One piece is extremely political, anti-authoritarian and anti Israel. I can see why a leftoid would consider it left leaning by focusing on the anti-slavery and freedom fighting factions while ignoring the terrorist slave descendants and good monarchies, but it’s more broadly anti-globalist, with the world government being a body a mostly good hearted people unfortunately under the orders of a megalomaniacal group of (literally) demonic elites who view the world as nothing but their
What may resemble the sub-cultures of decades past in our modern, sexually wild and politicized climate are nothing but costumes for whores, a slut will adorn herself in black and claim to be goth because she understands that the goth is attractive to men, what she fails to realize is that the source of this attraction was the goths prudish nature and rejection of societal norms, something the slut is incapable of replicating, the very anathema of what she is doing.
Men want a girl who isn’t a slut, goths were not sluts, sluts want men, sluts dress goth. Now a whole generation of men who never knew the original goth only know the slut and it has become something else entirely.
The word goth here is interchangeable with punk or any other variant of subculture that has long since died out and become commercialized by Hot Topic and Spencer’s.
Counter culture has been atomized by the internet, existing now in small pockets of mostly older folks who were around back in the day themselves, most of whom don’t recognize what’s happened around them.
Libs will often take ideas the like from pieces of media, i.e. One Piece being anti-authoritarian, and say that said ideas are inherently liberal becuase to them, liberals are good. They never think about any overlapping ideals that conservatives may share with them because conservatism is the opposite of liberalism, evil.
Also, the internet has practically ruined any notion of a subculture due to it allowing them to thoroughly mix and erode their meaning over time.
You can really see leftists spaz out over "this isn't real punk!" in a ridiculous way when they see Negative XP mentioned. Or Hard Christ, or Fried By Fluoride, or any of the other "incelcore" internet artists that followed him with music that has a punk vibe except they talk about killing themselves. Suddenly, punk is about not offending anybody and being fucking kind to others you chud. Punk isn't about being working class or being "against the system," it's first and foremost about Agreeing With Me and if you don't do that you're just a right wing chud trying to imitate a culture that hates you!
The “One Piece is left wing” thing always made me laugh, One Piece is pro monarchy explicitly, and there are very fundamental things about it that are incompatible with the leftist view points
RAC peaked in the 80s and 90s, you can trace the loss of popularity to the death of Ian Stuart Donaldson (Skrewdriver's vocalist) and the collapse of the National Front. There are still some decent RAC bands, however, they've shifted to a hardcore influenced style away from Oi! and it's essentially an unc genre now, with NSBM and neofolk becoming the face of White Identity music. Right-wing punk bands still live rent-free in the psyche of leftard punk fans though, e.g., reciting "NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF!" ad nauseam and scrupulously searching to confirm that any band they listen to aligns with their ideology.
Liberals are enamoured with the act of transgression itself and associate it with freedom, but are completely oblivious to nuance and context, so someone who upholds order or is positively portrayed for the correct reasons will be seen as evil no matter what (why on earth would Polyphemus be the good character when compared with odysseus???).
Their gatekeeping is a feeble way of controlling the culture in absence of talent and skill to produce something themselves.
My facebook profile used to be me chilling at the beach looking like a degenerate hippe wearing a Bad Brains shirt. This was during the first term or Trump and the rise of the alt right and whatnot and I was getting into political arguments in public as millenials do. Several leftist losers thought it was a huge own to say "the bad whose shirt youre wearing would hate you".
Now if you base your opinions on whether a band you enjoy would approve of them you're a pathetic loser regardless, but anyone who knows anything about American punk and hardcore should understand that not a single fan of the Bad Brains in the entire history of their existence has looked to them for their political and social commentary.
They're not fucking Rage Against The Machine, they're schizophrenic black Americans LARPing as rastafarians with barely coherent lyrics whose audience always consisted of apolitical skinhead and street punk types. I would be extremely surprised if anyone ever became a rasta because of Bad Brains. Not to mention they were controversial among left wing punks for actively beating up homosexuals.
But there's one thing the singer once said that does speak to me: he was once asked about the meaning of his lyrics and he said (paraphrasing) who the hell cares? If you listen to hardcore punk for the lyrics you're a retard.
The Goth girls esthetic is easy to pick up and demands people attention. No wonder mid to ugly hoes adapted it so they would recive attention they woulndt normaly get.
I’ve always found it funny how much Punks seem to despise power-hungry businessmen and capitalists; to me, the latter category have acted more effectively on the hedonistic nihilist attitude of “to hell with everything, I’m taking what’s mine” than Punks ever have. It’s just that Punks see it as a political/aesthetic turn-off to use “the system” to this end, while your Jeff Bezos type just doesn’t care; and isn’t “just not caring” also part of the Punk ethos?
only tangentially related, but i realized at some point that the reason why i never appeared to have a rebellious phase was because i never viewed my parents or the church or anything as "The Man," they were on my side if anything. The Man was the school, the teachers, liberals. so my rebellion was against them, i said racist things in class and online and it pissed them off and i laughed, and i think a lot of us had a similar experience. I wouldn't call conservatism punk, but to be further right than that pretty much is, because the liberals hold the power now.
It is beyond infuriating that most liberals online believe that right wingers actually see themselves as Patrick Bateman. Reddit liberals aren’t aware The “literally me” joke is just a fucking joke bc there might be 3 Chris Chan level autists that take it completely seriously
If I hear one more smug leftist complain about "media literacy" or tell someone "you CLEARLY didn't get the point 🤓" I'm going rambo mode on an HR department. I CAN DISAGREE WITH THE AUTHOR WITHOUT BEING STUPID! This is the "apotheosis of the author" where for some reason just because someone had the creativity, work, and good luck to create a decently popular piece of media or literature they're suddenly a God, and every not-so subtle theme of their work is taken as Gospel. Literally; leftists are analyzing the new Hunger Games novel the same way religious people discuss Bible verses.
When it comes to WH40K that shitlib (sorry, democratic socialist) "Adam Something" needs to be studied. His otherwise train and infrastructure yt channel is used by him on occasion for complete crashouts over politics, Musk, Drumpf, and Putler.
Like other commenters have said, One Piece is *deeply* political, and arguably as nuanced as LOTR. But it's not obvious at first, because the political salience grows in a crescendo. (Admittedly, it completely flew over my head until Oda started gesturing at racism/slavery during Fishman Island, which is probably about 500 chapters deep.)
It's weird because it clearly does have commie-coded sentiments (e.g. class warfare), and anti-globalist sentiments (viz. Imu occupying the "empty throne"). But at the same time, its most important theme is Freedom (qua Sovereignty/Kingship) and its juxtaposition against Anarchy (viz. Blackbeard) and Tyranny (viz. World Government). Which is obviously quite reactionary.
For the time being, I model Oda's politics as the missing link in the Horseshoe.
Fair. Frankly, if we pitted OP and LOTR in a contest for thematic complexity, I do think LOTR would win. But still. If you did a deep-dive, I think you'd be pleasantly surprised.
----
In OP, each story arc has at least one "signature minor-theme". In aggregate, they support its major-themes. Some of them are braindead (especially the earlier arcs), such as Alabasta being about the Power of Friendship, or Orange Town being about the True Meaning of Treasure. But some are a little more advanced, such as Fishman Island's signature theme being about "yeah, racism/slavery is bad. BUT ALSO, this new generation of fishman punks screeching about 'muh slavery' have never actually experienced it. Their words and actions ring hollow because they're NPC's".
In addition to these "signature minor-themes", there's often major themes that sort of build up in the background, because they get reiterated to foreshadow more-complex themes, later on in the series. E.g. Gecko Moria's (the antagonist of Thriller Bark) tragic flaw was not having faith in his crew. Which supports the signature minor theme of the story arc (viz. the indispensable value of subordinates). But simultaneously, Moria was also a parallel to Luffy, in that he wasn't really taking the New World seriously. The Strawhats barely defeating Moria, and then getting slapped silly by Bartholomew Kuma a second later, was foreshadowing for the Strawhats getting curbstomped by Kuma *again* at Sabaody Archipelago in the next arc. Which, in turn, foreshadowed Ace's permadeath during Whitebeard's War. The 1st time the Straw Hats get wiped, they're surprised and upset. The 2nd time, they're a bit panicked. But it took losing Ace for Luffy to lose his sanity, and therefore fully understand that he wasn't ready for the New World. Thus, the foreshadowing isn't *just* foreshadowing, but escalation and elaboration.
This is a common tactic that Oda uses with his major themes. He introduces them quietly, and then reiterates and elaborates later on. Thus, it's often the case that instances of "foreshadowing" are more than just foreshadowing for its own sake. It represents the careful building of a political treatise. Like in, say, Plato's Republic. Other examples include how Enel/Skypeia was a microcosm of the Imu/WG, wrt the theme of "tyranny of the shadow ruler". Or Dragon's speech about "inherited will" (et al) at Logue Town mirrors Dr. Hiriluk's (quack doctor; Chopper's mentor) musings about how people only truly die when their actions/memory cease to echo through time, which turned out to be a major obsession of Kaido, due to the memetic vacuum left by (Kaido's former captain) Rocks D. Xebec.
I'll stop here. But hopefully, I've at least *somewhat* convinced you that OP's depth is easy to underestimate. And that's just the political stuff. There's plenty of silly easter eggs. Including: the dumb puns; the architectural references; pirates' names being inspired by real-life pirates; Kaido sharing a mythological common ancestor with magikarp/gyrados; Gaimon and Sarfunkel; etc.
I'm not sure how to articulate this exactly, but your comment strikes me as a bit odd. I sense that you're trying to smuggle in certain assumptions that aren't really appropriate, since OP's politics aren't intended to map to contemporary U.S. politics. That is to say,
Given the existence of Ivankov and Bon Clay, Oda does seem fine with queers. But also, I remember when Oda caught some flak from lefties for the joke about Sanji being chased around Kamabaka Kingdom by the queers. So it's not like Oda is an ally of the snowflakes, either. And I'm not 100% confident in this, but I don't think the trans question is quite so prominent or polarizing in Japan as it is in the Anglosphere.
And the entire cartoon is over-the-top about everything. I suspect this is a stylistic choice, harkening back to the epics of old, in which characters like Achilles tend to be one-dimensional caricatures.
And highlighting "atheism" suggests to me that you think OP could only be conservative-coded if it were to exalt an Abrahamic deity. But to me, devil-fruits feel very Shinto-esque, which I suspect is somewhat conservative-coded in the context of Japan. Just not in a way someone from the Anglosphere would recognize.
I'm not saying Ivankov isn't coded as a progressive leftist (or more specifically: a drag queen). She definitely is, and Oda's definitely comfortable with that.
I'm just saying: be careful about importing Western assumptions into a cartoon of Japanese origin. The mention of "atheism" indicates to me that this is likely occurring. Which might have ramifications on how you understand the Japanese attitude toward queers. E.g. I hear that in Japan, gays consider homosexuality a *choice*. Whereas in the Anglosphere, gays consider homosexuality as being *congenital*. And I've heard there's other differences in how Japan treats romance in general. E.g. traditionally, romance and family-rearing were viewed as being relatively compartmentalized. [0]
It's part of a wider trend I've noticed where Americans don't really know anything about foreign countries, and therefore unknowingly impose bad assumptions.
More broadly though, I think OP is best understood on its own terms, as opposed to being immediately shoehorned into a particular corner of the ideological spectrum.
[0] I'm no expert, so I'm prepared to be wrong about this. Though I do make at least a modest effort to understand the satellites of the yankee imperium. And not just Japan.
One piece is extremely political, anti-authoritarian and anti Israel. I can see why a leftoid would consider it left leaning by focusing on the anti-slavery and freedom fighting factions while ignoring the terrorist slave descendants and good monarchies, but it’s more broadly anti-globalist, with the world government being a body a mostly good hearted people unfortunately under the orders of a megalomaniacal group of (literally) demonic elites who view the world as nothing but their
What may resemble the sub-cultures of decades past in our modern, sexually wild and politicized climate are nothing but costumes for whores, a slut will adorn herself in black and claim to be goth because she understands that the goth is attractive to men, what she fails to realize is that the source of this attraction was the goths prudish nature and rejection of societal norms, something the slut is incapable of replicating, the very anathema of what she is doing.
Men want a girl who isn’t a slut, goths were not sluts, sluts want men, sluts dress goth. Now a whole generation of men who never knew the original goth only know the slut and it has become something else entirely.
The word goth here is interchangeable with punk or any other variant of subculture that has long since died out and become commercialized by Hot Topic and Spencer’s.
Counter culture has been atomized by the internet, existing now in small pockets of mostly older folks who were around back in the day themselves, most of whom don’t recognize what’s happened around them.
Libs will often take ideas the like from pieces of media, i.e. One Piece being anti-authoritarian, and say that said ideas are inherently liberal becuase to them, liberals are good. They never think about any overlapping ideals that conservatives may share with them because conservatism is the opposite of liberalism, evil.
Also, the internet has practically ruined any notion of a subculture due to it allowing them to thoroughly mix and erode their meaning over time.
You can really see leftists spaz out over "this isn't real punk!" in a ridiculous way when they see Negative XP mentioned. Or Hard Christ, or Fried By Fluoride, or any of the other "incelcore" internet artists that followed him with music that has a punk vibe except they talk about killing themselves. Suddenly, punk is about not offending anybody and being fucking kind to others you chud. Punk isn't about being working class or being "against the system," it's first and foremost about Agreeing With Me and if you don't do that you're just a right wing chud trying to imitate a culture that hates you!
The “One Piece is left wing” thing always made me laugh, One Piece is pro monarchy explicitly, and there are very fundamental things about it that are incompatible with the leftist view points
the one piece is real
RAC peaked in the 80s and 90s, you can trace the loss of popularity to the death of Ian Stuart Donaldson (Skrewdriver's vocalist) and the collapse of the National Front. There are still some decent RAC bands, however, they've shifted to a hardcore influenced style away from Oi! and it's essentially an unc genre now, with NSBM and neofolk becoming the face of White Identity music. Right-wing punk bands still live rent-free in the psyche of leftard punk fans though, e.g., reciting "NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF!" ad nauseam and scrupulously searching to confirm that any band they listen to aligns with their ideology.
Liberals are enamoured with the act of transgression itself and associate it with freedom, but are completely oblivious to nuance and context, so someone who upholds order or is positively portrayed for the correct reasons will be seen as evil no matter what (why on earth would Polyphemus be the good character when compared with odysseus???).
Their gatekeeping is a feeble way of controlling the culture in absence of talent and skill to produce something themselves.
My facebook profile used to be me chilling at the beach looking like a degenerate hippe wearing a Bad Brains shirt. This was during the first term or Trump and the rise of the alt right and whatnot and I was getting into political arguments in public as millenials do. Several leftist losers thought it was a huge own to say "the bad whose shirt youre wearing would hate you".
Now if you base your opinions on whether a band you enjoy would approve of them you're a pathetic loser regardless, but anyone who knows anything about American punk and hardcore should understand that not a single fan of the Bad Brains in the entire history of their existence has looked to them for their political and social commentary.
They're not fucking Rage Against The Machine, they're schizophrenic black Americans LARPing as rastafarians with barely coherent lyrics whose audience always consisted of apolitical skinhead and street punk types. I would be extremely surprised if anyone ever became a rasta because of Bad Brains. Not to mention they were controversial among left wing punks for actively beating up homosexuals.
But there's one thing the singer once said that does speak to me: he was once asked about the meaning of his lyrics and he said (paraphrasing) who the hell cares? If you listen to hardcore punk for the lyrics you're a retard.
The Goth girls esthetic is easy to pick up and demands people attention. No wonder mid to ugly hoes adapted it so they would recive attention they woulndt normaly get.
What’s up man
hows it goin dronom
Yo whats good nigga
I’ve always found it funny how much Punks seem to despise power-hungry businessmen and capitalists; to me, the latter category have acted more effectively on the hedonistic nihilist attitude of “to hell with everything, I’m taking what’s mine” than Punks ever have. It’s just that Punks see it as a political/aesthetic turn-off to use “the system” to this end, while your Jeff Bezos type just doesn’t care; and isn’t “just not caring” also part of the Punk ethos?
I wrote an article about this last month and I’m really glad this has been taking off as a topic on wider Substack.
only tangentially related, but i realized at some point that the reason why i never appeared to have a rebellious phase was because i never viewed my parents or the church or anything as "The Man," they were on my side if anything. The Man was the school, the teachers, liberals. so my rebellion was against them, i said racist things in class and online and it pissed them off and i laughed, and i think a lot of us had a similar experience. I wouldn't call conservatism punk, but to be further right than that pretty much is, because the liberals hold the power now.
It is beyond infuriating that most liberals online believe that right wingers actually see themselves as Patrick Bateman. Reddit liberals aren’t aware The “literally me” joke is just a fucking joke bc there might be 3 Chris Chan level autists that take it completely seriously
When it comes to Warhammer, I knew a Furry/Scalie guy who's, you guessed it, favorite faction was Slaanesh. Many such cases!
If I hear one more smug leftist complain about "media literacy" or tell someone "you CLEARLY didn't get the point 🤓" I'm going rambo mode on an HR department. I CAN DISAGREE WITH THE AUTHOR WITHOUT BEING STUPID! This is the "apotheosis of the author" where for some reason just because someone had the creativity, work, and good luck to create a decently popular piece of media or literature they're suddenly a God, and every not-so subtle theme of their work is taken as Gospel. Literally; leftists are analyzing the new Hunger Games novel the same way religious people discuss Bible verses.
When it comes to WH40K that shitlib (sorry, democratic socialist) "Adam Something" needs to be studied. His otherwise train and infrastructure yt channel is used by him on occasion for complete crashouts over politics, Musk, Drumpf, and Putler.
Like other commenters have said, One Piece is *deeply* political, and arguably as nuanced as LOTR. But it's not obvious at first, because the political salience grows in a crescendo. (Admittedly, it completely flew over my head until Oda started gesturing at racism/slavery during Fishman Island, which is probably about 500 chapters deep.)
It's weird because it clearly does have commie-coded sentiments (e.g. class warfare), and anti-globalist sentiments (viz. Imu occupying the "empty throne"). But at the same time, its most important theme is Freedom (qua Sovereignty/Kingship) and its juxtaposition against Anarchy (viz. Blackbeard) and Tyranny (viz. World Government). Which is obviously quite reactionary.
For the time being, I model Oda's politics as the missing link in the Horseshoe.
One Piss is not as "nuanced as LOTR".. Furthermore, Yajirobe clears that whole verse
Fair. Frankly, if we pitted OP and LOTR in a contest for thematic complexity, I do think LOTR would win. But still. If you did a deep-dive, I think you'd be pleasantly surprised.
----
In OP, each story arc has at least one "signature minor-theme". In aggregate, they support its major-themes. Some of them are braindead (especially the earlier arcs), such as Alabasta being about the Power of Friendship, or Orange Town being about the True Meaning of Treasure. But some are a little more advanced, such as Fishman Island's signature theme being about "yeah, racism/slavery is bad. BUT ALSO, this new generation of fishman punks screeching about 'muh slavery' have never actually experienced it. Their words and actions ring hollow because they're NPC's".
In addition to these "signature minor-themes", there's often major themes that sort of build up in the background, because they get reiterated to foreshadow more-complex themes, later on in the series. E.g. Gecko Moria's (the antagonist of Thriller Bark) tragic flaw was not having faith in his crew. Which supports the signature minor theme of the story arc (viz. the indispensable value of subordinates). But simultaneously, Moria was also a parallel to Luffy, in that he wasn't really taking the New World seriously. The Strawhats barely defeating Moria, and then getting slapped silly by Bartholomew Kuma a second later, was foreshadowing for the Strawhats getting curbstomped by Kuma *again* at Sabaody Archipelago in the next arc. Which, in turn, foreshadowed Ace's permadeath during Whitebeard's War. The 1st time the Straw Hats get wiped, they're surprised and upset. The 2nd time, they're a bit panicked. But it took losing Ace for Luffy to lose his sanity, and therefore fully understand that he wasn't ready for the New World. Thus, the foreshadowing isn't *just* foreshadowing, but escalation and elaboration.
This is a common tactic that Oda uses with his major themes. He introduces them quietly, and then reiterates and elaborates later on. Thus, it's often the case that instances of "foreshadowing" are more than just foreshadowing for its own sake. It represents the careful building of a political treatise. Like in, say, Plato's Republic. Other examples include how Enel/Skypeia was a microcosm of the Imu/WG, wrt the theme of "tyranny of the shadow ruler". Or Dragon's speech about "inherited will" (et al) at Logue Town mirrors Dr. Hiriluk's (quack doctor; Chopper's mentor) musings about how people only truly die when their actions/memory cease to echo through time, which turned out to be a major obsession of Kaido, due to the memetic vacuum left by (Kaido's former captain) Rocks D. Xebec.
I'll stop here. But hopefully, I've at least *somewhat* convinced you that OP's depth is easy to underestimate. And that's just the political stuff. There's plenty of silly easter eggs. Including: the dumb puns; the architectural references; pirates' names being inspired by real-life pirates; Kaido sharing a mythological common ancestor with magikarp/gyrados; Gaimon and Sarfunkel; etc.
I'm not sure how to articulate this exactly, but your comment strikes me as a bit odd. I sense that you're trying to smuggle in certain assumptions that aren't really appropriate, since OP's politics aren't intended to map to contemporary U.S. politics. That is to say,
Given the existence of Ivankov and Bon Clay, Oda does seem fine with queers. But also, I remember when Oda caught some flak from lefties for the joke about Sanji being chased around Kamabaka Kingdom by the queers. So it's not like Oda is an ally of the snowflakes, either. And I'm not 100% confident in this, but I don't think the trans question is quite so prominent or polarizing in Japan as it is in the Anglosphere.
And the entire cartoon is over-the-top about everything. I suspect this is a stylistic choice, harkening back to the epics of old, in which characters like Achilles tend to be one-dimensional caricatures.
And highlighting "atheism" suggests to me that you think OP could only be conservative-coded if it were to exalt an Abrahamic deity. But to me, devil-fruits feel very Shinto-esque, which I suspect is somewhat conservative-coded in the context of Japan. Just not in a way someone from the Anglosphere would recognize.
I'm not saying Ivankov isn't coded as a progressive leftist (or more specifically: a drag queen). She definitely is, and Oda's definitely comfortable with that.
I'm just saying: be careful about importing Western assumptions into a cartoon of Japanese origin. The mention of "atheism" indicates to me that this is likely occurring. Which might have ramifications on how you understand the Japanese attitude toward queers. E.g. I hear that in Japan, gays consider homosexuality a *choice*. Whereas in the Anglosphere, gays consider homosexuality as being *congenital*. And I've heard there's other differences in how Japan treats romance in general. E.g. traditionally, romance and family-rearing were viewed as being relatively compartmentalized. [0]
It's part of a wider trend I've noticed where Americans don't really know anything about foreign countries, and therefore unknowingly impose bad assumptions.
More broadly though, I think OP is best understood on its own terms, as opposed to being immediately shoehorned into a particular corner of the ideological spectrum.
[0] I'm no expert, so I'm prepared to be wrong about this. Though I do make at least a modest effort to understand the satellites of the yankee imperium. And not just Japan.
>The Guevara picture in Oda’s drawing room could very easily just be a reference.
I have a chairman mao portrait...