Mastodawn

Feel like it's important to not oversell the amount of undiluted leftist praxis to be found in One Piece. It's a shonen adventure story where a great deal of political change is accomplished by Punching the Bad Guy.
But within that, there are some beautiful memetic moments of clarity: no person should be illegal. Everyone should have enough to eat. Bullies are unfit to rule. Sufficiently advanced individualist goals become collectivist goals. No single authority should dominate human destiny.

Per Vognsen Dec 1, 2024

@jplebreton My favorite fake outrage is when the family values people are upset that One Piece is glorifying piracy. As opposed to what, glorifying the imperialist military of your own country?

@pervognsen Right, and the story itself offers plenty to refute "piracy is unequivocally good" - Blackbeard and everyone down the pecking order from him are clearly not nice people! But pirates as a concept offer an antidote to the global order that humanity would live in total darkness without, and the story is starting to demarcate who within that order will succeed it.

Erin Dec 1, 2024

@jplebreton > Sufficiently advanced individualist goals become collectivist goals

would you mind expanding on that? that sounds awesome

@ChateauErin So, the protagonist (Monkey D Luffy) is this classically self interested individual - he wants to become King of the Pirates - "the person who is most free", by his description. But then he goes out into the world and gathers a crew and makes allies, and not so gradually they (the Straw Hat Pirates) become liberators, because lots of pirates are opportunist tyrants. And at some point he realizes that his being free requires the liberation of everyone else.

Erin Dec 1, 2024

@jplebreton none us is free until all of us are

i like it

Cheeseness Dec 1, 2024

@jplebreton @ChateauErin I have no One Piece literacy or much awareness of its cultural impact, but this sounds like a powerful insight

@Cheeseness @ChateauErin it's really just an extension of ubuntu - "I am, because you are."

Cheeseness Dec 1, 2024

@jplebreton @ChateauErin It's the depiction of someone taking a journey that leads them there that I struggle to think of good examples of in popular media (though I've also been watching through original Voltron for what feels like ages, and it's possible my brain/memory/faith in people making stuff with substance has just turned to mush)

@ChateauErin but this realization is not conscious - Luffy has not had a single thought bubble in 1132 chapters. It is something he has arrived at by being a creature of instinct and empathy and ambition. And it's exactly what the fictional world he inhabits needs; it is dominated by a World Government that took power 900 years ago and sustains itself on exploitation.

none gender with left politics Dec 4, 2024

@jplebreton I have heard that Oda is an anarchist and: yeah that tracks

gkrnours Dec 5, 2024

@jplebreton my favorite part is the bad guy can be anyone. The first bad guy is a colonel of the marine, the global "peace keeper". Later on, the captain decides to save another colonel live despite having been chased for a while by him and not being able to defeat him in combat.

Being a bad guy isn't about trying to catch the main character. It's mostly about disrespecting other people.

Cheeseness Jul 26, 2025

@jplebreton This toot led me to check out the live action One Piece adaptation, and consider watching the anime/reading the manga, and yikes, I think that's more Stuff than I have life left to appreciate.

I felt like I saw these themes at work in my brief exposure, and it was heartening.

JP Jul 26, 2025

@Cheeseness ah cool, glad you got something out of it! yeah it's a near-bottomless hole one can fall down, easy to understand why anyone isn't up for the plunge. there's so much more art and culture out there than anyone can take in in a single lifetime!

Cheeseness Jul 26, 2025

@jplebreton Absolutely! I think that's a good thing in general, but we're still in the awkward transitionary period where we're (culturally speaking) coming to terms with that.

I gather that the manga is mostly the work of one creative voice, and that's super impressive. I hope they find it fulfilling to work on - I can't imagine having the stamina to keep a narrative project going for 25 years!

JP Jul 26, 2025

@Cheeseness yeah manga is a fascinatingly different creative domain, huge stories that are basically 1-3 peoples' (mangaka, assistants, an editor) brainchild. Oda loves the world and characters he's created so much his endurance for it seems limitless, but also has hopefully taken the right lessons from various mangaka who've worked themselves into an early grave.

tranarchy_a_genderqueer

@jplebreton can we just get started on the punching the bad guys part?

jdarkside Dec 1, 2024

I feel like this gets undercut when you find out Oda is friends with the Rurouni Kenshin guy and probably played a huge role in him still having a job after he was busted with so much CP that it took multiple trips to get it all out of his home. I'm still pissed seeing how many manga creators I know who signed a mural celebrating that creep after that whole mess.

@jdarkside i completely do not disagree, it sucks and he should absolutely reckon with it

@jdarkside i read ~1000 chapters and only found that out afterward and am invested in this story but also readily admit that him standing by a pedophile sucks big time. i am also not willing to write it off as "people are complicated". i hear you and i wish he would advance his apparent "anyone who helps my career and is nice to me personally is a friend who is good" belief.

hiberhernandez.com Dec 5, 2024

@jplebreton Alguien sabe donde poder verlo en español? ya tiene tanto tiempo que dejé de verlo que no sé en qué capitulo me quede.

@jplebreton
This is the difference between leftist morality and right-wing morality. Leftists judge a person's character based on what they do and the choices they make. Right-wingers judge people based on what they are. In their eyes, people don't do good things or do bad things; they either are good or are bad.