#hes very lucky that her poison isnt as strong as her mothers

[dooblebugss]

...did Hornet bite Tiso with her venom before

Sure did!

[tumblunni]

Man i'm remembering how raw all of Nami's early arcs were in One Piece and how much it sucks that she just got completely sidelined later on and increasingly turned into a sex symbol as well as being pushed further into the box of 'token weak normal human who can never win a fight' while usopp eventually escaped it. Oh except she can sometomes win sexualized fights against other sexualized women. *sigh* That moment where she got fuckin assualted ny an invisible man while naked in the shower and it was all played as sexy to the audience and sanji makes a shitty joke about wishing he had the invisible power to perv on girls and then EVERYONE ELSE EXCEPT NAMI gets some damn resolution on beating up invisibiluty asshole and its clear the whole thing was just an excuse for the author to show tits and her feelings dont really matter. Oh and the fuckin literal soap bath battle with the lady whose power is magic soap that makes people extra slippery and shiny like JESUS CHRIST BRO

Anyway lets not go on for an hour about the bad nami stuff and instead remember the great stuff!

Like that FUCKIN RAW moment in her backstory arc where theyve played the reveal of her being part of Arlong's crew SO WELL that you genuinely cant tell if she was really evil all along and is really betraying everyone. And then they slap you right in the face with what seems to be a scene of her murdering usopp! And its just done so damn great and dark and shocking, like right down to the framing of it where it looks like he escaped for a second and then he barely has time to gasp out a word before she stabs him. And they let this ride for a decently long amount of time too before revealing she's not evil after all. Just enough time to sink in and make you believe it! And the circumstances of the reveal are SO DAMN GREAT, yo! I think its straight up the most badass heroic thing anyone has ever done in the entire series and i hate how it doesnt get remembered much or aknowledged as much as the bigger more dramatic fights.

Cos you see...yeah Nami was not in fact evil and was just pretending to be loyal to these villains because theyd been blackmailing her for years ans she had a plan to trick her way out of it and wanted to keep her friends safe from being involved (and loads of other complex shit!) But she REALLY FUCKIN DEDICATED HERSELF TO HER ACTING cos she knew just how damn dangerous these bastards are and how much it was gonna take to fool them. The real reason Usopp got cut off mid sentence into a strangled scream is because Nami stabbed HERSELF to fake killing him! She wrecked the shit out of her arm and rubbed the blood on him and told him to stay down, and then managed to not let out the slightest sound of her pain and continue pulling off her amazing fake villain acting while bleeding out underneath her sleeve. Its not really brought up again but from the degree of how goddamn much she injured that hand and how she wasnt able to get it treated until after HOURS OF HIDING THE PAIN, it probably would have left her with permenant muscle spasms and difficulty moving her fingers. And she's a mapmaker so thats an injury that would really affect her career for the rest of her life. She risked all that to save a friend who believed she'd betrayed him and was 100% down to fight at that moment! Like seriously they also had some great development with usppp realizing he was wrong and working hard to overcome his cowardliness and put his own life on the line to help save Nami later on. It was such a good arc!!

Oh and of course theres the entire context to this whole thing that this villain group actually murdered nami's mother when she was a kid and groomed her into joining them. And right from the age of like six years old she was already planning how to out-manipulate the manipulators and gain the trust enough to take revenge someday. And she faked joining the villains, faked being fine with it, faked not mourning her goddamn mom. She let herself be treated like a heartless demon child by everyone she ever knew, so she could make these monsters believe she'd betrayed them and thus someday save them all. Save all those people who never even fuckin believed in her! And the villain dude fuckin branded her like a cow and she was so traumatized she tried to dig the tattoo out with a knife and seriously man her left arm must be so damn scarred and i hate that they dont atually show it just cos 'she's gotta be sexy'. They used to show the scar underneath her life-affirming happier replacement tattoo, but it just got phased out around the same time her waist became 2cm wide...

Also it really fuckin sucked that this arc just ended with Nami's decade long plan to save her family failing and she cries into the dirt and then all the male characters save her aand defeaat the bad guy instead. Even worse that this started becoming a trend where every new arc from now on would have some sort of femle character who was very sad and her grand character development was admitting she needed luffy to save her and then everyone else except her gets to defeat the bad guy she has this deep personal reason to want to defeat. Sigh!

So yeh seriously Oda i know ur tryin real damn hard to amp every damn battle as the biggest thing ever now but nothing will ever be bigger than back when you had more simple fully realized concepts that gave the whole cast time to shine and aalso very specifocally nami who was the best most goddamn engaging character and you suddenly somehow forgot this. "Woman who is so much of a damn hero that she'd stab herself to save her friends who didnt even believe she wasnt evil" is like the fucking apex of what this series has ever achieved and i wpuld personally like to remember her always as the way she was in that moment.

Also seriously it would have been way better if nami got to contribute towards defeating arlong AT ALL, and especiaally if she could have dealt the final blow. Like yeah she isnt some beastly strong superpowers guy like luffy and co, but it would have been so satisfying to see all her intelligence and planning pay off! Instead of just bullshit 'arlong somehow magically knew everything she was ever planning and he only let her believe he was fooled so he could have fun shooting down her hopes when she got so close'. Nah yknow what would have been really satisfying and great? If we still had that moment but then it was revealed nami actually double-doublecrossed him! Like he's boasting about seeing through her whole plan and then suddenly he stumbles and realizes she poisoned his drink or something. Would have been extra mega double triple satisfying if this was after him actually beating all the main brawn-over-brain characters in a physical fight, and it looked like our heroes were all doomed but she managed to take down this guy they couod never hope to defeat. Though some very simple clever trick that he never expected because he underestimated her. And also this could work well to introduce the seven warlords kf the sea without immediately undercutting them, like if we clearly show that arlong actually WAS wildly out of their league and they genuinely could not defeat one of the warlords at their current power level, they just got lucky with a creative solution. That would have worked better than having zoro fight mihawk for literally no reason except 'i wanna prove im stronger than mihawk'. Srsly so much of zoro's goddamn honor shit seems so dumb on a rewatch, he outright stabs himself to give himself a handicap cos something sonething honor, and refuses to accept help because honor and fights people who didnt wanna fight him because honor and generally this looks more like signs of the man being suicidal, geez! Also stabbing yourself for no reason is nowhere near as raw as stabbing yourself to save a friend. Also zoro fuckin passed out from blood loss and nami not only didng do that but also completely hid her injury from a literal shark man who can smell blood. And stared him right in the face and lied about murdering her best friend. Nami is the highest goddamn power tier in one piece and if the creator cant figure that out then i have no interest in reading any more of it

WE ARE NAMI STANS FIRST AND HUMANS SECOND