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One Piece Manga |OT| ZEHAHAHAHA! The Name of this Age is Blackbeard!

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Nah, he means that the women to men ratio as appeared on one survey was like 52% women, 48% men, and most One Piece readers are in fact adults. That said, I'd consider the 52% to be a margin of error and the actual number is more like 50% since One PIece is a huge cultural phenomenon in Japan

Oh yeah, I vaguely remember that survey. It does sound pretty bizarre that OP would have more female readers than male readers, but if it is indeed correct then that's cool.
 

Chariot

Member
One Piece is now a historical correct manga. Between the fishmen, the completely different world, the devil fruits and the technology shizoephrenia your claims sound weird. Characters are inspired by real life pirates from our world, but very loosely so, to the point where gender wouldn't be the strangest thing that would been changed. And let's talk about the original female characters that get treated as weak and to be guarded and defended by men.

And sure, it's a general problem. In manga, anime and in western media. That doesn't make it good. And just because we love the series we don't have to give Oda a freepass. It's his story to make, but we are consuments, fans. In what gruseome world is it not possible to critize art?
 
One Piece is definitely sexist, especially by Western standards that most of us are used to. That said, it's still far better than most manga, and as far as Japan's standards go I might even say it's s lightly progressive for the culture. People forget that Japan is a much more sexist country than places like the US. Which isn't to say the US is perfect or anything, just that we're much better relatively
 
Lol. At the end of the day, 99% of the characters are purely fictional, and the few characters that are based on real characters are usually based on name only. I mean yeah, Captain Kid, Blackbeard and many more were real characters, but trust me, they didn't have devil fruits, and absolutely everything else about them was different too.



Come on, man. You can't possibly think this. Everything about this is just wrong. Like I mentioned earlier, I really don't think sexism in One Piece is that big of a big deal, but this is just seriously morally wrong. And I assume you mean minority, not majority.

Of course I'm not some complete idiot who thinks that devil fruit are real what are you saying boy calm down there. But the crews have pirate themes and Oda is always keen on making the looks and mannerisms of crews, some more than other, fit the theme. This is not some manga where it's like world war 1 but all the characters are replaced with underage female witches or something.

The vast majority of One Piece readers are adults and something like 52% are female going by the only published released research I can find. Anyway One Piece is not manga that targets only boys as some people might think.

You think I'm morally wrong for letting people decide on their own if sexism is a problem or not or if Oda is more mean spirited than irreverent?
 
Of course I'm not some complete idiot who thinks that devil fruit are real what are you saying boy calm down there. But the crews have pirate themes and Oda is always keen on making the looks and mannerisms of crews, some more than other, fit the theme. This is not some manga where it's like world war 1 but all the characters are replaced with underage female witches or something.

The vast majority of One Piece readers are adults and something like 52% are female going by the only published released research I can find. Anyway One Piece is not manga that targets only boys as some people might think.

You think I'm morally wrong for letting people decide on their own if sexism is a problem or not or if Oda is more mean spirited than irreverent?

I'm going to add one note to this, and that's that Oda has gone on record saying that despite his popularity among a range of demographics, he himself is basically targeting 15 year old boys and isn't really trying to cater to other demographics
 
I'm going to add one note to this, and that's that Oda has gone on record saying that despite his popularity among a range of demographics, he himself is basically targeting 15 year old boys and isn't really trying to cater to other demographics

Well anyone who thinks that men really mature in mentality after 15 is probably still too young to know that it's bullshit.
 
Of course I'm not some complete idiot who thinks that devil fruit are real what are you saying boy calm down there. But the crews have pirate themes and Oda is always keen on making the looks and mannerisms of crews, some more than other, fit the theme. This is not some manga where it's like world war 1 but all the characters are replaced with underage female witches or something.

The vast majority of One Piece readers are adults and something like 52% are female going by the only published released research I can find. Anyway One Piece is not manga that targets only boys as some people might think.

You think I'm morally wrong for letting people decide on their own if sexism is a problem or not or if Oda is more mean spirited than irreverent?

Don't call me boy, and your first paragraph is just a contradiction. You're aware that the characters are barely at all based on real characters and pirates, and yet you insist that they follow that theme, which they clearly don't.

And for your last paragraph you've completely rephrased yourself. You were saying that everyone who reads One Piece is supposed to be adults, which is ridiculous to begin with, but moreover you're saying that men should not be discussing whether it is sexist or not, and that they should have no part in helping or discussing it. Basically; men shouldn't give a shit and just let the women do the talking, who of course will be voted down anyway. It's just silly to say that the people who may or may not be the offended group are the ones who should determine if they are, in fact, just that. You sound like the whitest man possible.

Also the guy who said 20 pages of discussions of sexism are yet again incoming was right, lol.
 
Don't call me boy, and your first paragraph is just a contradiction. You're aware that the characters are barely at all based on real characters and pirates, and yet you insist that they follow that theme, which they clearly don't.

And for your last paragraph you've completely rephrased yourself. You were saying that everyone who reads One Piece is supposed to be adults, which is ridiculous to begin with, but moreover you're saying that men should not be discussing whether it is sexist or not, and that they should have no part in helping or discussing it. Basically; men shouldn't give a shit and just let the women do the talking, who of course will be voted down anyway. It's just silly to say that the people who may or may not be the offended group are the ones who should determine if they are, in fact, just that. You sound like the whitest man possible.

Also the guy who said 20 pages of discussions of sexism are yet again incoming was right, lol.

I'm not really following you. It seems like you are deliberately misreading a lot of what I write so I'll just call it quits here.
 
I'm not really following you. It seems like you are deliberately misreading a lot of what I write so I'll just call it quits here. I don't want to get trapped in 20 pages of circular arguments.

"Deliberately misreading".

Not only can't you even argue for yourself or apologize, but you're also rude. I definitely expected better of you. There's no reason to act like a jerk, but whatever, I never even saw it as big deal to begin with personally.
 
"Deliberately misreading".

Not only can't you even argue for yourself or apologize, but you're also rude. I definitely expected better of you. There's no reason to act like a jerk, but whatever, I never even saw it as big deal to begin with personally.

Yeah I'm being pretty rude I guess but I feel that if you don't want to take what I wrote as it stands and understand it then there is no point stretching this out.
 
mountain-molehill.gif


Pretty much this topic in general.
 

Oxn

Member
Hmm I have a question.

Do you think WB's crew is ranked in order of strength? Because if so there is no way Ace should be 2nd. In comparison he just isnt that strong.
 

RomanceDawn

Member
Hmm I have a question.

Do you think WB's crew is ranked in order of strength? Because if so there is no way Ace should be 2nd. In comparison he just isnt that strong.

They weren't ranked by strength and they didn't have authority over one another but it's assumed Marco, Jozu, Ace and Vista were White Beard's Monster Quartet. By that I mean outside of White Beard those 4 are all more or less equal. Ace was plenty strong, we just never got to see much of his career after he got utterly destroyed left and right by White Beard himself. He was a legend in his own right worth 550,000,000 B. He was strong it's just we didn't get to see much beyond his fight with Teach, his 5 day tie with Jinbe and his quick loss to Akainu.

I mean if you really think about what we saw from White Beard's crew it was Jozu who put on the best show. Stopping Minawks slash, blasting away Logia like Crocodile and Aokiji left and right and then don't forget that ice berg. Marco held his own naturally but I remember there being a lot of fus over how he didn't demonstrate much after he kicked Kizaru at the beginning of the war.
 

Watch Da Birdie

I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
One Piece is definitely sexist, especially by Western standards that most of us are used to. That said, it's still far better than most manga, and as far as Japan's standards go I might even say it's s lightly progressive for the culture. People forget that Japan is a much more sexist country than places like the US. Which isn't to say the US is perfect or anything, just that we're much better relatively

Oda certainly impressed me with his balanced view of racism during Mermaid Island---seemed to avoid a lot of the pitfalls many fantasy authors fall into when tackling that subject.
 

Man God

Non-Canon Member
Oda certainly impressed me with his balanced view of racism during Mermaid Island---seemed to avoid a lot of the pitfalls many fantasy authors fall into when tackling that subject.

I was actually thinking the same thing just the other day. Pretty impressive since the main villain of the arc is a Fishman Hitler in training.
 

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Oda certainly impressed me with his balanced view of racism during Mermaid Island---seemed to avoid a lot of the pitfalls many fantasy authors fall into when tackling that subject.

Part of the issue with the sexism thing that every either tends to ignore or gloss over is the fact that One Piece, despite it's vast readership, is in a boy's magazine and is targeted at younger and teenage boys. It's like being shocked that the Alex Rider book series, which is targeted to teen boys, in the West stars a teenage boy doing all sorts of cool shit and the girls get shunted off to the side, or that the Hunger Games or Divergent or Twilight, which are targeted to teen girls, focuses on teenage girls and has them doing all kinds of cool shit and only has the guys there as romantic interests.
 

Watch Da Birdie

I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
Part of the issue with the sexism thing that every either tends to ignore or gloss over is the fact that One Piece, despite it's vast readership, is in a boy's magazine and is targeted at younger and teenage boys. It's like being shocked that the Alex Rider book series, which is targeted to teen boys, in the West stars a teenage boy doing all sorts of cool shit and the girls get shunted off to the side, or that the Hunger Games or Divergent or Twilight, which are targeted to teen girls, focuses on teenage girls and has them doing all kinds of cool shit and only has the guys there as romantic interests.

But that's wrong and missing the double-standard here where the Hunger Games, Divergent, and Twilight do have males in the spotlight and fighting alongside the heroines---hell in Twilight I'm pretty sure Edward and Jacob or whatever are more active in the overall action than Bella is.

I only saw the films of Hunger Games and Divergent, but I imagine they're accurate in terms of the main characters---and in Hunger Games the male lead is slightly less competent than Katniss, but still makes it all the way to the final fight alongside her. And in Divergent, the main girl is basically trained by the male lead. You've clearly haven't seen either and just basing that on the idea that those two are squarely aimed at women when I'd argue, especially Hunger Games, has cross-gender appeal easily more so than perhaps One Piece.

There's no denying women get the shorter end of the stick than males in terms of representation in terms of getting into the action...even when something is "aimed" at women.
 
Honestly i hate when people talk about this because for SOME sexism or misrepresentation of woman means "less fights" which is stupid why does it matter how much action you're getting. A good character is a god character. While is this topic still going on!!!? Come on people 5640 new strawhats!!
 

Kornflayx

Member
What is going on in here? Have I landed on AP Forums, where Zoro not using Haki on Monet results in a 100 page thread calling him the biggest piece of shit in the One Piece world?
 

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
But that's wrong and missing the double-standard here where the Hunger Games, Divergent, and Twilight do have males in the spotlight and fighting alongside the heroines---hell in Twilight I'm pretty sure Edward and Jacob or whatever are more active in the overall action than Bella is.

I only saw the films of Hunger Games and Divergent, but I imagine they're accurate in terms of the main characters---and in Hunger Games the male lead is slightly less competent than Katniss, but still makes it all the way to the final fight alongside her. And in Divergent, the main girl is basically trained by the male lead. You've clearly haven't seen either and just basing that on the idea that those two are squarely aimed at women when I'd argue, especially Hunger Games, has cross-gender appeal easily more so than perhaps One Piece.

There's no denying women get the shorter end of the stick than males in terms of representation in terms of getting into the action...even when something is "aimed" at women.

I must have miss-wrote because you obviously misunderstood, I wasn't talking about the fights. I was talking more about importance to the plot when I said cool stuff. In the Hunger Games Katniss basically drives the entire plot, without her the whole thing falls apart. You could replace the other two main guys with sexy lamps and not a whole lot would change. If you were to replace Robin or Nami with a sexy lamp the whole thing falls apart and either everyone winds up dead to a hurricane or some such, we saw this almost happen when Nami got sick, or the Straw Hats have no connection to the void century and no way of kickstarting whatever the final act of the story is. Robin is probably the second most important Straw Hat when it comes to the plot.

You're right that there is a gender gap when it comes to the fights, but One Pieces passes the sexy lamp test pretty easily as it's main female characters are fairly integral to the story.

What my point was is that One Piece is a story written for young boys, in a magazine for young boys, so of course the guys are going to have more fights. Just like how in those stories aimed at girls I mentioned are going to have everything revolve around their female leads. The fact that Nami and Robin are as important to the story as they are is pretty progressive and shouldn't be so readily ignored--which it often is in these conversations.
 
I must have miss-wrote because you obviously misunderstood, I wasn't talking about the fights. I was talking more about importance to the plot when I said cool stuff. In the Hunger Games Katniss basically drives the entire plot, without her the whole thing falls apart. You could replace the other two main guys with sexy lamps and not a whole lot would change. If you were to replace Robin or Nami with a sexy lamp the whole thing falls apart and either everyone winds up dead to a hurricane or some such, we saw this almost happen when Nami got sick, or the Straw Hats have no connection to the void century and no way of kickstarting whatever the final act of the story is. Robin is probably the second most important Straw Hat when it comes to the plot.

You're right that there is a gender gap when it comes to the fights, but One Pieces passes the sexy lamp test pretty easily as it's main female characters are fairly integral to the story.

What my point was is that One Piece is a story written for young boys, in a magazine for young boys, so of course the guys are going to have more fights. Just like how in those stories aimed at girls I mentioned are going to have everything revolve around their female leads. The fact that Nami and Robin are as important to the story as they are is pretty progressive and shouldn't be so readily ignored--which it often is in these conversations.

I Said it once ill say it again people only say women are treatrd badly in onepiece because of the fights thats it because honestly for the genere and demographic for whom oda writes for his females are fairly good
 

RomanceDawn

Member
I'm all over AP forums but the moment a woman does NOT take a hard hit the sexist brigade is out full force.

Zoro VS Monet is actually extremely fascinating when it comes to Zoro's ideals and personality. It's like the first time since his flash back that we really understand how his personality was affected by Kuina and the whole forum goes to hell about Sexism.

I remember one girl who got so pissed that Sanji "heard" tashigi's tears fall and came to her rescue. It's like come on, can't Sanji have is own ideals and motives when it comes to women? Why can't he just love women that much? It's not like the whole comic presents Sanji's stance on women as if it's the norm.

Hate hate hate this subject.
 

Kornflayx

Member
I'm all over AP forums but the moment a woman does NOT take a hard hit the sexist brigade is out full force.

Zoro VS Monet is actually extremely fascinating when it comes to Zoro's ideals and personality. It's like the first time since his flash back that we really understand how his personality was affected by Kuina and the whole forum goes to hell about Sexism.

I remember one girl who got so pissed that Sanji "heard" tashigi's tears fall and came to her rescue. It's like come on, can't Sanji have is own ideals and motives when it comes to women? Why can't he just love women that much? It's not like the whole comic presents Sanji's stance on women as if it's the norm.

Hate hate hate this subject.

Yeah, the discussion thread for chapter 687 was the moment I decided to get the early spoilers there and avoid the discussion threads like the plague.
 
I'm all over AP forums but the moment a woman does NOT take a hard hit the sexist brigade is out full force.

Zoro VS Monet is actually extremely fascinating when it comes to Zoro's ideals and personality. It's like the first time since his flash back that we really understand how his personality was affected by Kuina and the whole forum goes to hell about Sexism.

I remember one girl who got so pissed that Sanji "heard" tashigi's tears fall and came to her rescue. It's like come on, can't Sanji have is own ideals and motives when it comes to women? Why can't he just love women that much? It's not like the whole comic presents Sanji's stance on women as if it's the norm.

Hate hate hate this subject.

I actually think I remember the exact post.

It was...interesting.
 

Veelk

Banned
To the people who are tired of this topic, I sympathize. I am too. However, every time it is brought up, there are an ongoing series of posts that try to ignore it, downplay it, or dismiss it. If it were simply acknowledged as the fault it is, I'd be content with that and move on, but when people try to rationalize why it's okay, that's not acceptable for me to ignore.

Now we have the demographics schpeel. You know, one of the biggest lies propagated by a culture of sexism is that boys and girls' interest are defined by certain things. Boys can't like romance or girls can't like fights. If there is any truth to the matter, it's never been established by actual research, or atleast none that I've ever seen, and it's just presumed to be so as marketers were thinking up what could possibly be popular. I'm of the viewpoint that while there are things that teenage boys and girls might expect to like or not like based on shallow premises, once read, people like whatever is there based on quality. If shonen published a story of a middle aged mother that otherwise had all the marks of a typical adventure story and was well written, teenage boys would love that shit. Because stories are ultimately about empathizing with other people, and since mothers are people, assuming it was well written, there is no reason to think why they wouldn't be all over it.

So the argument that teenage boys can only like OP if it depicts women the way it does is nonsense to me. In fact, more than nonsense, it's an outright reason to depict them otherwise. Oda said that he sexualizes women to the extent that he does because he aims at teenage boys, which when you think about it, is one of the more vile things he's said. He's admitted to intentionally propagating the image that women are meant to be sexual objects for boys. His audience being teenage boys is only more reason to NOT sexualize every female the way he does and to have them be as represented as men, since that is a better way of influencing boys instead of feeding their hormonal desires.


What my point was is that One Piece is a story written for young boys, in a magazine for young boys, so of course the guys are going to have more fights. Just like how in those stories aimed at girls I mentioned are going to have everything revolve around their female leads. The fact that Nami and Robin are as important to the story as they are is pretty progressive and shouldn't be so readily ignored--which it often is in these conversations.

I feel that it may be that way with Robin, but I wouldn't say so with Nami. I feel we never really see her working on maps or anything, and it's just sort of in the background. They established that ships need a navigator, but that was so long ago and Nami has been in there mainly for the wackiness ever since and not much else. Imagine if they there was some plot device that would have killed the strawhat crew unless they had a cat on board their ship. If they got a cat early on and it's since then just been chilling in the background, then I'd argue that the cat would be a decorative piece, even if it's narrative purpose is clearly established as vital to the crews survival. That's sort of how I feel about Nami. It's not like we ever see her really working on maps or navigating. In fact, the last time we saw something like that, it was when they were deciding on where to go after Fishman Island, and Nami wanted to go to one of two safer places, and Luffy ignored her and "F that, lets go the most dangerous Punk Hazard", basically ignoring is navigator. Not to mention they get caught up in the random events of the sea regardless, and Nami doesn't seem to do anything about those. They just sort of ride it out until it's over. The last time I remember her actually influencing the plot was back in Hazard Punk where she made it a point to defend the kids while the other strawhats didn't really care all that much, but it was a very minor point and I don't remember her making any other kinds of assertions for a long time before then.

Robin I'd only partially agree with, since her interest is in the whole void century thing and all, but the void century is a very minor aspect of the strawhats ongoing story so far. I feel like the only thing distinguishing Robin is that her interests are worldly, while every other character mostly has their interests oriented around themselves, and the Void history and the ancient weapons are part of the world building. However, 95% of arcs are not about that. I've been open about the fact that Oda does a better job than Kishimoto and such because he does give the female strawhats their own meaningful backstory, but that only goes so far as far as the overall story goes.
 

Big One

Banned
One thing I'll say is that I do not believe a character's viewpoint on women means the author is sexist. Portraying sexism is a very different thing from being sexist.

The thing with One Piece is that pretty much everything is exaggerated. If someone is fat, they're morbidly obese. IF they have boobs, they're huge. When there's an ugly woman, they're REALLY ugly looking. This applies to personalities as well, and Zoro and Sanji are pretty much type-casted in not having a desire to fight women and wanting to be "noble."

I do agree Oda gets carried away with the fanservice, and making Rebecca into a whiny character didn't help either.
 
Maaaaaan you guys must absolutely hate fairy tail then lol. Ill try again to spark some different topics while everyone else talks about this. You know what ill even keep it about women,

so how do you guys think oda will go about namis dream..like is she collecting different maps for the places they haven't been or is it going to bs like a timeskip where he shows at the end they traveled everywhere?
 
Maaaaaan you guys must absolutely hate fairy tail then lol. Ill try again to spark some different topics while everyone else talks about this. You know what ill even keep it about women,

Fairy Tail is honestly the only shonen manga I actually had to quit reading because of how much it pissed me off.

It wasn't even the shallow fanservice though, FT'stoxic cultist morals, capacity to somehow replace cliches with something worse & extremely cheap emotional manipulating just made me not want to read any of it anymore.


Simultaneously I don't actually respect Mashima enough to really care if he does better or not. I care about Oda's portrayal of women & general writing because .. I actually really appreciate One Piece.

so how do you guys think oda will go about namis dream..like is she collecting different maps for the places they haven't been or is it going to bs like a timeskip where he shows at the end they traveled everywhere?

I think several of the dreams feel more like character flavor rather than something the characters are actively working on.

For Nami her "map of the world dream" will probably just end with her charting Raftel.
 
I would love to change the topic to some crazy theory or something but I got nothing :(. Only thing I can say is that Sniper Island is in your hearts though. So would it be a real place, on it would have to be a giant heart island with sniper island in it?
 
I would love to change the topic to some crazy theory or something but I got nothing :(. Only thing I can say is that Sniper Island is in your hearts though. So would it be a real place, on it would have to be a giant heart island with sniper island in it?

Sniper Island is inside a devil fruit similar to Capone's.


But instead of a fortress body it's an island body.
 
Hmm I have a question.

Do you think WB's crew is ranked in order of strength? Because if so there is no way Ace should be 2nd. In comparison he just isnt that strong.

I think Ace was insanely strong. Just like Luffy, he had heavy training, and his fruit was also very powerful, hence why so many strong characters wanted it during the Dressrosa arc.

Jozu and Vista comes to mind as two other powerful Whitebeard crew members, but in terms of causing damage and defeating enemies, I'd say Ace was stronger, although Vista coming to a stalemate with Mihawk was kind of interesting.
 
Hmm I have a question.

Do you think WB's crew is ranked in order of strength? Because if so there is no way Ace should be 2nd. In comparison he just isnt that strong.

Ace suffers from what I shall henceforth call Rebecca-syndrome.

At various points we're told he's powerful & there's some "Oh yeah, x totally has haki"-moments.

But within the narrative Oda kinda forgets to properly show it, rather focusing on the "strong" character's low points.


Ace had a few "oh look he's strong" moments against fodder, and his devil fruit stalemating Aokiji's ice fruit. But his most significant on-screen battles he either lost, or relied entirely on his devil fruit.
 
Ace defeated Jinbe to reach Whitebeard and that is before he rose to his position as division commander which must have been a big power up. I think it would be cool if we met someone really strong in the new world who had a flashback of being beaten by Ace. Like Don Chinjao and Garp.

The real question for me is if Smoker and Tashigi will ever win a fight against anyone without help or if they are just going to give up fighting and raise a family of giant kids.
 

Rebel Leader

THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
What is going on in here? Have I landed on AP Forums, where Zoro not using Haki on Monet results in a 100 page thread calling him the biggest piece of shit in the One Piece world?

Goddamn this fucking discussion.

No 1 reason why I stay away from this thread nowadays. Always the same complaints... :-/

You'd think after all the hype chapters we've been getting this would be the last thing on people's mind's

This is what happens when oda decides to go on break.
This is why he never takes a vacation, even though he deserves it.
 

Kater

Banned
The real question for me is if Smoker and Tashigi will ever win a fight against anyone without help or if they are just going to give up fighting and raise a family of giant kids.
Why should they give up? Sure, Luffy surpassed Smoker now. That doesn't mean that him and Tashigi lost everything just because he can't beat him.They still have more than enough other work cut out for themselves in the New World.
 
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