Let’s get this over with first thing okay? Nakama. Take a deep breath and say it with me.

“Nakama.”

There it is. The One Piece “n-word.” Do you not care, or does it make you shudder? There is not going to be any censoring of it in this written piece because the term nakama, and to a lesser extent other terms like it in the fandom, is my subject today. I want to look into why such a term has risen to prominence within the One Piece fandom, and also why some fans think of it with revulsion while others just don’t care or even embrace it.

As I often do, I’m going to start off with a little bit about my own positions on these issues. Unlike many others involved with the One Piece Podcast, I absolutely do not mind the term nakama. I don’t often use it while talking about One Piece, but I absolutely do not care if people choose to use it or not. It doesn’t bother me if I see it in forums, hear people using it, or read in it fanfiction. While I don’t use nakama that often when speaking I sometimes do so while writing in forums or just quickly to other fans. I personally tend to use Shichibukai and Warlord interchangeably, but I use Yonko more than I use Emperor. There are many other terms that are used and I’m not going to state my personal usage of each one, but clearly you can see that I’m someone who has an open mind when it comes to seeing some untranslated content in the fandom.

Now, nakama started being involved with the One Piece fandom dating back to when it wasn’t as easy for English speaking fans to get the content that we wanted. If you wanted the official chapters you would have to wait week by week for Shonen Jump Magazine, or purchase the volumes individually, which were very far behind where the series was in Japan at the time. It was a time of glory for fansubs and scanlations, and often those groups who did the translations would slip in their own…quirks.

Probably the most well-known One Piece fansub creators at the time were Kaizoku-Fansubs. I know that I speak for myself and a lot of other One Piece fans when I say that back in those days Kaizoku-Fansubs was one of the fastest and easiest way to get relatively high quality subtitled One Piece episodes. And the biggest quirk that Kaizoku-Fansubs had was their prolific use of the term nakama. While it’s extremely easy to watch One Piece with official subs and dubs legally now, there are still many parts of the our fandom that have been fundamentally influenced by those years of fan translations, such as how the term nakama permeates almost every part of the fandom and is used often between fans and in fan-created content.

Nakama as a term is translatable, regardless of what other people might say. It means friend or teammate, or in the context of One Piece, crewmate. It’s used in the Japanese language, and even in other anime or manga fandoms, without being romanticized the way that English-speaking One Piece fans have done. So why has the fandom latched on to this particular term so very strongly, even when it has been shown to be easily translatable in the official English versions?

One Piece is a series about making your own family and a lot of fans deeply resonate with that theme. In my own life, I’ve found myself to be much closer to a group of friends that I choose to surround myself with than with my own blood relatives. That’s why when I read or watch One Piece and see the crew interact with and love each other so much through so much adversity, I just get a really warm feeling in my chest. It’s normal to think that such a positive feeling and concept should have a special word to define it, and that is the reason that nakama became a staple for much of the One Piece fandom. It’s a word that has grown to encompass the very essence of that feeling of love and camaraderie between such close friends like those in the Straw Hat crew. Fans identify with this, and revere the bonds that the crew share, and thus believe that there has to be a special word that specifically refers to such a relationship.

There are other Japanese words that people in the community tend to prefer instead of translations such as Yonko instead of Four Emperors, Shichibukai instead of Seven Warlords, Gorosei for the Five Elder Stars. For those specific terms, they are titles that many fans believe either just sound better or that the Japanese language gives them a gravitas that the English doesn’t. I personally say Yonko because it’s faster, but I don’t have the same excuse for why I tend to say Shichibukai. Some speech patterns are just hard to change when they are ingrained so much into the culture, and it’s the same for many people in the One Piece fandom. In addition to specific titles in the One Piece world, other things like nicknames and honorifics tend to go untranslated among fans, while they are changed in official translations. Nakama is very different in that it is singular term that is absolutely translatable into English words, not even a proper noun, yet still often isn’t by a vast amount of the fandom.

The meaning for the term nakama has far outstripped what its actual translation is within the One Piece fan community. Yes, you can explain however many time you want that it’s not some special word or the concept that has no English equivalent, but often the other fan knows that and they don’t care what you have to say about it. And you know why? Because that isn’t the point of nakama. True, it did start because of a fansub group just choosing not to translate one word maybe because they did believe that it was somehow special, but it is far beyond that now all these years later. Nakama has a meaning of its own that is based on deep themes that are an essential part of the fandom.

It’s clear that even though there are other words and titles that often go untranslated with fan translations of One Piece, none have the same kind of almost reverence that nakama does. However, I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing. No, I don’t agree with the fans who say that the actual term nakama is some magical Japanese idea that isn’t translatable into English. That’s simply not true. But, in the context of One Piece and especially within its fandom, nakama has become a theme that goes beyond the translation. Its more than just the word, it’s something that sums up a feeling that people see between our beloved Straw Hats and thus often feel themselves as well.

So please, if someone insists that nakama can’t be translated then go ahead and correct them, because we all know that simply isn’t true and they might just be actually ignorant rather than stubborn. But if someone uses the term nakama while just discussing One Piece, it’s really very rude to interrupt and correct them. To many fans, nakama has a special meaning not because of the word itself, but because of how the fandom has evolved with it early on. It’s more than the translation now, it’s an idea of bonds and family who make you happy in life. Of course you personally don’t have to use nakama, but making fun of fans who do ignores how the fandom itself has grown and where it has come from. Someday, nakama might not be used because of the official translations overtaking fan versions, but while it’s still around, please respect the fans who say it. I do believe that the large majority of One Piece fans know that nakama as a word can be translated, but they don’t care. As a theme, they just want to leave it as how they first heard it years ago, and how they first felt for themselves the bonds that are in One Piece.

“Fort Knight” is a monthly editorial by Jillian Knight written exclusively for the One Piece Podcast website.

If you want to ask me a question, call me an idiot weeb or become my nakama you can post here or at my Twitter @PiratessUnluck.