This text was originally written for Arlong Park forums’ discussion thread.

A little bit of a slow chapter, mostly building up to the “pose as a team” shot at the end rather than taking any huge strides forward, but it was a lot of fun regardless. I was sure we’d cut away from the prison this week, but what the hell do I know?

The use of the other prisoners here is interesting. It emphasises the point Oda’s made before about Luffy not necessarily being a hero. He’s come into Wano and he’s starting shit all for his own agenda, not caring at all about whether the locals want their lives to be catapulted from “kinda unpleasant” to “certain death fighting unfathomable odds.” For better or worse, the people around Luffy tend to get dragged into what he’s doing. Also I like that what is essentially just a mob of anonymous nobodies are given something of a collective personality/will to share rather than just being set dressing. The people of Dressrosa were also their own grouped character, but their characterisation was more frustrating than anything for most of that arc.

Kawamatsu is finally here, and I’m not disappointed one bit. Surprised, maybe, that he’s an actual kappa rather than an aquatic mink species that could be mistaken for one (otter or platypus would have been great), but I’m interested to see how kappas fit into the series’ racial lore. (And was it just me, or did the panel where he’s preparing the fishbones in his mouth before the reveal make them look like whiskers, perhaps as one last tease for mink theories?) The gag where he unleashes 13 years of vomit on his captors was great as well.

And then we get to that great group shot and the big talking point of the chapter. Kiku. Christ, that’s brought out some toxicity. Our spoiler threat here didn’t look great, but the One Piece reddit (and its mods’ response) are a hot garbage fire. Like, just awful. I was happy to see the number of the people in the comments here actually talking back against all the ignorant shit the trolls were spouting The majority of y’all are good types.

An interesting part of that debate, now that the official translation is out, is that the “yes” in Kiku’s response to being asked if she was a man is something entirely added by the scanlators. In the raws and in the official translation she goes straight to “I’m a woman at heart,” without any tacit acknowledgement of prying gender questions, which is extremely telling of how Oda intended for us to read her. Can’t discuss that on Reddit though, because the mods want to treat it like a “lets hear both sides” kind of thing despite the objective right and wrong of the issue. At least this new info has her wiki page changed to neutral pronouns after being locked with male ones a couple days ago. It is infuriating to me that every inch of queer representation and every respectful concession has to be fought for. Frustrating beyond reason that the people controlling the discussion on such important fan resources as the wiki and the reddit are choosing to take a step back and act like the trolls and advocates are somehow equal, and refusing to take a hand in guiding fans who are less educated in LGBTect issues down the right path.

I’ve been trying to keep my contributions to the official release threads instead of the scan ones lately, so I’ve been holding that in over the weekend.

The most common stance I see on Oda’s queer representation is that he doesn’t do particularly well, but to be honest I think the man is due more credit than he gets. In the context of Japan’s more conservative society and queer representation in the shonen genre, I think he comes out ahead of the pack. Thinking on other shonens I’ve read, the characters who would canonically fall under the queer umbrella (as understood from my very western perspective) are few and far between, and it’s generally one, if you’re really lucky two, per series. Counting something like a dozen named okama, Luffy’s asexuality and now Kiku, not to mention ambiguous characters who crossdress but don’t specifically follow the okama’s genderfluid ideology, like Izo, Oda comes out far ahead in the numbers game. He does fall into some traps with depiction: a lot of the one-note minor okama fall into a gross “predatory gay” stereotype (and have names like Splash and Splatter, ugh) and characters like Sanji and Daz being upset by them is played off as funny instead of gross. It would be wrong to discuss queer representation in One Piece without at least acknowledging those issues. But compare and contrast something like One Punch Man, and its Puri Puri Prisoner. He falls into all the same traps, but its worse there because he’s the only canonically queer character the series has. He’s all ONE has to say about the queer community. One Piece gives us a number of queer characters, many of them bombastic and exaggerated, as is the style of the series, but they do show a few varying perspectives on what it means to be queer, especially with the introduction of Kiku as a more subdued take. These characters have roles beyond being a token character or a joke in the wider lore, and most of them are unambiguously heroic to boot. Aligning most of the okama with the Revolutionary Army in opposition to the fascist, authoritarian World Government strikes me as incredibly fitting, whether it was intended to read that way or not. There’s also, and this is a subjective impression so your mileage may vary, the way Oda’s queer characters don’t scan as being any way malicious. The man clearly has a liking for Japan’s drag scene and wants to work that into his art. I don’t feel like I’m being invited to laugh at these characters just for being queer. They’re funny, certainly, but they’re funny because they’re all such large, colourful personalities, same as basically everyone else in the cast. Characters like the aforementioned Puri Puri Prisoner, I certainly don’t get the same vibe from. We laugh at him in what feels like a meaner way.

In conclusion, Oda’s handling of queer characters is far from perfect, but he’s included more of them than basically anyone else writing for his demographic and despite the issues his writing has, it scans as sincere and non-malicious, and I think credit needs to be given for that, as well as acknowledging the flaws.

(other good shonen queer representation that comes immediately to mind include Hero Academia’s Magne and Tiger, D.Gray Man’s Kanda and Soul Eater’s Crona, for anyone curious)

I got a little ranty in a couple of spots there, but these things felt important to air. Thanks to anyone who made it through the whole thing.