Spoiler Alert: This paper contains spoilers for the Fishman Island arc in One Piece. The content of this analysis mostly covers flashback material, however, which is mostly significant because of the overarching theme of the story arc. In my opinion, you can read it without knowing much about the source material or having read much of One Piece at all, but tread lightly. Please note that all screenshots from the original manga have dialogue that read from the top right corner flowing down to the bottom left corner, as the original language is Japanese.

I wrote this as the final, final paper of my college career for a class centered on comic book heroes. This is mostly a surface-level analysis; I may revisit later to expand. I hope you enjoy!

One of the most important aspects of fictional storytelling is the art of world building. This includes creating a believable society and universe with its own set of rules that exists both with and separate from the primary protagonists and antagonists’ conflict. Without a believable world surrounding the main characters in any given fictional story, the characters and main conflict typically fall flat. Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, a Japanese manga that continues to be serialized since 1997, executes world building masterfully, creating a universe in which the main characters interact with important elements while also not even coming into contact with other elements that are shown. Oda uses world building in One Piece to his advantage to mimic real-life conflicts surrounding social injustices. One Piece’s depiction of the Fishmen race and the conflicts surrounding that group portray Oda’s attitude toward the significant social issue that is racism and modern-day slavery.

One Piece was created by Eiichiro Oda in 1997 after his successful one-shot story Wanted! that won him significant praise at age 17. From there, Oda was hired by e Weekly Shōnen Jump. Jump is a weekly magazine that is published in Japan and hosts chapters of some of the most popular Japanese manga directed toward young teenaged males. The word shōnen itself can be translated as, “young boy.” The titles in this magazine are often power fantasies, the type of content that their target audience eats up. Oda worked as an assistant for a few years before beginning One Piece. After going through several early drafts and versions, it was published and serialized in Jump. The titles in Jump, especially more accessible manga like One Piece, have grown in increasing popularity outside of their target audience. As a result, One Piece is the 5th highest selling comic book of all-time behind Micky Maus, The Beano, Classics Illustrated, Superman and Batman.

Since starting One Piece, Oda has been focused on just that single manga, and because of it, he’s one of the most successful manga artists (or mangaka) of all time, consistently placing high in popularity polls conducted by Jump. As he has been doing this for over 20 years, Oda is not solely responsible for his manga’s success. Along the way he has had many publicly unnamed assistants and editors who have sworn to not reveal the ending that Oda has in mind for his seemingly never-ending narrative. As his platform has increased, Oda has been able to weave social conflicts into his story, and he uses the perspective of the main characters to interact with these racial elements in the world of One Piece.

The perspective I have chosen for my analysis of One Piece is racism. This perspective is of particular interest in today’s racially charged climate, especially in the political world. When there are stories in fiction that contain answers on how to solve real-world issues, they are worth considering to see what we can draw from these stories to apply in real world situations. In reference to science fiction, in particular, there was a journal in which, “he mentions that science fiction film and literature emphasizes the value of African-Americans and that race discrimination must be eradicated” (Noonan 2013). This common theme has an altruistic quality, and with racial tensions being as strained as ever, more fiction displaying how to conquer racial issues certainly have a place in American media.

André M. Carrington did research on the relationship between race and science fiction, coming to an important conclusion. “By insisting that race impacts speculative fiction cultural production and vice versa, Carrington creates a speculative fiction production based theory about cultural praxis” (Barr 2016). This supports the idea that racial relations breed fictional conflict that reflect the climate of the real world. Race relations are depicted often in nonfictional media, but in fiction, especially in fantastical genres, tend to not work these themes in as often, which according to the research presented, is not as beneficial as the alternative. For example, stories centered around pixies and dragons tend to not have time to delve into deep racial territory. One Piece takes the opportunity to have a racial discourse and runs with it

In One Piece, there is a large list of varying races and tribes that inhabit its fictional world. For example, there are Fishmen, humanoid fish that can exist on both land or underwater but typically inhabit the seas. Merfolk are another humanoid species that exist underwater as part of that ecosystem. Additionally, other races and tribes include the Mink tribe, a group of humanoids with animal features, Skypeians, a group of angelic beings that live on sky islands, and the Longarm Tribe, a group of people with long arms that have two joints in them. Oda often creates character designs that are wacky in nature to evoke humor in what can often be described as non-humorous situations. The types of races and tribes within the story are no exception.

Monkey D. Luffy, the main protagonist of One Piece, seeks out to be King of the Pirates during the Great Age of Piracy, and finding a specific hidden treasure will grant him that desire. Throughout his travels, Luffy meets several people of several different races, and Oda uses Luffy’s perspective and attitude as a way to inject his own views on altruism and social injustice through the lens of his main character. Luffy is a very happy-go-lucky character who loves to focus his attention things such as eating a lot of food or recruiting a musician for his pirate crew. Although much attention is drawn to these gags, Luffy’s biggest focus in life is the well-being of his nakama, a Japanese term that could be compared to the word “comrade” in English. Luffy never tolerates seeing someone he cares about getting hurt in any way, regardless of what they look like or what race they are.

In a sense, Luffy is depicted as the perfect, non-prejudiced character. While this might not fully represent Eiichiro Oda’s character in reality, it certainly can be seen as a projection of what Oda would like to be, especially because as the central protagonist, Luffy’s actions and viewpoints are almost always, if not always, portrayed positively as the “right” thing to do. For this reason, Luffy’s the perfect picture of altruism, and this perspective is the one that readers adopt while experiencing the story.

As mentioned previously, however, part of One Piece’s charm is that the world exists outside of Luffy and his crew. Most people in the world of One Piece are not accepting of foreign races, and this is a result of the attitudes of the ruling elite, the Celestial Dragons. This group of people descend from the founders of the World Government, the chief executive, legislative and judicial authority in the world of One Piece. As such, these descendants live life in a literal bubble, and are allowed to brutally murder anyone who looks at them incorrectly without any consequence because of their status. The world literally bends to their will.

These Celestial Dragons have made slavery an acceptable practice among them, and the Fishmen are chief targets of this practice. One respected member of the Fishmen society, Fisher Tiger, is captured and spends years as a slave to the Celestial Dragons on their island, Mariejoie. Eventually, he breaks out, freeing many other slaves of different races, tribes and nationalities. As a side note, Oda uses this event to flesh out his world even further, because it is revealed that some characters that Luffy met previously on his journey were among the slaves that Fisher Tiger freed at that time. After this incident, Fisher Tiger returned to Fishman Island, where his ideologies clash slightly with the queen of the land, a mermaid named Otohime.

Otohime represents the ideologies of Martin Luther King, Jr., a big proponent, at least early in his career, of nonviolent protests. Otohime maintains that having citizens of Fishman Island sign a petition to get the country a seat at the World Government’s “Reverie” would be a big step toward eliminating the racial bias that dictates a lot of the issues that plague the Fishmen. The Reverie is a global conference in which leaders of nations and lands come together to discuss hot topics around the world. Otohime felt that allowing the humans to get to know the Fishmen would eliminate fear, and this peaceful way of “protesting,” so to speak, is the solution.

Fisher Tiger, as a result of his experience as a slave, embraces the more violent ideologies of Malcolm X. While Fisher Tiger has a strict no-killing policy, he forms the Sun Pirates and sails around with other Fishmen liberating slaves and “sticking it to the man.” The no-killing policy is of particular interest because it is carrying out violent acts to represent the threat of violence. In an article comparing the contrasts in style between Malcolm X and King Jr., “the evidence reveals that for the threat of violence to have been credible, actual violence was required, as events in Birmingham, Alabama, demonstrate” (Nimtz 2016). This suggests that Fisher Tiger’s method to be violent but not cross a certain line was to instill fear and respect into the humans, and those factors were supposed to be agents for change, according to Tiger’s plan.

The contrast between the two ideologies of both King Jr. and Malcolm X and Queen Otohime and Fisher Tiger are at the center of the conflict of the tensions portrayed in One Piece. Framing played a big part of how these parties are portrayed, both fictional and non-fictional. “Through this framing, Malcolm X was labeled as a deviant while Martin Luther King, Jr., was embraced as a righteous leader” (Grimm 2015). Otohime is that righteous leader while Fisher Tiger, although respected and adored more by the common merfolk, is framed as a deviant because of his violent tendencies.

A lot of the fear and prejudice displayed both in the story and in real life are a result of fear of the unknown. This is punctuated when, in the story, the Sun Pirates rescue a little girl named Koala. She was originally one of the slaves that Fisher Tiger rescued on Mariejoie, but her island was too far away from where she ended up. As a result, locals request Fisher Tiger to escort her home. On their voyage, Koala, though being a white female, acts as the marginalized party on a ship full of marginalized individual Fishmen. She desperately tries to prove her worth as she pleads constantly, “please don’t kill me.” This is due both in part to the overwhelming physical presence of the Fishmen as well as her previous experience as a slave.

Koala is eventually returned to her family, but it turns out that the village that sent her with Fisher Tiger set them up, and it’s revealed that the whole situation was a trap (unbeknownst to Koala). Marines shoot Fisher Tiger, but he survives just long enough to escape with his crew on a ship. The only way for him to survive is through a blood transfusion, but the only blood readily available is human blood. Scarred by the apparent betrayal of the humans he sought to help, he refuses the transfusion and breaks down in tears, stating that he can’t deny his hatred for humans any longer. Due to blood loss, Tiger dies a martyr by gunshot. Malcolm X died by gunshot as well.

On the flip side, Queen Otohime loses her already shaky support for her petitions to join the Reverie. After seeing Fisher Tiger die at the hands of the very humans he sought to save, prejudice against the oppressors resurfaces in the hearts of the merfolk on Fishman Island. This sense of betrayal reverberates throughout the land, and as a result, strained racial tensions continue. Queen Otohime doesn’t give up, opting to continue her peaceful and nonviolent approach. However, she begins to be discouraged and eventually she is assassinated by gunshot by one of Fisher Tiger’s supporters. While the identity of the assassin doesn’t match up historically, she died a peaceful martyr in the same way that Martin Luther King, Jr. did.

This racial tension continued on for decades until our protagonist, Luffy lands on Fishman Island. He finds himself in a similar predicament where he gets injured to the point of needing a blood transfusion. While his doctor screams for help, Fishmen on the island nervously look away because of the pained history. One Fishman steps forward to help, however: Jimbe, one of Luffy’s old friends and also a former officer in Fisher Tiger’s crew. Jimbe’s experience moves him to look past racial boundaries, and he offers his blood to save Luffy’s life.

This act, in addition to Luffy saving the island later from Otohime’s murderer, solidifies Otohime’s ideals in the hearts of the citizens, leading to the beginning of the changes that she envisioned. To start, Fishman Island was invited to “this year’s” Reverie conference, thus bringing her character arc full circle, just as how systemic racism has seen slow but steady progress since King Jr. spread his ideals before his assassination.

Through flashbacks and current-day events, Luffy is a witness to all of the history of the tensions existing between humans and Fishmen. His ability to look beyond race and to see people is the message that Eiichiro Oda wishes to pass onto readers. Oda’s message is that for true progress to occur, fear of the unknown must dissipate. For that to happen, true conversation and friendships must form, and that is the way to eradicate hate, especially based on prejudice, from this world. He just uses a world where underwater islands and merfolk exist to portray that message.

Works Cited

BARR, MARLEEN S. “The Future of Race in Science Fiction.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 27, no. 3, Sept. 2016, pp. 509-511. EBSCOhost, login.ezproxy.fgcu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asu&AN=124769673&site=ehost-live.

Grimm, Josh. “Hegemonic Framing of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., in Northeastern Newspapers.” Howard Journal of Communications, vol. 26, no. 3, Jul-Sep2015, pp. 313-332. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/10646175.2015.1049761.

Nimtz, August H. “Violence And/Or Nonviolence in the Success of the Civil Rights Movement: The Malcolm X–Martin Luther King, Jr. Nexus.” New Political Science, vol. 38, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 1-22. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/07393148.2015.1125116.

NOONAN, BONNIE. “Science Fiction, Race, the Fifties, and beyond.” Xavier Review, vol. 33, no. 1, Spring2013, pp. 59-64. EBSCOhost, login.ezproxy.fgcu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hus&AN=89651104&site=ehost-live.