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The Good and Bad of One Piece's Character Writing: A Thread.
To me, the most misunderstood part of One Piece is Oda's character writing, in terms of criticism and praise. In this thread, I'll break down exactly how Oda writes characters. Shoutout to Noxi for the idea
To me, the most misunderstood part of One Piece is Oda's character writing, in terms of criticism and praise. In this thread, I'll break down exactly how Oda writes characters. Shoutout to Noxi for the idea
First of all we need to establish that there are 2 things Oda does not like using in his story a lot. That being narration, and inner monologue. No matter the character, no matter the moment, Oda uses these techniques sparingly (mostly combat), and this is very important to note.
Oda's lack of narration and inner monologue creates a problem when it comes to writing because the characters will very rarely explain who they are and what they're feeling. Unlike a majority of manga, Oda "shows" a lot more than he "tells" with his characters and their nuances.
The way One Piece characters are usually written are split up between who they present themselves to be, and the side that isn't explicitly shown. As an example, Luffy is a fun-loving freedom seeking cinnamon roll, yet beneath that he is TERRIFIED of losing people close to him
This is notable, because we are never explicitly told Luffy is like this, yet Oda writes him as if we already know that this is the case. What this means is that when it comes to alot of One Piece charas, the weight falls to the audience to truly discover who these characters are
But "show not tell" is a good thing, right? Well... yes and no. The problem in this case is that it creates misunderstandings. LOTS of them, the most recent case being Whitebeard in chapter 999. Oda doesn't tell us what he's thinking so all we can do is infer.
So not only is there a chance to misinterpret who the character is, there are also many people who don't try to dig deep and just judge the characters based on their surface level characterization. And they shouldn't obligated to dig deep if they don't want to.
This is what I mean when both slander and praise for a character can sometimes stem from a miscommunication. So on one hand, it is so cool that Oda respects his readers enough to not convey everything about a character through words, but it's also a bit problematic.
The thing that makes One Piece characters so awesome and fascinating, is also the main reason why some people are prone to disliking them. So what's the point of this thread?
The point is to make people see the story differently. In One Piece there is always more than what's beneath the surface, so judging the story based on strict on the nose dialogue fundamentally changes the story for you. Thanks for reading and I hope this all made sense!
