One Piece, being a very popular and long-running series with a large fanbase, has inevitably been at the center of some controversies that have polarized the fanbase. Be warned: all spoilers are unmarked!
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Female and Transgender Characters
- The increased sexualization of female characters post-Time Skip; while Fanservice was originally just limited to occasional skimpy outfits, most prominent female characters now share an Impossible Hourglass Figure. Some obviously enjoy the change, while others feel that the figures are too unnatural to the point of Fetish Retardant, as well making all of the female characters feel repetitive in their designs. The anime drives this further, often ramping up bust sizes as well as giving them more attention.
- There's controversy regarding the quality of female characters in general. The series does have its fair share of Action Girls, and the ladies among the main characters have remained fairly competent both in and out of battle. However, complaints arise from perceptions of Oda going easy on attractive female characters if there isn't room for a Designated Girl Fight, as well as overuse of Females Are More Innocent. Also related to the female design is the complaint of Only One Female Mold amongst relevant female characters who aren't outright Gonks (something that Oda has acknowledged getting flak for, but some would argue has improved over time).
- In the West, Yamato's gender identity is a very sensitive topic. Some simply decide to take Yamato's proclamation of being male at face value — Kaido and Luffy take this approach in canon without question, hence the usage of masculine terms such as musuko ("son") and bocchan ("young master"). Others treat Yamato as female in accordance with the character's introductory text box saying "daughter" as well as the epithet "Oni Princess" in a flashback and interpret the male identity as part of Yamato's desire to impersonate Oden rather than an innate case of gender dysphoria. Further disarray emerged when the Vivre Card databooks simply call Yamato female while retaining Kiku's proclamation of "kokoro wa onna" (literally "[my] heart is a woman"), a phrasing commonly used to describe transgender people in Japanese. And then this information became further disarrayed in Chapter 1052 when Yamato goes into the men's side of the bathhouse after declining an offer to join Nami in the women's side of the bathhouse. At the same time, Kiku goes into the women's bath. In both cases, Yamato and Kiku are accepted in the gendered bath of their choosing without objection. This has led to a heated debate between fans over which is the "correct" source of information for this topic regarding Yamato and even caused Oda to be sent death threats on Twitter over the Vivre Card listing Yamato's gender as female, even more so after a color spread featuring all women included Yamato. Either way, Yamato's gender identity — or at least, how to identify Yamato and which pronouns to use — remains a contentious topic among fans of One Piece. (For the sake of consistency, a consensus has been reached on TV Tropes to refer to Yamato only with male pronouns until it's stated otherwise in canon.)
- The "okama" characters in general are either considered harmless fun, since a) plenty of men in canon are just as gonky and goofy as they, and b) being ridiculous in no way prevents them from being badasses, or else they are loathed as hamfisted, politically incorrect stereotypes of trans women since they are universally depicted as campy, extremely ugly, and very bad at presenting as female. Emporio Ivankov has his own entirely separate broken base in addition to overlapping with the general okama controversy. Some fans love Ivankov for being a giant kung-fu-fighting gender-flipping Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a concept that is so ridiculous it becomes awesome. Other fans loathe Ivankov either because Ivankov embodies negative stereotypes of trans women as not only perverse, but predatory, because Ivankov is willing to force sex-shifts on other people either as punishment for offending Ivankov or just to fill a whim, or for both reasons.
Storytelling
- The scale of the latter arcs, with Oda introducing multiple factions, with numerous side characters that have their own motivations, backstories and plot threads. Some fans argue that this helps to make the arcs more epic, that it makes sense that the latter antagonists (such as Doflamingo and Kaido) require massive alliances to be taken down, and that it makes the One Piece world feel more lively and compelling. Detracting fans argue that Oda introduces too many characters to properly develop, that this practice ends up making the arcs slow down to a crawl, and that the side characters end up taking focus away from the main protagonists and villains, with many of them being seen as one-note or simply not interesting enough for the attention they get in-story.
- This problem has escalated since the end of Wano as the story is now presumably getting into the final arcs, but new characters and factions are still being introduced. The biggest base breaker among these are the Holy Knights (alternatively translated as Gods Knights), a group of Celestial Dragons trained in combat who are apparently quite powerful. Fans were immediately divided down the middle as this new group seemed to conflict with the existence of Admirals and the Gorosei and muddied who was meant to be the final Quirky Mini Boss Squad of the series. Others are simply excited to have new villains to look forward to seeing in action.
- Haki's increased importance in the post-timeskip part of the series. Some fans like how it makes Logia-type Devil Fruits less overpowered and punishes those who rely too heavily on the fruits' ability to phase through attacks, while it also allows otherwise normal people like Garp to stay relevant without a Fruit. Others dislike how Haki, a power that most strong fighters have and generally doesn't vary much between practitioners, has eclipsed the more unique Devil Fruit powers in importance, making a few fights heavily rely on power levels.
- Gear 5th, Luffy's Awakening, has been one of the more controversial developments in the series, for a few reasons.
- While it was fully expected that he would make his surroundings rubbery, the controversy comes with the revelation that his Gum Gum Fruit, which had been established as a Paramecia for over 1000 chapters, is secretly the Mythical Zoan Human Human Fruit, Model: Nika. Luffy's rubber body is actually an aspect of Nika, a Sun God of Oda's own creation (unlike other Mythical Zoans based on "real" mythical beings) and "Warrior of Liberation" who fights freestyle to free the oppressed. For some, this is simply a culmination of everything Luffy's character has represented throughout the story; a free-spirited warrior who frequently saves people from despots. For others, the fruit was much more appealing as a simple, silly Paramecia that Luffy learned to make work, and attaching such significance so late in the game is unnecessary.
- Gear 5th's Tom and Jerry-inspired Toon Physics also change the tone of the fight with Kaido considerably, with much of the damage he gives and receives becoming slapstick. Oda himself acknowledged in an interview that he might alienate some people who feel that all the tension is getting sucked out, while othersnote enjoy it and point out that Luffy's powers were always intended to look silly.
- Additionally, there's also the question of whether the revelation of the fruit's true nature is an Ass Pull or whether it was properly foreshadowed. Detractors bring up what they perceive as plot holes, while defenders of the twist point to what they perceive as subtle clues throughout the series as proof that Oda had this development planned out far in advance.
- One scene in particular that has been at the center of a lot of arguments is the final scene of the Wano arc which re-enacts Orochi's death, primarily due to the fanbase not being able to agree on how the scene is meant to be interpreted. While Hiyori's line "Kurozumi (Charcoal) was born to burn!" is undoubtedly a pun playing off "Oden was born to boil!" a lot of arguments have spawned over the fact that "Kurozumi" is the name of Orochi's clan which gives the line some... weird potential implications. It isn't helped by the fact that a major theme of the arc was that the persecution of the Kurozumi clan directly caused characters like Kanjuro to seek revenge against Wano, and that Cycle of Revenge had been a central reoccurring theme throughout the series. With that being said, the story obviously is not condoning the clan's persecution considering that Tama of all characters is a Kurozumi. It actually got to the point that Eichiro Oda had to explicitly say in SBS 105 that Hiyori was referring to Orochi in the singular... but then goes on to say that discrimination against the clan is still a problem in the country, and leaves the future for Tama (an impoverished young girl whose powers helped overthrow Orochi and Kaido's rule) ambiguous if she were ever outed as a Kurozumi, which implies that the line's weird implications likely weren't exactly unintentional. Many fans get the impression that the story is trying to make an interesting point with the scenenote that gets somewhat muddled in the rushed ending.
Adaptations and Localization
- 4Kids' infamous
Theme Tune Rap. Some enjoy it for its catchy tune, even calling it one of the few redeeming qualities of their torrid run with the show, while others lambast it for being an over-the-top Piss-Take Rap. - Toei Animation's handling of the anime as a whole (especially from Fish-Man Island to Whole Cake Island). Many manga readers consider it a terrible adaptation thanks to inconsistent animation (especially of the female characters), bad pacing, use of sound effects (the sound of running is the same regardless of speed or terrain, for example) and poorly handled fights. Some even say that it gives the manga a bad name. Other fans, while acknowledging its flaws, think that it's still enjoyable thanks to great music, voice acting, and how well it handles certain key moments.
- One of the most easily noticeable schisms in the fanbase, however, is whether a One Piece fan follows the official translations and prefers the translated names and reworked puns; or the scanlations, who leave a lot of things in Japanese and have very literal and plain translations. There are heavyweights on both sides, with the Unofficial One Piece Podcast on the official side and the One Piece Wiki on the scanlation side. It is evident on this very site too, in the lack of consistency between terms, such as Gum-Gum Fruit vs. Gomu Gomu no Mi, Seven Warlords of the Sea vs. Shichibukai, Four Emperors vs. Yonko/Yonkou, Cat Viper vs. Nekomamushi, etc. Tensions remain high because the scanlation sides, thanks to the speed translators, release chapters almost 3 days ahead of the intended street date (due to some of them being inside the distribution system and thus can get them early) and tend to behave as if every fan reads them on that day, forcing the people on the official translation side to avoid communication with the rest of the One Piece fandom until the official release. Not helping matters is that a significant portion of the fanbase reads early spoilers (In spite of their rather infamous inaccuracy), which typically come out on Monday or Tuesday. All in all, there's only about a 24 to 48 hour timespan in which the fanbase is on the same page.
