: Imagine Luffy getting jealous. He’d end up striking out at some random islander paying too much attention to Usopp’s stories and then have no idea why he did it!
Me: Kaya doesn’t even have to be an obstacle! Luffy wouldn’t mind sharing if it was her, Kaya’s like Usopp’s personal nakama! Oh god, imagine Usopp trying to explain to Luffy why he can’t just be in love with both of them at the same time. It’d be hopeless (and not least because Luffy might just be right).
Me: Poor Usopp, everyone on the crew would have well-meaning advice for him, and virtually none of it would be any use.
Me: It would be the most crack-addled angsty polyamorous ship-fic ever written.
Me: …
Me: …I just did it again, didn’t I? >_<
On femmeslash possibilities
Me: Seems to be a fair bit of Nami/Vivi or Nami/Robin around. Guess that stands to reason – if you wanna write femmeslash for a series like this those are gonna be pretty much your only options.
Nami: *is totally uninterested in Sanji*
Nami: *is similarly uninterested in every other guy on the crew or anyone else they meet*
Nami: *and yet, is utterly gay for Vivi on a level that Zoro/Sanji fans could only dream of*
Me: ...huh
Robin: *shows up to join the crew under tense and mysterious circumstances just as Vivi leaves and Nami is on the rebound*
Me: Okay, I am not used to femmeslash doing this thing where it writes itself.
My brain: Also: ROBIN. Robin’s abilities, and terrifying ability to keep a straight face. Think of the possibilities.
Me: Well I sure am now.
On Smoker/Ace
Me: So I gather Smoker/Ace is kind of A Thing in fandom? Iiiinteresting, I wonder where that comes from.
One Piece: *provides, somewhat grudgingly, a few minutes of conversation and a short fight scene which, while quite literally smoking hot, ultimately reaches a stalemate somewhere off screen*
Me: That's it? Okay fandom, I'll give you one more chance to convince me.
Fandom: *convinces you*
Me: … holy shit
Me: why are there not more people writing this
In conclusion: Apparently I slash everyone. And really need to do some more poking through fandom to see if all my ideas have been written already before they get any deeper entrenched in my mind. Recs, anyone? =D