#one piece east blue arc

[mugiwarasource]

𓏲 ๋࣭ ࣪☠︎︎⭑. vinsmoke sanji ; icons ༉‧𓊝˚.

⤹ anime | baratie ⤹ like/reblog | @snghaobin ⤹ don't repost or claim as yours ⤹ cr if you use it

[namisweatheria]

I feel like we don't discuss Nami's relationship with gender enough. Her entire character is so deeply informed by being a girl in a male-dominated pirate world and it's so interesting and so worth talking about.

The background creepiness of Bad pirate crews, which are most of them, how they tend to not have any female crew members at all, how they beckon any pretty young woman around to come play with them and join them. It's real bad. It's also like, a totally 2 dimensional portrayal of evil that is reserved for the most background of background characters.

However I think their ubiquity says a lot about how piracy is meant to be perceived by the public in One Piece, and is one of the strongest indicators of how prevalent misogyny is in-world.

It's very normal in One Piece for regular island inhabitants to have never met a Different class of pirate in their life. There's no reason for them to withhold judgement that maybe these pirates won't be like every crew that attacked before, and to wait and judge them by their actions. I mean frankly that would be irrationally weak self-preservation.

There are people who live peacefully under the flags of Yonkos who protect them, and feel loyalty and gratitude to them for it, but that seems to only be thing with very big name pirates. The East Blue, being the weakest and least populated, has no such plethora of powerful people and resulting turf wars.

So. Nami. Is very clearly implied to have never met any Different pirates before. I'm thinking about what that means. About how every group of pirates she stole from were creepy, dangerous men. How she started going out stealing when she was still a young child. How she didn't have a mother anymore to guide her or comfort her. How Arlong would grab her chin inappropriately, talk about her as a "human female", as property, and god knows what else.

How all the men in Arlong's crew treated her patronizingly, pretending they're all friends, teasing her and playing at respect when really not a single one of them ever stuck up for her or hesitated to accuse her of betrayal. Who were always ready to kill her if she refused to cooperate. Who grabbed her and intimidated her when they felt like it.

That's what she had to come back to after a close call with stealing from other predatory men, instead of the relief of home there was a dark, cramped room filled with endless hours of misery and isolation and blood. Where any one of her captors could barge in and demand new maps, work faster, where did you go, you took too long again this time. Endless threats and incursions.

I'm thinking about that her fight scene in Alabasta, where she tumbles and rips off her cape and uses it to catch her enemy's spikes, before leaping to her feet and running out the back door, all in one moment. How it makes her enemy reconsider her and think, "so the girl's not a total novice at fighting after all." What that implies about her experiences as a young thief. The times she wasn't fast or clever enough and had to fight and claw her way out. Why she always carried a staff and a knife. Why she was the only one before Chopper who had any medical knowledge or experience.

You know she was stitching herself up. And the weapons, how do you think she learned to use those? If any of the Arlong Pirates helped her it wasn't out of kindness and it wasn't gentle.

Then I think about Nojiko, and Bellemere's memory, and the only softness in a hard life. How easily Nami connects to every young woman experiencing hardship that she meets. How completely she dismisses the struggles of men unless they mean something to her and are going through something terrible. The way that Nami only has sympathy for women and children is easily noticeable in-text, but it's also something confirmed in those words by the author. And it's clearly because of the life she lived, the men who had all the power and only abused it, who saw her as nothing but a girl to take advantage of, without anyone aside from her sister clearly knowing and caring about any of it.

Nami clearly isn't bitter, she doesn't think the world owes her recompense, on the contrary she knows she is far from the only person in the world to suffer the things she has suffered. She is endlessly reaching out and kind, but only to those that she isn't sure would get help without her. Certainly, before Luffy, Usopp, and Zoro, no man ever reached out a hand to her without an ulterior motive.

I think when she sees a girl in trouble, a girl biting her lip to hold in a scream of grief, a girl running in the woods away from a monster, a girl captured by pirates, she sees someone who no one is coming for. Who no one will stick up for. A person without allies in a world against her. Whether it's actually true in this case or not, she runs straight for that girl anyways every single time.

[zonaenthusiast]

One thing that is never mentioned when we talk about the "Luffy… help me" scene is that yes, the main characters of this moment are indisputably Luffy and Nami, but the others are there too.

Zoro, Usopp and Sanji are just a few steps away from them and it's safe to assume that they witness what is Nami's greatest moment of vulnerability in her entire life. They see her crying, collapsing, stabbing herself. And none of them know why. Usopp and Sanji have context, Zoro a little bit too, but none of them know what it is that has led Nami to completely break down. But still, there they are: the guy who didn't trust her, the guy who's afraid of everything and the guy who met her five minutes ago. Willing to put their lives on the line for her.

Nothing like the East Blue five bond to make me cry.

[ichigoginchan]

East Blue Five's Elbaf outfit let's gooooo

[idreaminmugiwara]

Chapter 1128 of One Piece with no context

[potatopassenger]

Also in Arlong Park love that when Luffy comes out of the water and grabs onto Zoro everyone is like Woooo he's gonna save Zoro apart from Zoro who is like Hey what are you doing

And then Luffy promptly chucks him in the sea proving Zoro's fears correct and freaking everyone else out

Same vibe as later when Luffy put Arlong's teeth in his own mouth and everyone was like ??? w h y would he do that and Zoro is like Of fucking course he did that

Only Zoro can predict Luffy and that is why he's first mate!

[beetles4brains]

[eyes-like-alexandrite]

the romance dawn trio are soooo ferris bueller coded. to me.

these are pretty shitty tho lmao

[wesleysniperking]

East blue five and their colors (meaning)

Oda paid real close “intention” to this…

Luffy - Red

Positive: Love, Passion, Power, and Good fortune

Negative: Danger and Anger

Zoro - Green

Positive: Growth, Life, and Rebirth

Negative: Artificiality, Boredom, and Sickness

Nami - Orange

Positive: Youth, Optimism, and Enthusiasm

Negative: Deceit, Impatience, and Pride

Usopp - Yellow

Positive: Celebration, Friendship, Happiness, and Energy

Negative: Caution, cowardice, and irritation (too bright)

Sanji - Blue

Positive: Calmness, Loyalty, and Confidence

Negative: Sadness, Fragility, and Coldness

[sammygems]

Straw Hat Outfits - East Blue Saga

I decided to start a new little series of posts of the Straw Hats outfits from each arc. I will be including the filler arcs as well and I'm gonna be dividing this by the Story Sagas, so first up is East Blue!

This post includes Romance Dawn, Orange Town, Syrup Village, Baratie, Arlong Park, & Loguetown. Warship Island is apart of the East Blue saga, but will be in the post for the Alabasta Saga, because the outfits in Warship Island are the same as the ones in Reverse Mountain.

Romance Dawn Arc

Orange Town Arc

Syrup Village Arc

Baratie Arc

Arlong Park Arc

Loguetown Arc

Later Posts in this series:

Alabasta Saga, Sky Island Saga, Water 7 Saga

[sailing-ever-west]

Rewatching Syrup Village arc and it's really hitting me how Usopp has never had anyone who was truly in his corner. The people in the village implicitly took care of him when his mom died, he didn't have to starve or beg and he considers them all loved ones, but they're tired of tolerating him and none of them really stop to actually have a talk with him. The Usopp pirates defend him a lot, but they're just kids and in the end he's really the one taking care of them. Plus they quickly abandon him once they don't look up to him anymore. Merry was never unkind to him before but he was willing to shoot him with very little context. And Kaya, well, they're obviously close friends and she cares about him on a deeper level than anyone else, but she doesn't really have the power to protect him in any way, and when it comes down to conflict she trusts Klahadore over Usopp. In daily life everything is fine, but when the other shoe drops Usopp very quickly finds himself completely alone.

So it makes it that much more meaningful that Luffy, Zoro, and Nami, three strangers more or less, take one look at him and his cause and decide they're going to fight alongside him. That they believe in him. They're the first people to ever truly stick with him at risk to themselves when things get hard, and that's so important.

[mugiwarasource]

𓏲 ๋࣭ ࣪☠︎︎⭑. usopp ; icons ༉‧𓊝˚.

⤹ anime | east blue ⤹ like/reblog | @snghaobin ⤹ don't repost or claim as yours ⤹ cr if you use it

[mugiwara-lucy]

I always wonder how Luffy roped Kid and Law to go with him given they're all hot headed idiots 😂

[vurbrena]

[evilishei]

The One Piece by WIT Studio.

[j-liz]

Private pirate

He’s very excited he has a crew ok?