made peanut butter cookie dough at 1 am and had some epiphanies about one piece and its women.
yknow, before i had finally picked it up i had seen a few posts floating around sharing screenshots of some of the women’s designs essentially being like “lol look at how sexist this series is theyre all super busty and have tiny waists and huge hips and are literally clones of each other i cannot believe anybody says this series is good” and i had taken them at their word. i remember talking to a friend of mine whose been into op for several years now and i said, “i know op is really good or whatever but . the women . the women.”
and y'know, its not like those posts came to any conclusion i wouldn’t have. usually when people design all their female characters like that its uh, its bad. and the gender ratio isnt honestly very good either, lets be real, but. all things considered, one piece treats its female characters quite well, especially in comparison to other shounen.
like even the fanservice is extremely mild - i cant speak for the anime because i havent watched it, but as far as the manga goes, like, yeah we have gratuitous bath scenes but unironically name 5 shounens off the top of your head that dont. there arent any panty shots or groping scenes and even sanji who people will complain about now is. honestly quite mild especially considering this is a 20+ year old series that is the best selling manga of all time. is it good and should we have to deal with this at all? no, but also its like. ok welcome to shounen lol
people who know like nothing about the series like to write the whole thing off as sexist but i would honestly argue that one piece treats its female characters narratively quite well. i mean even in shounen that are typically lauded as feminist and progressive like fullmetal alchemist, how important to the plot are the women, really? like mei and winry are, hawkeye and olivier kind of, you could probably count izumi, and trisha doesnt count because shes the dead mom. and, like, 80% of hawkeyes life revolves are mustang exclusively. i love fma so so very much and it is definitely like One of The Most Pieces of Media, Ever that i will always 1000% recommend and the female characters are Really Really Good, do Not get me wrong, but there is something quite funny to me that the same people who will call op sexist and irredeemable also love fma. and god forbid you bring up a series like demon slayer where the one actually relevant female character could be replaced with an inanimate object for all she actually does.
in contrast, one piece’s women are completely and entirely crucial to the plot. without nami, zoro and luffy literally wouldve gotten Nowhere and sanji never wouldve joined the crew and also they wouldve been completely dead so many times over, extremely, and wouldnt have gone to drum island and picked up chopper. without kaya they all definitely wouldve died attempting to go into grand line. without vivi they wouldve been stuck on little garden for a year, assuming they survived, and never wouldve picked up robin. without robin luffy wouldve died and they wouldnt have made it to skypeia or completely brought down enies lobby, declaring war on the world gov, and also literally luffy would be completely unable to make it to laugh tale. without conis like everybody at skypeia would be extremely dead and also probably the straw hats too. and these are just the immediate effects on the plot for just a few of the female characters, let alone all of them and long reaching effects. i dont have time to like sit here and list everything but tldr the women and the choices and decisions that they make throughout the course of the story, not just flashbacks and things done in the past, have huge ramifications for the plot. theyre crucial you literally cannot take out the women from one piece because the story just wont make sense.
and not even just that because the women are actually characters. in a lot of series the author is afraid to give the women flaws because it might be construed as sexist or theyre just extremely lazy writers so they take the easiest possible route of creating what is essentially a cardboard box with the shape of a woman and duct taping either “nice :)” or “hash tag girled boss” onto it and calling it a day. typically all their dreams and aspirations (if the author has been so kind to bestow one or two upon them at all) are directly surrounding their male companions. with one piece the women are actually characters. they have fully fleshed out personalities with flaws and dreams and aspirations that do not revolve around the men in their lives. like there are some, yes, but also like zoro’s entire thing was completely kickstarted by kuina, a girl who he could not beat, so like . equality.
and im definitely not saying that the women are perfect because. they are not lol we dont have nearly enough like absolutely stone cold female villains or women who can go toe to toe with relevant male characters and their fights dont get nearly enough focus and so on and so forth, but for all the complaining that non one piece fans do about the female characters theyre actually handled quite well like the least you could do is read a plot summary lol
and sidetracking mildly but it is also very nice to see the male characters do things that are typically perceived as “feminine” and have that be a normal and even good thing to do. like people have talked about it before but in one piece like. everybody cries. its not just the women its not just the young boys its everybody. its good and its encouraged and its ugly crying !!! these arent pretty tears !!!
and even more than that i think is really with sanji recently where after so long where he’s taken on his burdens and tried to deal with them on his own and by himself, it is a huge moment of character development for him to finally ask for help. tenfold because he is part of the main power trio, very much the strongest characters in the entire crew. him finally realizing he cant deal with everything by himself and he has friends who love him and he can rely on to take some of that off his shoulders is not supposed to be a moment of weakness, its a moment of strength! we’re supposed to be cheering him on! and not even just that - when he asks for help, hes not asking for the help of the other men in the power trio, he’s asking for robin!!! a woman !!!!
