While it's honestly hard to find many people who don't love the Straw Hat crew, the one person who has been sailing with them the longest along their grand journey is the author of One Piece himself, Eiichiro Oda. While it would be easy to assume that Oda has a pretty good grasp of how to write his characters, considering One Piece has been running for more than two decades by this point, he's admitted that he is still running into one problem, which gives him some difficulty with guiding a particular character through the story.
In fact, this seems like an issue that may have gotten worse over time, but it also makes a lot of sense why the character in question acts the way they do when taking this problem into account. While it's very rare for Oda to ever give out public information regarding his approach to his work, he has recently commented on one Straw Hat who he still struggles to keep in line, and fans will probably be able to guess exactly who it is if they've been paying attention.
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Oda Needs To Put The 'Brakes' On Luffy
He Would Take Down The Villains Without Much Worry Otherwise
If any One Piece fans out there have ever wondered why Luffy ends up getting lost almost as soon as he steps foot on a new island, Oda has finally revealed the reason why. According to the author, he constantly finds that he needs to put the 'brakes' on Luffy by throwing obstacles in his way along the journey. Otherwise, Luffy will simply end up defeating the villain too quickly, which does make sense considering he's always been immensely powerful thanks to his elastic Devil Fruit ability.
"Luffy bothers me the most. I have to put brakes on him with obstacles, or he'll soon defeat the villain" - Eiichiro Oda
There's a plethora of examples of this in practice, with the most recent being how Luffy ended up getting sidetracked and bumping into the mysterious Loki only a few chapters into Elbaf. The same can also be said about the Dressrosa arc, where Luffy first needed to partake in a tournament while also helping an abundance of side characters with their own problems, before eventually reaching Doflamingo himself.
Considering that a big draw of One Piece is the sense of adventure and exploration that comes with entering a new location, it would be pretty boring if a story arc only lasted a few chapters or episodes due to Luffy defeating the main villain as quickly as possible. However, because Oda has clarified that this is a problem that primarily relates to Luffy, it does beg the question: has this always been the case?
Has Luffy Become Too Strong?
Luffy's Reached God-Like Status, Making Him Harder To Write
While it's pretty clear to see how Oda's comments relate to the modern One Piece story, specifically the arcs that came after the timeskip, they also suggest that Luffy was a lot easier to write in the early portions of the story. The main reason for this is that he simply didn't possess the godlike powers that he has today. In fact, rather than needing to encounter multiple external obstacles before reaching the villain, Luffy had a bad tendency of encountering the antagonist several times, only to be humiliated over and over again before he finally got it right, such as with Crocodile.
This, however, was at a time when Luffy was still getting accustomed to his rubber body, and well before he had mastered his Gear techniques, which he now relies on heavily when taking on a tough opponent. The truth is, most villains just aren't all that threatening to Luffy these days, since he's already proven that he's more than capable of handling even the toughest of opponents, including the likes of Kaido and Kizaru, just to name a few.
Does Oda Struggle To Write The Other Straw Hats?
The Other Straw Hats Don't Suffer The Same Fate, But Why Is That?
Though Oda may struggle a little to keep Luffy in line, he doesn't seem to have the same issue with the other Straw Hats, and there's a pretty obvious reason why. While Sanji and Zoro might both be insanely powerful, at the end of the day, they are still subservient to their captain Luffy, meaning they will never charge directly at the main villain of an arc unless they are ordered to by the protagonist himself.
At the same time, it's also very easy for many of the Straw Hats to get distracted for their own personal reasons, such as how Zoro always gets lost anytime he tries to travel from A to B, or how Sanji can't help but obsess over every woman he lays his eyes on. This ensures that they take the time to explore their surroundings and settle into an island first, unlike Luffy, who is always dead-set on reaching the end goal as quickly as possible.
As for the other members of the Straw Hat crew, many of them are simply too weak to really stand any chance of facing off against a Yonko or an Admiral. Therefore, it's presumably much easier to write these characters into the story without having to try and prevent them from taking down the big bad antagonist right from the get-go, but the same certainly can't be said for Luffy, especially now that he has acquired his devastating Gear 5 technique.
Source: X
- Release Date
- October 20, 1999
- Network
- Fuji TV
- Directors
- Hiroaki Miyamoto, Konosuke Uda, Junji Shimizu, Satoshi Itō, Munehisa Sakai, Katsumi Tokoro, Yutaka Nakajima, Yoshihiro Ueda, Kenichi Takeshita, Yoko Ikeda, Ryota Nakamura, Hiroyuki Kakudou, Takahiro Imamura, Toshihiro Maeya, Yûji Endô, Nozomu Shishido, Hidehiko Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou
Cast
-
Mayumi TanakaMonkey D. Luffy (voice) -
Kazuya NakaiRoronoa Zoro (voice)
WHERE TO WATCH
- Writers
- Jin Tanaka, Akiko Inoue, Junki Takegami, Shinzo Fujita, Shouji Yonemura, Yoshiyuki Suga, Atsuhiro Tomioka, Hirohiko Uesaka, Michiru Shimada, Isao Murayama, Takuya Masumoto, Yoichi Takahashi, Momoka Toyoda
- Franchise(s)
- One Piece
- Creator(s)
- Eiichiro Oda
