Blackleg-sanji1
Banned
Edit: I don't even wanna conversate in this thread anymore
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One Piece Manga |OT2| Four Emperors, One King, All Blue
- Thread starter Cloud Strife
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If we're being completely honest just about every arc in the series has had part of its course altered by choices made by either Nami, Robin of Vivi. Well altered or actually began. Even post time skip you can point to Nami specifically changing the shape of Punk Hazard (the decision to save the giant kids).
Which is probably where our point of disagreement comes in.
You see Nami telling her crew to save children is an expression of her agency. I see it as the male crew member's agency to save the kids because their the ones who actually do it. Nami merely convinces them of it. If they had disagreed or something, then Nami would be shit out of luck. So, at best, you're arguing that she imposes her will on the narrative through male surrogates, which means what I say is true, it's the people who do the actual fighting that change the course of the narrative. You can say it's preferable to them being completely ignored, but real agency cannot be dependent on others doing what you want for you. Or, if it can, it needs to be more even between the genders. Even if you want to say that, for whatever reason, Nami shouldn't be a powerful character and should be dependent on persuasion to get anything done okay, but then other female characters should be the ones who are able to brawl, and we should see them get into brawls. As it is, because the manga goes out of it's way to avoid putting women in actual fights like it does males, there is a clear inequality in how the people affect the world that is based on gender.
Do you think a character needs to be strong and kick asses in order to have agency? Because I, and probably the person you are answering doesn't.
Nami's role isn't fighting. It doesn't really need to. She has her own role as a navigator, in the same way Usopp and Chopper have their own role and don't have big important 1v1 fights. I mean, we all loved Usopp in Dressrosa, but he just acted as a sniper, pulled a Buggy with the Coliseum fighters and scared the shit out of a kid twice. That doesn't made the fact that he decided to not run away and confront Sugar any less impressive.
Not every character needs to be a power fantasy in order to be a full fledged character with agency. Asuna in Sword Art Online may be a strong character capable of fighting, but that doesn't make her a good character because she doesn't have any goals, motivations or worries other than being Kirito's waifu.
Vivi is a really cool character and is as weak as she could be. That didn't stop her from doing a lot of crazy things and risking her life in order to protect her country. If anything, being weak, knowing that you are weak and still deciding to risk your life is braver than being Luffy. That's why a lot of people like Usopp. Because even though he is weak and a coward when time comes he gets the job done.
Nami deciding to help the children gives her agency. Even if other people are the ones kicking the baddies asses, she is still risking her own life in order to save those children life.
The problem isn't really Nami, but the fact that there may be other women capable of fighting that don't actually fight. Robin, for example, is an underused character (and she'll be amazing if she mastered Armored Haki). Rebecca could have fighted a bit more during her arc (maybe she could have fought against Diamante alongside Kyros). I won't deny that. Oda could have fit a fight between her and somebody every once in a while. But he doesn't even do that many fights to begin with compared with other shonen (which design a lot of bad guys in order to pair one with each main character).
I wouldn't say there aren't problems (I acutally agreed with the idea that most females seem to have DF powers focused on knocking out the enemy without long fights, which seems to fit the pattern in fantasy stuff where women are mages of archers instead of knights), but I can't agree with this. There are a lot of factors that shape the quality of a character and being weak or strong isn't one IMO.
No, and I addressed these points in basically past posts. That's the super annoying thing about these discussions. They just go in circles, often with points being mischaracterized. I'd say it's a strawman argument, but it happens so often, I don't even think that it's intentional anymore.
Does every character need to be a powerhouse? Is the only way a character can make a difference through physical strength? Is there nothing more to a character than just being able to kick ass? No to all of these, for obvious reasons. That's never the argument I made in the first place.
But when you have a battle manga and you do not allow an entire subgroup of characters to participate in battle to the same degree as another subgroup, then you are depicting them as having less agency. Not zero agency, but definitely less. If you have a cooking manga, and you have a character who can't cook for shit, but they can bench press a truck, well, that's great, but they're not able to resolve the conflicts that can only be resolved by cooking, meaning they have less agency in the story, just because they lack the skillset required to solve the problems of the narrative. If you have a story about racing, and you just have a character that all they can do is cook, they're not going to have as much agency in this story, etc. How much agency a character has is generally dependent on what kind of story your writing and what kind of conflicts it has, and the fact that women often lack the skillset needed to get into brawls, or that when they do have the skill set the narrative contorts itself to make them avoid that conflict, then their agency is depicted as lesser.
And I stress that this is a group problem. Nami not fighting wouldn't matter if you had 3 female characters who do fight like male characters do. It's a statistical problem, not necessarily an individual one. That's why even if we end this arc with Big Mom having a huge brawl with Luffy like usual OP villains, it wouldn't change that Big Mom is one exception to a very pervasive rule of how female characters are depicted.
And that's where I'm ending it. I don't think it's your fault, but it's tiring going over these points over and over again. Anyone who cares can pick up where I leave off.
Oh well ok then, you've spoken and that's the end of it. Your tone is incredibly condescending considering you constantly ignore other people's points and dismiss any evidence that goes counter to your ideas.
1. When I say that I've spoken and want to end it there, I just mean I don't want to have this conversation again for the thousandth time. I'm not saying it by way of trying to make my word final, I'm saying I'm tired and unwilling to speak on it more at this moment. It's not an end to the conversation, just my participation. If you want to continue it, feel free, but I don't owe any response. I just wanted to throw in a brief summary of my thoughts on the matter.
2. Well, yes, if I don't see them as valid, I will dismiss it. Is that bad? I mean, I try to be as open minded as possible, but if you present me with something that you claim addresses my grievance and I disagree that it does, the natural response is to dismiss it. You can disagree with me, but evaluating evidence and deciding if it qualifies as a refutation or not is a basic function of critical thinking. Otherwise, logical fallacies would be considered valid responses. It's kind of weird if you're saying I'm wrong to do that. I usually give my reasons for why I disagree or why I feel the evidence in response doesn't qualify. Other than that, I'm not sure what else I can do. Because if you're suggesting that I should accept evidence I don't feel validly goes against the points I make, then yeah, sorry, not happening.
The reason I dismissed Ralch's refutation is because he's making a counterargument to an argument I wasn't actually making, that not being able to fight robs characters of all agency and worth, which isn't what I was saying at all. I don't take it personally, but it just isn't what my argument was.
He's saying that because you're essentially warping the idea of character agency to suit your own argument. A character has agency if you can answer yes to these two questions:
- Does this character have goals and motivations all their own?
- Do the actions this character takes affect the story/plot?
You know, it may seem like a subtle difference, but I've said it multiple times that the problem is an inequality in agency rather than a complete and absolute absence. If you aren't going to acknowledge the actual argument I am making, then why are you surprised I'm dismissive of counter arguments against me?
Less agency is not no agency. The assertion I am making even fits into the simplistic paradigm that you gave. "Do the actions this character takes affect the story/plot?" Sure, however, by not allowing them to fight, the way in which they affect the story/plot is less than the ways that other characters aren't. They aren't equal in this regard, and it's for reasons that don't have anything to do with the world in which they built, but rather that the narrative just chooses not to give them this privilege.
I feel that it's worth noting that trying to boil down the question of agency to 2 simple yes or no questions is extremely reductive of the argument. Agency is more complex than that due to the myriad of ways it can be implemented in the story. So it's not just a matter of if there is agency, but whether that agency is substantial enough to truly be noteworthy.
But if you want to keep the point of comparison to comics produced in the 1950's where sexism was much more permeable through all of society and the response of an exasperated female writer trying to set a bare minimum rule for advising how other writers should write female characters, then just be cognizant of how low you're setting the bar in order to allow OP to pass it.
And again you missed the point. The whole point of the sexy lamp test is to determine if a character has agency or not. To determine whether or not they affect the story around them to any degree. It's supposed to be a more accurate version of the bechdel test, which is often passed by stories with horribly written female character due to how reductive it is.
Also, you seem to be making the argument that fights = large part of story/plot.
This assumption rests on the fact that a fight can affect the story/plot. Go back to any fight in the series, odds are the winner is completely irrelevant to the plot for any fight outside of Luffy vs Big bad. Most of the fights exist literally so Luffy can fight the big bad one-on-one and don't affect the plot/story of a particular arc at all.
Hell, the one non-boss fight that had any affect on any plot is probably Usopp vs Sugar as it closed up a plot line. Like 99% of the time the fights in a series, outside the big bad, are just there so that characters can look cool. I mean, seriously, go back to any arc in the series and pick out a Sanji or Chopper fight. How many of them actually wind up mattering to the larger story in an arc? Odds are you can remove a fight and nothing much would change. Saying that fights that don't affect the story at all give a character agency is silly.
The problem is that you're making it subjective and even when presented with examples you just wave them off. We can actually measure if a character has agency or not, anything after that is opinion. This is what everyone takes issue with.
It's called an example, not a bar. I'll gladly point at Bleach or Fairy Tale, hell even something like Twilight over here. Bella is literally nothing more than a sexy lamp and she's the damn main character in a story written by a woman.
Also, you seem to be making the argument that fights = large part of story/plot.
This assumption rests on the fact that a fight can affect the story/plot. Go back to any fight in the series, odds are the winner is completely irrelevant to the plot for any fight outside of Luffy vs Big bad. Most of the fights exist literally so Luffy can fight the big bad one-on-one and don't affect the plot/story of a particular arc at all.
Hell, the one non-boss fight that had any affect on any plot is probably Usopp vs Sugar as it closed up a plot line. Like 99% of the time the fights in a series, outside the big bad, are just there so that characters can look cool. I mean, seriously, go back to any arc in the series and pick out a Sanji or Chopper fight. How many of them actually wind up mattering to the larger story in an arc? Odds are you can remove a fight and nothing much would change. Saying that fights that don't affect the story at all give a character agency is silly.
The problem is that you're making it subjective and even when presented with examples you just wave them off. We can actually measure if a character has agency or not, anything after that is opinion. This is what everyone takes issue with.
It's called an example, not a bar. I'll gladly point at Bleach or Fairy Tale, hell even something like Twilight over here. Bella is literally nothing more than a sexy lamp and she's the damn main character in a story written by a woman.
It's funny you mention Bechdel test, since that test was devised to try and set a bare minimum for movie producers to meet when developing female characters. And like the Bechdel test, it's not meant the be the end solution for which the Bechdel was striving for. If you pass the test, that does not mean you're movie has good female representation, it's just to prove a point of how outrageously poor representation is in general.
So, you just seem to be having a different argument here. You think that if you use the sexy lamp test, you can go "Great, debate over, Nami is more than a sexy lamp, agency achieved!"
That's not good enough, and the quality of agency in female characters is substantially less than males because they aren't allowed to fight is the primary reason
Because they are. You're correct that there are a number of filler fights in addition to the large number of meaningful fights, sure, but I don't see how that changes the fact that fights are largely what determine the course of a battle manga. The vast majority of plot turning events involve one party inflicting violence in some way onto another party. Rarely is a conflict resolved through diplomacy, or trickery, or other means. I'd say atleast 80% of the time it's a fight.
I also disagree with the sentiment that just because a fight isn't plot changing that means it's superficial. A fight can be helpful in terms of developing a character, like Usopp often did.
I don't need to list how many fights didn't matter. I just need to list how many conflict resolutions were decided by fights. And the answer is most of them. That means anyone who can't fight can't exert agency to the degree they want to.
Well, first let me point out that any interpretation of art is going to be subjective. You keep saying I miss the point, but you keep trying to assert that the argument is about "whether the character has agency or not" in a black and white, yes, no sort of response. I already passed the point where I can grant that Nami has a degree of agency. My argument is that it is an insufficient degree. And what qualifies as sufficient? Well, that's indeed subjective. And in my opinion, it's not what OP offers.
As for dismissing your argument,...you can give examples on why you feel differently, but you just seem to be getting upset that I keep finding reasons to not accept them. All I can say is that I don't do it without what I feel is just cause. The argument you presented about filler fights, that they exist for males isn't really an evidence against the idea that the story of OP isn't fight driven for reasons I stated above.
And that's all I can really do. I considered your position with as open a mind as I am able, and I found it to be faulty so I can't accept it and have explained why. You can disagree with me if you want, but I'm not going to adopt a position I find to be erroneous just because you want me to. That's not reasonable.
Just because it's one does not mean it cannot be the other. Also, if there is anything that this election cycle proved, it's that women can be just as bigoted, sexist and misogynistic as men.
Either way, I don't see what pointing to bad examples of fiction does to help OP's case. It's not difficult to treat female characters with more respect than those series, even if I agree that OP does indeed do that, so what? I operate on a threshold metric, not a relative one.
silenttype01
Member
I'm stupid late, but I thought I should contribute the one Sanji edit I made
http://i.imgur.com/hSMrKZ8.png
http://i.imgur.com/hSMrKZ8.png
Principate
Saint Titanfall
But they are allowed to fight (nami had a fight almost every arc until enies lobby. After that the entire crew got less solo fights. Currently female members fight less which US undeniable and I consider a problem but Nami has had more character agency than Sanji up until this arc. In fact she's actually in the top 3 and is singlehandedly the reason Luffy has gotten as far as he did in this arc. He wouldn't have have beaten Cracker without her, the woods still would have been a problem and did as much damage to rage army as Luffy did. Manu is also one of the few crew members that commands enough respect to lead the crew in Luffy's absence and one of the first to point out Luffy's stupidity. Sanjj is largely the crew's shipping boy and gets manipulated daily. Outside of Mr Prince momebts most of his actions are a consequence of someone else not his own goals. Even his no hitting ideology comes from someone else that he never bothered challenging despite the damage it could cause.
You chose a very poor arc to start having this discussion in regards to Namj. Little everyone else bar Nami and Luffy has been a hindrance or done nothing so far. She has by car proven herself to be the most resourceful and useful crew member.
nelsonroyale
Member
Vleek loves OP. Of that there can be no doubt.
laserlaser
Member
I know the aninme's been sucking but how's the music? I stopped watching it before the time skip and kinda miss the music and the opening songs.
Cindi Mayweather
Member
I will not allow Vleek to trash my favorite OP character. Nami is far from useless.
music has kept up mostly, theres only a few iffy ones that people debate on being bad or good ops
Cindi Mayweather
Member
Let's be real. Nami is the most dependable Strawhat. Nami is smart, dependable, they would die without her navigation skills, Nami is funny too. Nami helped Luffy fight a dude made of biscuits for an entire night. Nami is the one leading the pack and his head screwed on straight. Nami is the straight woman in a weird, weird world. Her arc is also when One Piece goes from okay to great. GOAT One Piece character.
Zoro's swords are useful. Usopp's slingshots are useful.
This isn't about usefulness, I'm talking about agency. And I'm not even specifically talking about Nami specifically but female characters as a whole. By not allowing them to get into the kind of fights men do, in a narrative that is largely shaped by fights, that is a restriction on the kind of agency they can make. I just don't really see how this is a debatable point. When you get down to it, male characters can simply do more than females by the virtue that they are allowed to fully get into brawls in ways females cannot. Meanwhile, I can't think of any specific domain that female characters have had dominion over males in the manga. Hence, Females can do X, while males can do X+also fight. Just, mathematically speaking, there is a clear imbalance.
You yourself said you don't like how OP handles female characters. Other than the constant sexual objectification, this would be the other reason why for me. I assumed it was the same for you.
Without nami they wouldn't have gone to the grand line, without nami they wouldn't have gone to skypiea, without nami they couldn't have saved robin, without nami luffy would've probably died from drowning trying to even enter the grand line. Nami has tons of agency without having to be in fights...and even then she has gotten a fight atleast once every arc besides marineford/punk hazard.
I don't mean to be overly sarcastic about this, but I can only have what I'm saying ignored so many times before it's hardly worth bothering giving a serious response.
Or, just admit that fights aren't the only ways to agency in this series, because if it was then Luffy should've just punched the water away till the grand line and just continued.
I never claimed they were. That was never my argument. But they are the primary way of doing so.
Also, Bart managed to make it to the New fucking World from Loguetown without a navigator. The text can say their as instrumental as they want, but that doesn't change the fact that the narrative....the actual story...is about fighting. Otherwise, we'd have more chapters showing Nami plotting routes and...well, navigating. Instead we get a few panels every so often at the end and beginning of each arc.
Think about it like this. Tony's engineering skills are absolutely instrumental to making Iron Man function. But, at best, only Iron Man 3 is about his actual engineering skills. 1, 2, Avengers, 3, Avengers 2, and Civil War are all about his actual fighting in the suit. His engineering skills might be what justifies the existence of Iron Man, but the moving force of change in the narrative is Iron Man fighting shit.
You basically are claiming that its the only way, like with how you said "Nami does A but the guys do A+a fight" when actually no they don't Nami has fights and helps navigate while for example Zoro would be a useless character without fights hence why he gets more fights in general.
Again, please read my posts.
If this was just Nami, I wouldn't care. But the way it works is that the vast majority of female characters are designed to either not fight, or else the narrative makes it so they either don't have to or it doesn't show it. That's the actual problem.
I think some of the confusion might come from the fact that when you take any given case individually, you can make some kind of defense for it. Nami is more of a support role. Robin doesn't often get a chance. Rebecca has a style not suited for it. Vivi just happens to be weaker. Okay, so they do other stuff. Whatever.
But when you start noticing it as a pattern, it becomes a problem that almost NO female characters are put in the same kind of positions as male characters in a fight. Every time....every single time...circumstances just happen to work out so that it doesn't happen.
Right now, Big Mom is the possible exception. Her powers have been hyped up to be extremely powerful, and in a direct way. Big Mom seems like she can go head to head with the best of them and is equipped to do so. But it's the fact that she's the first female character that seems ready to do so. Hancock typically ended fights by stoning men, Bonnie is the only supernova that not only didn't fight but specifically stopped a fight, Baby 5 despite her offensive powers got her arc resolved by falling for a dude instead of getting beaten like any other fighter, Monet was defeated because she chickened out and she wasn't actually harmed. And some people on this board think that Big Mom will avoid a fight with Luffy by just becoming her ally.
Something happens every time. And it's a shitty way to depict agency for women in a world where fights do indeed resolve the majority of conflicts. And it harms the story, because then you realize that the real reason isn't whatever the manga is saying it is, but rather because Oda just doesn't want to have women fight.
So do I need Nami specifically to bitchslap characters with her literal fists? No. Do I think physical strength is the only way to have worth in OP? No. But female characters not being able to get in fights, even when they have the abilities to do so, is a systemic problem that does indeed impede (IMPEDE, NOT REMOVE) their agency.
And I just don't understand why this is such a controversial position to take in a manga that we all acknowledge has problems involving women in fights. I mean, let me pose this question to people who disagree with me: If you agree that OP has problems depicting women and their role in fighting, why is that precisely? Like, why are female characters not fighting a problem for you, if it's not for this reason?
Again the majority of conflicts aren't solved by just fighting, like for example the most recent one Dressrossa, having intel gathered at the beginning of arc served to be a good way to defeat doffy. Often the actions taken to lead to a fight are more important then then the fight itself because the fight itself doesn't resolve everything. Fighting is definitely not the only thing to One Piece, this isn't something like bleach or DBZ where power level solves all problems basically.
Besides some overly ridiculous stuff that even the characters themselves point out, like Sanji almost dying to Kalifa in Enies Lobby because of his values. I mostly have no problem with how women are portrayed in one piece.
For like the 40th time, I didn't say...
You know what, fuck it. I am literally unable to clarify my position further. This is just a circular conversation of "You can't say that X" "I didn't say X, I said Y" "But you can't say X" "But I didn't say X, I said Y" "But you can't say X!"
We are clearly not communicating in the same language or something. I'm out.
Dude its right in the quote that I replied to, you have said several times that basically everything is solved in One Piece by fighting when its actually not. We just remember the fights more because of how the story is structured.
Do you know what the word 'majority' means?
Yes I do, but again the fights don't solve the majority of things in One Piece. You're looking at the smaller picture of One Piece.
I...disagree. It seems pretty clear to me that violence is the major hand of change when it comes to One Piece, in one way or another.
But even if I didn't, that wouldn't actually counter my argument.
Lets say that 20% of the conflicts resolved in one piece are by fights, and 80% is by other skills. That's not true, but lets just say for the sake of argument.
This means that women can only do 80% of the stuff. Meanwhile, male characters can do all the stuff women have done. We have male navigators, cooks, architects, governors etc. The manga has no problem depicting male characters who can't fight, but have other skills.
If that's the case, then your left with female only being able to participate in 80% of conflict resolutions, while men can participate in 100% of them. Which leaves them with less agency.
Trying to diminish the importance of fights in One Piece is just a weak deflection of the actual issue - that women do not have equal participation in them.
Edit: If anyone is interested in a counter example, I just read Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings. This isn't a real spoiler or anything, but if you want to read it blind, don't highlight.
There are actually very strong gender roles in that novel, where women are not allowed to fight which is standard fair for medieval timely fantasies. However, their culture has also dictated that men cannot read. But since writing is integral to any civilization, this means that women are educated and have a lot of freedom and respect. I wrote this off as unrealistic at first, but it actually gave an interesting dynamic where there was sexism in society, but no actual misogyny or disrespect.
Again you're looking at the small picture of one piece, there are plenty of women marines for example, who do have said skills and who do fight.....so women overall in one piece have full agency. You're conflating a character who is a woman who doesn't have much agency with all the women in one piece. Heck with your reasoning I could easily say that men don't have agency because the majority of men in the show are ruthlessly slaughtered with no after thought or control for their fate.
Cindi Mayweather
Member
Robin's say "yup". Even Robin knows what's up.
Uhhh, Zoro's swords are useful and Usopp's slingshots are useful but Nami's climatact, the thing that helped Luffy fight Cracker for 11 hours isn't? Um. I'm not sure what your point there is?
I agree that men and women don't get in the same type of fights but I'm not sure how this makes Nami a less useful or wasteful character? Saying she lacks agency completely makes no sense to me because of how much she has done for the crew and her place within it. It seems you're just weighing this on the fights and you're right, they're never as brutal as the men's, but neither are Chopper or Usopp's. Nami's agency doesn't come from fighting, and while that's a definite weak link Oda's writing, this doesn't make Nami herself lacking agency as a character. I'll agree that the way women character fights are handled is always tacky, and it's a definite flaw, but I've always loved Nami besides this.
(I just wanted to post that gif, I entirely agree with you on Nami.)
"Plenty of female marines" is basically....3, I think. Hina, Tsuru, and Tashigi. Out of literally thousands, if we're counting no-names that appear in the background. 4 if we count Bellmere. 5 if we count that SBS marine considered for an admiral position that hasn't even made an appearance in the story. I don't remember any other female marines, even background ones. So if 'plenty' to you is when you don't even need to use your second hand to count them, I don't know what to tell you.
And that's also not how agency works, especially in a narrative. You can't expand that to encompass literally the entire population of an a given work. By that logic, the vast majority all characters in literature don't have agency because the rest of the assumed world's inhabitant. Normal citizens of the MCU don't have superpowers, so people don't have agency in the MCU, since only the few that are heroes can do shit, literally 1% out of thousands. It's like saying virtually no character in Star Wars has agency because the Empire has killed off 6 planets worth of people. It's a nonsense argument.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how agency works in a narrative context. You follow the narrative focus. And the narrative focus' almost exclusively on male fights. For example, Hancock is a female character that can, theoretically, take on very powerful characters. But the narrative doesn't focus on this. She either uses her powers passively to avoid a fight, or her fight happens offscreen like in the war. As far as I can remember, despite being one of the most powerful women in the world, she doesn't have a single major fight.
I say again, if this was just hancock, just like if this was just Nami, this would be fine on it's own. But it's not on it's own. This is a distinct pattern across all female characters.
And if you can't see that, then I don't know what to tell you. You are not reading the same manga I am.
My point is that usefulness isn't what I'm talking about at all. Objects can have usefulness, but do not have agency. I *never* said Nami was useless, and that is the last time I'm clarifying that point. This is about agency, not worth or usefulness.
And I wouldn't say that Usopp's lack for brutality in any way. Usopp got his skull cracked in in his fight against Mole Lady, and he got the shit beat out of him in the Waters 7 arc. I guess I can tenatively agree about Chopper, but I think this misses the greater point. It's not that men's fights MUST be brutal, but they CAN be. They have that potential, while women do not.
If you can agree that there is a distinction between how male characters handle fights vs women, and that this is a flaw, then we basically are in agreement. I just specify the reason this is an actual problem: Not allowing women to fully participate in fights is an issue because of how it depicts female character's agency as lesser.
Which is why I am baffled this is such a contentious topic and why my arguments are constantly misinterpreted. If you can agree that female characters do not have as much spotlight in fights, and you agree that this is a bad thing, why is it bad? Why else, if not because of the implications of the lack of capability?
Cindi Mayweather
Member
Disagree heavily. To me, One Piece is an adventure comic that happens to have fighting in it. You're treating this like it's Dragon Ball or Naruto. One Piece is above those series where fighting doesn't necessarily estimate a characters worth. I think you're applying shounen rules to this and I have never really seen One Piece in the same category with other shounen titles on that aspect.
Like how Cindi noted up top, every character has their weapon and they have their own fight basically every arc and heck there are arcs where some of the male characters get no fights...btw Hancock using her powers to "passively" win a fight is still winning a fight...like how usopp wins the majority of his fights by using intellect rather then strength.
Also on the same note, things like navigating the grand line are a conflict in themself.
Wait....you don't find Nami for example frying somebody alive or Hancock litterally ending somebodies life in a flash brutal? or how Robin makes most of her enemies walk in crutches for the rest of their lives?
The great example being in DBZ vs One piece in that, DBZ litterally fights in generic desert with mountains #347 while One Piece enters a island and most of the time learns about its background, culture, history etc etc.
Generally speaking, I would say the adventure genre has fighting as it's main conflict resolution as well. I mean, if we think something like Indiana jones, the key pieces of it's progress involve either fighting an oppositional force, or else surviving some kind of danger which can arguably be considered another form of fighting.
I can agree that fighting is less emphasized than something like DBZ, but you're comparing it to some hard extremes there. I find it bizarre to claim that One Piece doesn't have violence as it's primary conflict resolution. I'm not going to literally go and tally it by arc, but I think it's pretty clear that that's the case. In fact, the vast majority of non-violent measures typically fail to lead into a resolution where the only way to put down someone else is to directly fight them. Like how Law's plan to have Doflamingo fight Kaido was eventually dropped in favor of fighting him directly. But see my first reply to you for a fuller explanation.
Again, not one the narrative focus' on.
At this point, you've seem to have lost my argument completely if you're defending mere winning an fight by the fact that people looked at hancock is a counter to my statement that women don't get into equal fights as men.
I don't see where we can proceed from here. It'd be one thing if you disagreed with me, but no matter how plainly I try to make my points, they aren't getting through. You can't disagree with my argument if you don't even understand what it is.
No, it's definitely not as brutal or upfront about it. It's about the depiction rather than the objective act itself. You can present a naked body nonsexually, or a hangnail like the most painful experience imaginable. Recently, that female chef's face was covered in darkness from the beating she got from Niji, but similar injuries on male characters are presented more casually. Different depicts of the same thing give different implications. As such there is very little attention paid to Nami and Robin's fighting. It's just a 'Oh, it's there' sort of thing. This isn't even accounting that One Piece physics make these things far less painful than they would be otherwise. Remember when Luffy had his brain pieced by a blade and he was fine the next panel? Probably not, because no big deal was made about it.
Doesn't look all that covered up to me, I can tell pretty much what happen to her in basically all detail. Also when did luffy ever a blade through his skull? You're going to have to show that, because they made it apparent that blades are one of the few things that can naturally hurt luffy.
Again, relativity. Her eyes are covered up and it's harder to make out her general face compared to the clear and full view we get of Sanji when he gets his face beat up.
Chapter 33
When Jango threw the chakram at Nami, it hits the back of Luffy's head after he got up. In the anime, Luffy caught it with his teeth and bit it to pieces.
Luffy should be, at the least, a vegatable, but One piece damage lol
subjective I can pretty much tell the detail of her face, and I don't think that didn't do dmg to him but more just that when he got hit he was on a adrenaline high.
Anyway heading to bed....so continue as you will.
It's not really a matter of subjectivity. We have an objectively clearer view of Sani's injuries, which is typical, while the female chef's is clearly more obscured.
But I guess I'll end it here. I didn't want to talk this long but I really don't like it when people misinterpret my argument, so I felt the need to keep replying. People who dislike talking about female depiction have wrung their hands at me ruining the thread yet again, probably.
But for me it's not even about that anymore. Before this, I noticed a tendency for people that people tend to agree, in the abstract, the OP treats women worse than men, yet reject any specification of that accusation. But this is kind of a new level of that that people seem to disagree that OP, at it's core, is a battle manga.
I mean, you can say that it's got adventure, you can say that it places value on the other skillsets, sure, whatever. But to argue that most of it's conflict resolutions don't come down to fights is such a diviation from....basically, everything I understand about the manga that I'm not sure what to make of it.
Can we go further beyond this? Are we going to debate whether Luffy is the main character next?
Cindi Mayweather
Member
Wasn't Usopp having his head cracked open by the Mole lady comic relief? Usopp is the series punching bag. Sanji's wounds you posted above are also comic relief. Look at that fucking face and compare it to face of that poor chef.
I'm not saying you don't have good points but it feels like you're taking some of these points too literally in the case of using Usopp's head crack as an example of brutality.
Not that I necessarily disagree with what you're getting at, but this specific argument is funny to me. "Objectively", Sanji is the one who's got more of their face obscured.
I really hate that excuse. Oda makes...well, almost everything, have a tinge of comedy through his designs, but that doesn't mean he's also not trying also draw out other emotions. The context of the scene is him showing Pudding what his family really does to him. His face is serious, her reaction is horrified, and there's nothing to suggest comedy outside that Sanji's beat up face looks kinda funny because of the art style. You can laugh at it, but no, it doesn't change that it is also meant to be taken as evidence that what his brothers did to him is actually horrible. Otherwise, you'd have to argue that his brothers actually didn't do anything wrong. If we disregard everything that we can laugh at, there's nary a serious moment in all of One Piece.
Same with Usopp. Sure, it looked funny and you could laugh at it, but it is also meant to be an earnest display of the kind of pain Usopp was fighting through to gain his victory. I really wish people would stop assuming that just because something is comedic doesn't mean it's not serious. I'd like that to happen everywhere, but especially this manga, where silliness to some extent is interspruced with virtually everything. .
Lol...Well, hair nonwithstanding, we see his injuries more clearly. You know what I mean.
Cindi Mayweather
Member
It uses violence as its conflict resolution but it does not use violence as its main method of storytelling. The main method of One Piece's structure is piecing together the history of each island they step on. You say its main conflict resolution is violence, when I cried because of a ship burning due to the places that ship took the crew. I don't recall Merry ever getting into a fight. Law's plan was fighting Doflamingo because they're pirates. You concentrate on how much violence is important, but you also don't give the adventure aspect enough credit. For instance, from that same arc, the mystery of the toys, the mystery of gladiators, how King Riku was deposed by Doflamingo, who the fuck is Rebecca and what's her relationship with that toy? All of this was central to that story and are what I remember most - not fights. I barely remember the fights in One Piece. I love them, but my key interest is the adventure and plot and characters. I like the fights only for how they develop the characters and lead to character interaction. One Piece is a series where the fight is as important as the adventure. It's a series that's full of slow burn type storytelling. This arc alone we had the crew wander into a mysterious forest. There weren't any serious fights there until Cracker but until then, it was about the mystery and the puzzle - why everything was a copy of each other, why there was no exit, why the bridge disappeared, why they kept circling back to Big Mom's ex. Before this arc, we saw barely any fighting, just exposition on this crazy island of animals that live on the back of a cursed elephant man.
But somehow One Piece's most central importance is fighting.
No, that's what you find most important. I barely remember the fights. I remember the adventures and the mysteries and the build up of "what have our crew gotten into now?" I barely give a fuck about the fights and I think it's disrespectful and completely discrediting to assume that your interpretation of One Piece is the only true one. This is a comic book popular with different aspects of it. It's true that the female characters don't get as dirty as the male characters but to say that the only real value in anything in One Piece is fighting is incredibly erroneous, I feel.
We're talking about a story with a flashback with not one single fight about an island with a rift of poor and rich. But somehow conflict is only resolved through fighting and that's all One Piece is about?
How in the world have you managed to read the past 800 chapters? Certainly it has issues with gender representation in places, but how have you been able to read the past 800 chapters and not find ways to appreciate it despite that? That's not to say the complaints have no merit, but to me they're nitpicks at best. They bother me but not enough to take any enjoyment away from me liking it. Not everything is going to be perfect, and just because I have problems with how it treats women or lgbt doesn't mean I give it a pass either.
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