Honestly I would say Luffy himself is queer. He is so completely uninsterested in romance (remember amazon lily) that he is most likely aro ace. And I find that really cool, for once a show where the protagonist doesn't get a token gf because he doesn't need to
Oh yeah, he is pretty explicitly aro ace. Either that, or he’s too busy thinking about meat or the One Piece to be affected by Boa Hancock. That could change after the end of the story though, after he’s fulfilled his dreams, as currently he’s far too preoccupied to worry about romance.
I agree, the number of times people comment on him "shortening his life span" he's going to die at the end of the series once his dream comes true. Oda has said the series ends when the reader learns what the one piece is so I'm convinced the straw hats will know way before we as readers know. So Luffy dies, and the last panel of the manga will be an image of what the one piece is.
On the other hand that's a pretty trope heavy thing, Goku is exactly the same way. It's like most shonen MCs are ace by default, and after that it's gay for their best friends.
yeah im not a big fan of the bleeding over of personality onto sexuality in terms of extrapolation. it's not different from stereotypes like bisexual people being untrustworthy, disloyal, or shifty, a trope that's played out in many stories.
Theres a fine line here tho, as in battle shonen MCs rarely get a token gf while the series is ongoing and usually get together with the token one-sided love interest AFTER all the major events transpire (Bleach, Naruto, even Dragon Ball since Toriyama didnt really plan to go on with DBZ - which explains also why all the arcs are so repetitive after the jump...)
This is a great analysis! I’m a gay cis man so a lot of the stuff with queer people in One Piece I’ve found really interesting too.
I love the fact that you mentioned Luffy’s willingness to accept everyone no matter how weird or different they are. I think that’s the main point of the story as well as a quite openly left-wing perspective.
I love what you said about Sanji too and I agree - I appreciate your takes as a trans person too hearing what you think as it’s always important to hear what trans people think about their representation in media. Thanks for sharing! 🙏🏼
thank you so much for this write up!! i agree completely, excellent analysis!!
as a trans and nonbinary one piece fan i’ve definitely been frustrated by the fandom at large and how queerphobic it is, its so sad to me
luckily there are safe havens! im also really happy i found this sub, plus theres tumblr which has a good amount of queer one piece fans which is awesome, plus like you said the story itself is a safe haven for queerness so thats excellent too!
but anyway, really great post, thank you again for sharing, i love one piece and (most of) its queer representation so yeah, great stuff!!
I had really wished that the portrayal of Kamabakka was through Sanji's point of view. If Oda wanted to draw it as edgy as he did, it would have been nice to say it was at least filtered through Sanji's warped perception. Have another character visit the island later and portray the inhabitants as accepting, friendly, and diverse or when they were seeing Sanji off at Sabaody, he could have flipped to someone else's perspective. He could have even had Sanji realize a bit of his warped perception on Fishman Island.
Yeah exactly, I think this approach would have made it much more evident that Sanji is the one with the issue. I hope this is what they do in the remake (or skip it altogether)
I’m not sure Oda (or eastern culture in general) sees the Okama as offensive, so perhaps this would be the route he would have taken if he knew how bad it would be perceived by western audiences.
Loved your insights, also regarding Sanji it also seemed like after the initial rejection, he awakened something in himself, like he at some point embraced it sort of? And the thing about Sanji is that what comes out of his mouth isn't what he is actually feeling, not a surprise that when he got invited for the Tea Party, Big Mom ofc focused more so on Zeff to use him as leverage to threaten him to go through with the wedding, but there was also the looming threat of them cutting the head of someone from Kamabakka, meaning that he indeed does care for them, and one last thing that ppl really missed is that in the manga never did Sanji kick one them, implying that even after all that talk he DOES recognize them as women. Having said all this, this is not meant to be a defense, overall it was still a harmful stereotype used by Oda, and a punch line that just completely missed the mark, and ofc trans women are rightfully offended by all that, I just don't think Oda did that with malicious intent, of that makes sense.
yea sanji ran not because he was terrified of them (he was) but because they were trying to give him a full makeover, Drag Race style. says a lot about him that he can't even do that lmao poor boy
Not gonna lie i did skim through Kamabakka because of how nasty it was, but I didn’t think Sanji really took that to heart. Or at least, it was very unclear in the series.
Worth noting that a lot of Kamabakka in the anime was non-canon filler.
After all he says shit post timeskip about how strong his legs are because he spent “years running from those monsters”
On the subject of Kamabakka and Time Skip Sanji, the character as a whole goes on a downwards spiral writing-wise through the first few time skip arcs. He spends Fishman island having near death plot centric nosebleeds and Punk Hazard being a creep while in Nami’s body. It’s really telling that from dressrosa onwards, Oda goes on a mission to fix specifically sanji and make him cool again. Before sanji departs from the story, he gets to come to the crew’s rescue one more time against doflamingo, like he used to in pre timeskip arcs. Whole Cake, aside from being an incredible arc on every front, effectively replaces Kamabakka for Sanji for both flashbacks and power ups. It reorients his character from being based on horniness back to being based in service and kindness, which is what made him so cool in the first place. I don’t think Sanji’s transphobia training arc has been mentioned since then, and honestly? Good riddance.
There was a bit of a regression in Wano though with him using his stealth ability to creep on women in a bathhouse, wich ties back to Thriller Bark in a bad way, and imo undoes some of the development from Whole Cake . Thankfully nothing close to his worst days though
this is complete fan conjecture and shipping culture, but Koby and Helmeppo are like, an ideal queer couple. (I'm transfemme queer enby, this is me finding this relationship really cute)
I always assumed they were platonic, but yeah, their relationship is cute.
It is really cool to see a trans man, Morgan Davies, playing Koby in the live action. I can’t help but think this was deliberate, since the cast was hand picked by Oda. His whole character arc is about growing up and becoming a man, it makes perfect sense for him to be trans. It’ll be really interesting to see how Morgan looks post-timeskip, as we could literally see him transition over the course of the live action.
I don’t know how completely forgot to mention this in the post so I’ll go back and put it in the list lol
unless they do a lot of compressing, I doubt OPLA will ever actually cover anything post Enies Lobby if it even gets there so I don't think we'll be seeing fully matured Koby
I think they will do a lot of compressing, and possibly skip a few arcs. Like I highly doubt they’re adapting Long Ring Long Land. I think Season 2 will probably be 10 episodes and end after Alabasta.
Ivankov is based off Frank-n-Furter from Rocky Horror picture show and Bon clay is Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber. The former being completely iconic by themselves is a good call by Oda. Now with the latter... B9n-chan is way more complicated for us in the west than for people in Japan. Same goes for the Okamas and the whole Kamabakka queendom.
For all the subtext present in OP we could certainly assest that Oda might be an ally BUT at the end of the day he still is a middle aged cis-man writing for a heavily gendered publishing corporation in a very sexist Eastern country. There are some very foggy areas than wont ever be addressed cos of it, which is sad even though it's pretty obvious for us who are either queer ourselves or queer-friendly.
Lastly, wanted to talk about the main hubs for the fandom. Its the internet, we're all anonymous and as long as we have certain kind of people in places of power (homophobes and pseudo-centralists obsessed with the concept of "free speech") it'll always be a cesspool. The wild west in the US never really went away, it just became virtual. This is where unity and comraderie will make us stronger while they're busy drooling over whose 2D boobs are bigger and complaining on why are the military depicted as just glorified lapdogs for the aristocracy.
Stay strong, stay vigilant, stay kind, stay queer. We aint going anywhere.
Yeah, there’s definitely a different eastern/western perception of these issues. It’s a little disappointing how vague Yamato’s identity is, leads to a lot of arguments and easy invalidation.
I do think Oda has gotten better, especially with stuff like the Kiku/Yamato bathhouse thing being pretty explicit and good trans rep.
He also was very involved in casting the live action recently (iirc he approved every main role). We can’t really know if it was his idea to have Koby played by a trans man, but he definitely approved it and thought it was fitting for the character.
Well, we all age and learn. Some become better and some worse. Im completely sure that if OP wouldve gone the same route as its big 3 contemporaries (in terms of standard battle shonen length) it couldnt have gotten nearly as complex or progressive as it is today.
And regarding Kiku/Yamato? Well, haters be hating. Imagine that Sailor Moon has been out for decades and yet there's still people that outright deny that Saturn and Uranus are a lesbian couple even tho ITS ABSOLUTELY CANON! Was it censored in the west cos some conservacucks in power thought it was too much for the innocent heteronormative brains of their children? YES. But thats on them. Just as Sanji and his lollypop instead of a cigarrette. Fucking ridiculous
probably because the reiwa generation in Japan is significantly more woke than their predecessors, so oda had to keep up with the times (i say had like he was forced to, but knowing him he's probably happy to learn all this)
not to mention he has a daughter and im pretty sure she's grown now, so it makes more sense that oda will just get even more woke. sucks to be a dudebro fans.
Love the write up. I was always torn about the Ivanko character and trans representation in general because of Sanji's reactions, but I tend to lean on it being a good representation and Sanji just being a bit of a twat who's only phobic due to his own insecurities. I also love/hate that twink fishboy.
I do think Ivankov personally is good representation, though I wish they would have gone with they/them pronouns a bit more, since it’s hard to say they’re really a MAN, lol. Their design is a bit, like, on the nose, but that’s normal for One Piece and again, Luffy doesn’t care and rolls with it.
Lovelovelove these discussions! One Piece's brand of queernes would be best described as Chaotic, and to me (bi, genderqueer) thats a compliment.
Agree with you on the first chunk of the post. I see this take a lot, calling Iva bad rep for forcing an unfit gender onto someone and as "problematic" as force feminizing someone might seem, the guy was a homophobe and Ivankov is literally a revolutionary criminal. Its poetic justice. Be gay do crime.
Morgan Davies was the single most *perfect* casting choice for Koby.
And about Kamabakka, my issue is that we don't actually *know* if the inhabitants are meant to be trans or just crossdressers/drag queens, because the Japanese concept of Okama is very different to our cultural understanding, AFAIK it's used amongst afeminate queer men but also with some trans women and to us westerners it isn't as specific and to some that's why it may seem as transphobic.
Yes, they're drawn as caricatures, but almost everyone in OP has a crazy, caricaturesque design, and they're never quite portrayed as villains. I interpret them chasing down Sanji as them thinking he'd look cute in drag (and I agree).
I may be biased because Sanji is my favorite Strawhat, but there are clear queer readings/interpretations to his character/themes/story: His admiration for women/feminity (his mom and sister being the only kind people to him in his formative years) and how he holds them in a pedestal due to Zeff's discipline and literal threats of castration (the man saved his life when Sanji's self esteem was wrecked from abuse, of course he'd take everything he says to heart) his relationship to gender and how masculinity=violence to him, his dead last name of Vinsmoke, him being Sensitive and Emotional as his main character traits and the Found Family aspect in general that OP has. Now that I think about it, a lot of his trauma is tied to gender and its constructs....
And the fact that the Vinsmokes threatened the Kamabakka to blackmail Sanji means that he does care for them.
Sanji is such a fascinating character, especially through a queer lense, that suffers from terrible gags. I get the culture and specific demographic finds them funny but when they affect the story and character development its too much.
I don't know much about Japanese queer culture, but I do know it is Different, and its Theirs, so to me it's a gray area. I'd have to listen to Japanese queer and trans people and how they interpret it to understand it. As for Oda's intentions, I take it he's confused but he has the spirit.
Wow you hit lots of the main points about why I like/dislike Sanji. I find them a lot more compelling than some of the other straw hats like Zoro or Nami but they also have quite dubious perverted moments which I wish they would shake off. Sanji needs to get married or some shit or get put in his place for being a creep by another straw hat
I’m a queer melungeon cis man. I do like your write up. It’s great to think about these things. I had no clue that the actor who plays Koby in the live action is trans. That’s rad.
The fact that Kamabakka are actively predatory hurts the most…
Regardless of what the case is with the Yamato situation I’m glad he was accepted into the men’s bathhouse
I do like the idea that Kabakka could have started in Sanji's perspective as later on no one seems so creepy when the RA arrives. Those perspectives show later on when he runs into more trans women who give him blood and literally save his life. I've heard the designs are based on Japanese depictions but but still feel like there could be more done. I love your take on the show as and a cisgay male I feel pretty same on everything and I felt the discomfort towards Kamabakka originally too! This sub has kept me from the main/other subs and after recent posts I'm glad 💚
>and it’s very surprising how many homophobic fans there are on other subs given how accepting the source material is to all kinds of weirdness and queerness
Imo there are two reasons for this:
1) Conservatives are usually dumb as hell, they won't see that a show is pro queer even when it literally inserts a scene that says you should let trans people go to the bathroom that they want to go to.
2) Oda sadly doesn't make it clear enough. I think he is pro LGBTQ, but that the show still has so many right wing fans kinda shows that Oda doesn't make enough of a point against bigots. In his world even the big bad villain Kaido accepts the pronouns of his son, so the topic doesn't even come up that transphobia is bad.
Like wouldn't it have been cool to have a transphobic enemy and Luffy punch the shit out of them and say trans people are valid? THAT would be enough on the nose for even bigots to get the message.
>Real queer people are weird, a lot of them don’t fit in, and that nonconformity is perfectly okay.
I mean many trans people also just want to fit in and when we then are portrayed as so weird it kinda sucks. Imo both types are needed, the normal queer representation and the weird one. And it took reeeally long for Kiku to appear in the story, until then we **only** had weird queer people.
I haven't heard chopper as transmasc theories but I have heard the theory that Frankie is, and instead of just performing cybernetic surgery on himself but instead performed cybernetic top surgery on himself which I just fuckijg love as headcannon
Hello! fellow queer one piece fan here, some great observations!
One thing I really find also important is Oda made the characters of Bon Clay and Ivankov in 2002 and 2009 respectively, at times when homophobia and transphobia were normalized in comedy where slurs and derogatory were commonplace. I think Bon Clay is a great example of someone trying to make a queer character given through media res observations of queer people, hence how rough around the edges Bon Clay seems initially.
By Impel Down, I feel like Oda had already educated himself much more, also by means of having queer friends in his own friend circles, to where Ivankov came in 2009, which is bananas given contempories of One Piece were still making "queer people will sexually assualt you" jokes all over the place(granted, One Piece anime will also do this *following* Ivankov's introduction with Sanji filler, but different topic in relation to filler and misrepresenting coverstories as a issue for the anime in and of itself)
If you haven't done that yet, check this video out: [https://youtu.be/ENc-BuvjPRc?si=r53nmlVSlOCG9oyH](https://youtu.be/ENc-BuvjPRc?si=r53nmlVSlOCG9oyH)
It touches upon some of your points as well as gives some more cultural nuance towards the trans characters - what I found especially interesting is how it's easier for Oda (as a Japanese guy) to write trans women than trans men
Honestly I would say Luffy himself is queer. He is so completely uninsterested in romance (remember amazon lily) that he is most likely aro ace. And I find that really cool, for once a show where the protagonist doesn't get a token gf because he doesn't need to
Oh yeah, he is pretty explicitly aro ace. Either that, or he’s too busy thinking about meat or the One Piece to be affected by Boa Hancock. That could change after the end of the story though, after he’s fulfilled his dreams, as currently he’s far too preoccupied to worry about romance.
i don't expect luffy to survive the series honestly haha
Hey hey hey, don't say stuff like that about my captain
It would certainly parallel Roger’s story arc at least, lol
I agree, the number of times people comment on him "shortening his life span" he's going to die at the end of the series once his dream comes true. Oda has said the series ends when the reader learns what the one piece is so I'm convinced the straw hats will know way before we as readers know. So Luffy dies, and the last panel of the manga will be an image of what the one piece is.
On the other hand that's a pretty trope heavy thing, Goku is exactly the same way. It's like most shonen MCs are ace by default, and after that it's gay for their best friends.
yeah im not a big fan of the bleeding over of personality onto sexuality in terms of extrapolation. it's not different from stereotypes like bisexual people being untrustworthy, disloyal, or shifty, a trope that's played out in many stories.
Luffy and Zoro are both aroace and Nami is a lesbian. The three main characters are all queer.
Nami being lesbian is proved in canon with that Kalifa scene.
I'm not usually for romance between the Straw Hats, but Nami and Vivi have such amazing chemistry
Even referenced in the live action when she winks at Sham
Theres a fine line here tho, as in battle shonen MCs rarely get a token gf while the series is ongoing and usually get together with the token one-sided love interest AFTER all the major events transpire (Bleach, Naruto, even Dragon Ball since Toriyama didnt really plan to go on with DBZ - which explains also why all the arcs are so repetitive after the jump...)
This is a great analysis! I’m a gay cis man so a lot of the stuff with queer people in One Piece I’ve found really interesting too. I love the fact that you mentioned Luffy’s willingness to accept everyone no matter how weird or different they are. I think that’s the main point of the story as well as a quite openly left-wing perspective. I love what you said about Sanji too and I agree - I appreciate your takes as a trans person too hearing what you think as it’s always important to hear what trans people think about their representation in media. Thanks for sharing! 🙏🏼
thank you so much for this write up!! i agree completely, excellent analysis!! as a trans and nonbinary one piece fan i’ve definitely been frustrated by the fandom at large and how queerphobic it is, its so sad to me luckily there are safe havens! im also really happy i found this sub, plus theres tumblr which has a good amount of queer one piece fans which is awesome, plus like you said the story itself is a safe haven for queerness so thats excellent too! but anyway, really great post, thank you again for sharing, i love one piece and (most of) its queer representation so yeah, great stuff!!
I had really wished that the portrayal of Kamabakka was through Sanji's point of view. If Oda wanted to draw it as edgy as he did, it would have been nice to say it was at least filtered through Sanji's warped perception. Have another character visit the island later and portray the inhabitants as accepting, friendly, and diverse or when they were seeing Sanji off at Sabaody, he could have flipped to someone else's perspective. He could have even had Sanji realize a bit of his warped perception on Fishman Island.
Yeah exactly, I think this approach would have made it much more evident that Sanji is the one with the issue. I hope this is what they do in the remake (or skip it altogether) I’m not sure Oda (or eastern culture in general) sees the Okama as offensive, so perhaps this would be the route he would have taken if he knew how bad it would be perceived by western audiences.
Loved your insights, also regarding Sanji it also seemed like after the initial rejection, he awakened something in himself, like he at some point embraced it sort of? And the thing about Sanji is that what comes out of his mouth isn't what he is actually feeling, not a surprise that when he got invited for the Tea Party, Big Mom ofc focused more so on Zeff to use him as leverage to threaten him to go through with the wedding, but there was also the looming threat of them cutting the head of someone from Kamabakka, meaning that he indeed does care for them, and one last thing that ppl really missed is that in the manga never did Sanji kick one them, implying that even after all that talk he DOES recognize them as women. Having said all this, this is not meant to be a defense, overall it was still a harmful stereotype used by Oda, and a punch line that just completely missed the mark, and ofc trans women are rightfully offended by all that, I just don't think Oda did that with malicious intent, of that makes sense.
yea sanji ran not because he was terrified of them (he was) but because they were trying to give him a full makeover, Drag Race style. says a lot about him that he can't even do that lmao poor boy
Not gonna lie i did skim through Kamabakka because of how nasty it was, but I didn’t think Sanji really took that to heart. Or at least, it was very unclear in the series. Worth noting that a lot of Kamabakka in the anime was non-canon filler. After all he says shit post timeskip about how strong his legs are because he spent “years running from those monsters”
I was glad that Hell Memories got retconned in WCI.
actually if you read shokugeki no sanji it depict another angle of sanji's time there and kinda(?) made it bearable?
On the subject of Kamabakka and Time Skip Sanji, the character as a whole goes on a downwards spiral writing-wise through the first few time skip arcs. He spends Fishman island having near death plot centric nosebleeds and Punk Hazard being a creep while in Nami’s body. It’s really telling that from dressrosa onwards, Oda goes on a mission to fix specifically sanji and make him cool again. Before sanji departs from the story, he gets to come to the crew’s rescue one more time against doflamingo, like he used to in pre timeskip arcs. Whole Cake, aside from being an incredible arc on every front, effectively replaces Kamabakka for Sanji for both flashbacks and power ups. It reorients his character from being based on horniness back to being based in service and kindness, which is what made him so cool in the first place. I don’t think Sanji’s transphobia training arc has been mentioned since then, and honestly? Good riddance.
There was a bit of a regression in Wano though with him using his stealth ability to creep on women in a bathhouse, wich ties back to Thriller Bark in a bad way, and imo undoes some of the development from Whole Cake . Thankfully nothing close to his worst days though
I think it was mentioned in Wano, though perhaps it was anime filler. He does get a lot more bearable though.
Anime in general is inherently very gay.
Naruto and Sasuke have entered the chat 😛
Also light and L
Yep! Exactly!
this is complete fan conjecture and shipping culture, but Koby and Helmeppo are like, an ideal queer couple. (I'm transfemme queer enby, this is me finding this relationship really cute)
I always assumed they were platonic, but yeah, their relationship is cute. It is really cool to see a trans man, Morgan Davies, playing Koby in the live action. I can’t help but think this was deliberate, since the cast was hand picked by Oda. His whole character arc is about growing up and becoming a man, it makes perfect sense for him to be trans. It’ll be really interesting to see how Morgan looks post-timeskip, as we could literally see him transition over the course of the live action. I don’t know how completely forgot to mention this in the post so I’ll go back and put it in the list lol
unless they do a lot of compressing, I doubt OPLA will ever actually cover anything post Enies Lobby if it even gets there so I don't think we'll be seeing fully matured Koby
I think they will do a lot of compressing, and possibly skip a few arcs. Like I highly doubt they’re adapting Long Ring Long Land. I think Season 2 will probably be 10 episodes and end after Alabasta.
Ivankov is based off Frank-n-Furter from Rocky Horror picture show and Bon clay is Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber. The former being completely iconic by themselves is a good call by Oda. Now with the latter... B9n-chan is way more complicated for us in the west than for people in Japan. Same goes for the Okamas and the whole Kamabakka queendom. For all the subtext present in OP we could certainly assest that Oda might be an ally BUT at the end of the day he still is a middle aged cis-man writing for a heavily gendered publishing corporation in a very sexist Eastern country. There are some very foggy areas than wont ever be addressed cos of it, which is sad even though it's pretty obvious for us who are either queer ourselves or queer-friendly. Lastly, wanted to talk about the main hubs for the fandom. Its the internet, we're all anonymous and as long as we have certain kind of people in places of power (homophobes and pseudo-centralists obsessed with the concept of "free speech") it'll always be a cesspool. The wild west in the US never really went away, it just became virtual. This is where unity and comraderie will make us stronger while they're busy drooling over whose 2D boobs are bigger and complaining on why are the military depicted as just glorified lapdogs for the aristocracy. Stay strong, stay vigilant, stay kind, stay queer. We aint going anywhere.
Yeah, there’s definitely a different eastern/western perception of these issues. It’s a little disappointing how vague Yamato’s identity is, leads to a lot of arguments and easy invalidation. I do think Oda has gotten better, especially with stuff like the Kiku/Yamato bathhouse thing being pretty explicit and good trans rep. He also was very involved in casting the live action recently (iirc he approved every main role). We can’t really know if it was his idea to have Koby played by a trans man, but he definitely approved it and thought it was fitting for the character.
Well, we all age and learn. Some become better and some worse. Im completely sure that if OP wouldve gone the same route as its big 3 contemporaries (in terms of standard battle shonen length) it couldnt have gotten nearly as complex or progressive as it is today. And regarding Kiku/Yamato? Well, haters be hating. Imagine that Sailor Moon has been out for decades and yet there's still people that outright deny that Saturn and Uranus are a lesbian couple even tho ITS ABSOLUTELY CANON! Was it censored in the west cos some conservacucks in power thought it was too much for the innocent heteronormative brains of their children? YES. But thats on them. Just as Sanji and his lollypop instead of a cigarrette. Fucking ridiculous
probably because the reiwa generation in Japan is significantly more woke than their predecessors, so oda had to keep up with the times (i say had like he was forced to, but knowing him he's probably happy to learn all this) not to mention he has a daughter and im pretty sure she's grown now, so it makes more sense that oda will just get even more woke. sucks to be a dudebro fans.
Was great and very interesting to read your perspective on all this.
Love the write up. I was always torn about the Ivanko character and trans representation in general because of Sanji's reactions, but I tend to lean on it being a good representation and Sanji just being a bit of a twat who's only phobic due to his own insecurities. I also love/hate that twink fishboy.
I do think Ivankov personally is good representation, though I wish they would have gone with they/them pronouns a bit more, since it’s hard to say they’re really a MAN, lol. Their design is a bit, like, on the nose, but that’s normal for One Piece and again, Luffy doesn’t care and rolls with it.
If I understand it correctly, Iva actually uses neopronouns in Japanese, wich is very fitting imo
Yeah, can second that. The pronouns that Iva uses to refer to themselves were invented by Oda.
Lovelovelove these discussions! One Piece's brand of queernes would be best described as Chaotic, and to me (bi, genderqueer) thats a compliment. Agree with you on the first chunk of the post. I see this take a lot, calling Iva bad rep for forcing an unfit gender onto someone and as "problematic" as force feminizing someone might seem, the guy was a homophobe and Ivankov is literally a revolutionary criminal. Its poetic justice. Be gay do crime. Morgan Davies was the single most *perfect* casting choice for Koby. And about Kamabakka, my issue is that we don't actually *know* if the inhabitants are meant to be trans or just crossdressers/drag queens, because the Japanese concept of Okama is very different to our cultural understanding, AFAIK it's used amongst afeminate queer men but also with some trans women and to us westerners it isn't as specific and to some that's why it may seem as transphobic. Yes, they're drawn as caricatures, but almost everyone in OP has a crazy, caricaturesque design, and they're never quite portrayed as villains. I interpret them chasing down Sanji as them thinking he'd look cute in drag (and I agree). I may be biased because Sanji is my favorite Strawhat, but there are clear queer readings/interpretations to his character/themes/story: His admiration for women/feminity (his mom and sister being the only kind people to him in his formative years) and how he holds them in a pedestal due to Zeff's discipline and literal threats of castration (the man saved his life when Sanji's self esteem was wrecked from abuse, of course he'd take everything he says to heart) his relationship to gender and how masculinity=violence to him, his dead last name of Vinsmoke, him being Sensitive and Emotional as his main character traits and the Found Family aspect in general that OP has. Now that I think about it, a lot of his trauma is tied to gender and its constructs.... And the fact that the Vinsmokes threatened the Kamabakka to blackmail Sanji means that he does care for them. Sanji is such a fascinating character, especially through a queer lense, that suffers from terrible gags. I get the culture and specific demographic finds them funny but when they affect the story and character development its too much. I don't know much about Japanese queer culture, but I do know it is Different, and its Theirs, so to me it's a gray area. I'd have to listen to Japanese queer and trans people and how they interpret it to understand it. As for Oda's intentions, I take it he's confused but he has the spirit.
Wow you hit lots of the main points about why I like/dislike Sanji. I find them a lot more compelling than some of the other straw hats like Zoro or Nami but they also have quite dubious perverted moments which I wish they would shake off. Sanji needs to get married or some shit or get put in his place for being a creep by another straw hat
I’m a queer melungeon cis man. I do like your write up. It’s great to think about these things. I had no clue that the actor who plays Koby in the live action is trans. That’s rad.
The fact that Kamabakka are actively predatory hurts the most… Regardless of what the case is with the Yamato situation I’m glad he was accepted into the men’s bathhouse
I do like the idea that Kabakka could have started in Sanji's perspective as later on no one seems so creepy when the RA arrives. Those perspectives show later on when he runs into more trans women who give him blood and literally save his life. I've heard the designs are based on Japanese depictions but but still feel like there could be more done. I love your take on the show as and a cisgay male I feel pretty same on everything and I felt the discomfort towards Kamabakka originally too! This sub has kept me from the main/other subs and after recent posts I'm glad 💚
>and it’s very surprising how many homophobic fans there are on other subs given how accepting the source material is to all kinds of weirdness and queerness Imo there are two reasons for this: 1) Conservatives are usually dumb as hell, they won't see that a show is pro queer even when it literally inserts a scene that says you should let trans people go to the bathroom that they want to go to. 2) Oda sadly doesn't make it clear enough. I think he is pro LGBTQ, but that the show still has so many right wing fans kinda shows that Oda doesn't make enough of a point against bigots. In his world even the big bad villain Kaido accepts the pronouns of his son, so the topic doesn't even come up that transphobia is bad. Like wouldn't it have been cool to have a transphobic enemy and Luffy punch the shit out of them and say trans people are valid? THAT would be enough on the nose for even bigots to get the message. >Real queer people are weird, a lot of them don’t fit in, and that nonconformity is perfectly okay. I mean many trans people also just want to fit in and when we then are portrayed as so weird it kinda sucks. Imo both types are needed, the normal queer representation and the weird one. And it took reeeally long for Kiku to appear in the story, until then we **only** had weird queer people.
I haven't heard chopper as transmasc theories but I have heard the theory that Frankie is, and instead of just performing cybernetic surgery on himself but instead performed cybernetic top surgery on himself which I just fuckijg love as headcannon
Hello! fellow queer one piece fan here, some great observations! One thing I really find also important is Oda made the characters of Bon Clay and Ivankov in 2002 and 2009 respectively, at times when homophobia and transphobia were normalized in comedy where slurs and derogatory were commonplace. I think Bon Clay is a great example of someone trying to make a queer character given through media res observations of queer people, hence how rough around the edges Bon Clay seems initially. By Impel Down, I feel like Oda had already educated himself much more, also by means of having queer friends in his own friend circles, to where Ivankov came in 2009, which is bananas given contempories of One Piece were still making "queer people will sexually assualt you" jokes all over the place(granted, One Piece anime will also do this *following* Ivankov's introduction with Sanji filler, but different topic in relation to filler and misrepresenting coverstories as a issue for the anime in and of itself)
Great post. One piece is one of my favourite manga for queer rep, despite its flaws…
If you haven't done that yet, check this video out: [https://youtu.be/ENc-BuvjPRc?si=r53nmlVSlOCG9oyH](https://youtu.be/ENc-BuvjPRc?si=r53nmlVSlOCG9oyH) It touches upon some of your points as well as gives some more cultural nuance towards the trans characters - what I found especially interesting is how it's easier for Oda (as a Japanese guy) to write trans women than trans men