20 Weird Facts You Never Knew About One Piece
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One Piece has a lot of dark secrets surrounding it that are shocking, not just inside the series itself but also behind-the-scenes.
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One Piece is a very special series. It has an infectious enthusiasm about it, which makes you excited every time you get to spend more time with Luffy and the rest of the Straw Hat Pirates. Reading a new issue of One Piece makes you feel like a kid who is picking up his first ever X-Men comic.
Things aren’t always happy and playful in the world of One Piece. There is a lot of shady things going on with the production of the series. Eiichiro Oda is a genius, who is pushing himself to the edge of his health in order to entertain us. It seems that the people at Weekly Shonen Jump magazine are content to let him kill himself, so long as he keeps producing content. Oda himself also has a dark streak to him, as he has hidden some very nasty and uncomfortable concepts within One Piece.
We are here today to look at the darkest and most disturbing facts about the most popular anime/manga series in the world. From the author’s frequent collaborations with a pedophile to the details of how the Devil Fruit affects the love life of its user.
Here are Twenty Dark Facts You Never Knew About One Piece!
20 Maybe This Guy Should Have Been Fired…
There are likely a lot of you out there who are familiar with a manga/anime series called Toriko. It ran in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine and it is one of the few series to officially cross over with both One Piece and Dragon Ball Z.
You may not be aware that the creator of Toriko, Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro, was working on a different series in the early ’00s. It was canceled before it could be finished because Shimabukuro was arrested and convicted of bad things. He was caught paying 16-year-old girls for services.
Despite his despicable crime, Shimabukuro was allowed to return to Weekly Shonen Jump. He is still good friends with Eiichiro Oda and the two of them have collaborated on several Toriko/One Piece crossovers in recent years.
19 The Disturbing Sixth Movie
There have been several One Piece movies that have received a theatrical release in Japan. These are similar to the films that were created for series like Dragon Ball Z and Naruto: they have almost no bearing on the plot and are usually not part of the canon. It is for this reason that most movies that exist as part of anime franchises are ignored by the fans.
The sixth One Piece movie is well worth checking out, due to how utterly different it is from the rest of the series. Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island has a final battle that may feature the most disturbing scene in the whole series. This is because all of the Straw Hats (save Luffy) are absorbed into a plant monster.
18 4Kids Actually Made Bell-mère’s Death Even Worse
The 4Kids dub of One Piece is notorious for being so awful that it killed the franchise in the west for years. The biggest manga series in the world only found an audience due to word of mouth among those who were reading the illegal English scanlations online. It was always harder to convince someone to read One Piece after they had been subjected to the horrors of the rap song from the intro.
The changes made in the 4Kids dub sometimes made events even more violent than they were in the original version of the show. One example of this happened to Bell-mère, the adopted mother of Nami. In the Japanese version of the One Piece anime & manga, Bell-mère is shot in the head by Arlong. In the 4Kids dub, she is imprisoned for life. Bell-mère presumably dies while in prison, as she isn’t freed by Nami when Arlong is defeated.
17 Luffy The Sadist
The protagonists of superhero comics tend not to kill their foes. This is due to the fact that it would be morally wrong of them to do so… and it would also ruin the series if Batman killed the Joker within five minutes of meeting him.
Manga protagonists aren’t held to the same standard. Goku had no problem killing King Piccolo and Naruto was responsible for the death of Yura. Monkey D. Luffy has yet to kill any of his enemies in One Piece. Indeed, it took thirteen years for any character to die in One Piece.
Eiichiro Oda was asked why Luffy doesn’t kill anyone in the letters section that appears in the collected volumes of One Piece, which is called the SBS. Oda claims that the reason Luffy doesn’t kill anyone is that he prefers to destroy the dreams of his enemies, which is far more painful than simply taking their life.
16 Big Mom Ate Her Adopted Mother
One Piece has featured some dark content, such as the death of Ace and the destruction of Ohara. The One Piece manga runs in Weekly Shonen Jump, whose main demographic is still young kids and teenagers. As such, the series has limits on what it can publish. This is why you won’t see nudity or brutal decapitations in the page of One Piece or My Hero Academia.
An example of Eiichiro Oda having to restrict himself happened recently during the origin story of Big Mom. The manga highly suggests that she ate her adopted mother and family. This would explain how she gained the Devil Fruit ability of her adopted mother. The reason it could only be hinted at is that the editors at Weekly Shonen Jump didn’t want to have a little girl performing cannibalism on her family in the pages of their comic.
15 The Tragic Blackbeard Connection
The main reason that Whitebeard was the most feared pirate of his era was due to his Devil Fruit ability. Whitebeard had the ability to cause earthquakes, which could also be used to create tsunamis. If Whitebeard was so inclined, he could wash away entire countries. This power later falls into the hands of Blackbeard, who might actually be despicable enough to sink a nation.
It wasn’t long after Blackbeard gained the ability to create earthquakes that Japan suffered one of its most destructive natural disasters of all time. An earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 happened on the Pacific Coast of Tohaku, which triggered a massive tsunami. Had the episodes involving Whitebeard & Blackbeard been broadcast a few weeks later, then they would have caused controversy over their content and likely would have had to be edited or skipped.
14 Real Life Pirates Have Used Shank’s Jolly Roger
When people think of pirates, they generally imagine the aesthetic that was created by Treasure Island, which has been used for a long time. We still think of pirates as a relic of a forgotten age. This is partly due to the fact that ships are a lot rarer now, as it is far more convenient to travel by air.
Pirates are still very much a real thing. They exist in the South China Sea and off the coast of Somalia, as well as other parts of the world.
It seems that some Somali pirates have Internet access, as a video exists of a ship bearing the jolly roger of Shanks from One Piece. These pirates actually used Shank’s flag on their vessel.
13 The Series Is Outliving The Voice Actors
One Piece has been running since 1997 and doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. This length of time isn’t that impressive, as Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has been in publication since 1987 and Golgo 13 has been running since 1968!
With One Piece having gone on for so long, it is only natural that a few of its voice actors have passed away during the run of the show. These include Kazuyuki Sogabe (Benn Beckman, Silvers Rayleigh), Daisuke Gori (Jinbei, Dorry), Takeshi Aono (Dracule Mihawk), Takashi Taniguchi (Montblanc Cricket), Takkou Ishimori (Sengoku), Ginzo Matsuo (Smoker), and Chikao Otsuka (Gol D. Roger).
For the English voice actors of One Piece, we have lost Cole Brown (Blackbeard), Jerry Russell (Crocus), and Ed Blaylock (Sengoku). We can only hope that One Piece doesn’t lose any more voice actors before the story concludes.
12 The Only People Who Know How It’ll End…
There is always a suspicion with a long-running series that the author is just making things up as they go along. There have been some authors who are honest about how they didn’t know the ending (like Stephen King with The Dark Tower series) and there are those who lie and claim that they have planned everything out (like the creators of Lost.)
Eiichiro Oda has always maintained that he has the story of One Piece planned out. It’s hard to refute this, considering how many plot elements are hinted at years or even decades before they became relevant.
There was at least one One Piece fan who knew the ending of the series. Hinati Fujinami was a kid from Japan who was dying of lung cancer. The Make-A-Wish Foundation helped to fulfill Hinati’s final request, which was to learn how One Piece ended. Oda visited the child personally and revealed the ending to One Piece in private.
11 If You Work On The Series, You Give Up Everything
Every mangaka who works for Weekly Shonen Jump has to run their ideas past an editor. This relationship was brilliantly outlined in Bakuman, which was a comic about the inner-workings of the manga industry. The editor of a series can have a tremendous amount of power and influence over the story. The most famous example of this happened in Dragon Ball Z, as the entire Cell Saga was created due to one of Akira Toriyama’s former editors not liking the design of Android 19 & 20.
Eiichiro Oda works himself to the bone for One Piece. He also expects his editors to do the same, as he has told previous editors that they must be willing to “Die for One Piece” if they are to work on the series with him. Going on what we know of Oda’s schedule, he definitely isn’t kidding when he says this.
10 Maybe You Shouldn’t Put These Online…
Emporio Ivankov and his kingdom of mannish trans women is the kind of thing that could cause controversy for One Piece in the west. The only reason it hasn’t is likely due to the fact that the series still has a small following compared to other anime franchises.
The character of Emporio Ivankov didn’t cause any issues in Japan, though his voice actor certainly did. Ivankov was originally voiced by Norio Imamura. He was fired from the role in 2010 when it was revealed that he had been posting pictures of his unclothed body on his blog. Inamura is a tattoo enthusiast and he has covered almost his entire body in artwork. He showed his entire body on his blog, which ended up costing him his role in One Piece.
9 Tricked Into Taking The Show
One Piece is a cultural phenomenon in Japan, yet it is a harder sell in the west. The show has cartoonish visuals, yet it often includes violent battles and depressing backstories. It would be hard to sell One Piece as either a kids or an adult show.
This was the task given to 4Kids, which is why their One Piece dub is so reviled. They tried to turn it into a kids show, which is pretty much an impossible task.
4Kids aren’t totally to blame for this, as they were tricked into buying the license for One Piece. 4Kids were interested in buying different shows from Toei Animation and were convinced to take One Piece as part of a package deal. Toei was desperate to try and recreate One Piece’s success in America, so they presented it as a show that could be marketed to kids.
8 The Manga’s Version Of This Is So Much Worse
The early chapters of One Piece included a few violent moments that were left out of the anime. The most significant of these involves how Luffy got his scar. He stabbed himself in the face in the first chapter of One Piece, in a scene that wasn’t shown in the anime until recently. This was likely changed to prevent any kind of copycat behavior, which was probably for the best, considering how big One Piece became in Japan.
Sanji’s backstory also had a scene changed in the anime adaptation. In the One Piece anime, Zeff needs to have his leg cut off because it was caught under debris. In the One Piece manga, he cuts it off so that could eat it, as he would have starved to death otherwise.
7 Whitebeard’s Injuries
Eiichiro Oda made sure to give Whitebeard the most badass death of any character in One Piece. He was stabbed through the chest by Squard, shot repeatedly by bullets and cannons, as well as being stabbed by numerous members of the marines. It took the combined might of the Blackbeard Pirates to deal the killing blow against him.
The anime version of One Piece toned down Whitebeard’s wounds. The most significant of these involved his battle against Akainu. In the anime, Akainu uses his magma powers to burn off one side of Whitebeard’s mustache. In the manga, Akainu manages to melt off a part of his face. A chunk of Whitebeard’s head is missing during his final battle with Blackbeard.
6 The Terrible Fate Of Sugar
Sugar might be the most powerful person in all of One Piece. This is because she has the ability to remove any memory of a person from the minds of others, which involves turning them into harmless toys. It’s surprising that the World Government never tried to take her, as she presents the perfect solution for dealing with famous pirates.
Things aren’t so easy for Sugar, as her Devil Fruit keeps her in the body of a child for the rest of her life. Sugar is actually twenty-two when she first encounters the Straw Hat Pirates. She will remain in that body until she dies.
Eiichiro Oda actually drew what Sugar would look like, had she never eaten the Devil Fruit and been trapped in the body of a little girl.
5 The Case Of The Banned Exhibit
The Rising Sun symbol (which is usually shown on a flag) is a common one in Japan, yet it is considered offensive to the people of South Korea. This is due to the fact that Japan annexed the country and committed atrocities there at the start of the 1900s. The image of the Rising Sun is commonly censored in Korea, as was the case recently with Persona 5, due to Ryoji having the symbol on his shoes.
A One Piece exhibit was canceled in South Korea only three days before it was due to run. This was due to numerous complaints about how the One Piece manga frequently features the Rising Sun symbol, which usually appears in relation to the nation of Wano, that is heavily based on ancient Japan.
4 But Girls Can’t Like Giant Robots!
One of the running jokes in One Piece involves Luffy, Usopp, and Chopper being excited whenever they see a robot or a laser beam. These are usually provided by Franky, who created numerous mech suits and vehicles during the time skip.
Whenever Luffy freaks out over seeing a robot, the female members of the Straw Hats (and any girls in the vicinity) are always unimpressed by what they are seeing.
Eiichiro Oda explained in one of the SBS’s that the reason this joke exists is that he doesn’t think girls understand the “coolness” of giant robots and that they prefer things that are fluffy and cute. It’s odd that Oda would have this opinion, especially considering the billions of dollars that the Transformers franchise has brought in at the box office. It can’t all be dudebros who saw those movies.
3 A Familiar Offensive Symbol
One Piece was subjected to some of the most ridiculous censorship of all time when it was dubbed by 4Kids Entertainment. Things have been a lot better for One Piece since then, as the series has mostly run without edits in both the English versions of the anime and manga.
There was actually a case when the editors at Weekly Shonen Jump magazine forced Eiichiro Oda to censor One Piece, which involved permanently retconning part of the story.
When Ace first showed up, he had a tattoo of Whitebeard’s symbol on his back. Whitebeard’s symbol contained a Manji, which looks like a reverse Swastika. This was changed to a cross. This change was enforced upon all One Piece media, in order to avoid any potential controversy, as the series had started to gain headway in foreign markets.
2 Working Himself To Death
Producing a weekly manga is one of the most damaging careers when it comes to the health of the author. These people undergo one of the most ruthless schedules of any industry in order to entertain their fans. Their whole life revolves around planning, writing, and producing manga.
Eiichiro Oda is no exception to this. He works seven days a week and only gets three hours sleep at night. You would think that the richest mangaka on the planet would hire an army of assistants to do all of the work for him, but Oda isn’t like that. He still draws most of One Piece by himself.
It seems that Oda may finally be backing off this murderous schedule, as fans have noticed that One Piece has recently been on a break for at least one week of every month. It seems that Oda might finally be trying to take care of himself and spend more time with his family.
1 What Do The Devil Fruits Actually Do?
Eiichiro Oda will answer pretty much any question posed to him in the SBS section of the collected One Piece volumes. He has even dropped subtle hints concerning future events within his answers, which has included a lot of lore about how the Devil Fruits actually work.
The most common question posed to Oda over the years has pertained to how Devil Fruits affect the private parts of the male characters in One Piece. We know for a fact that Luffy’s can stretch like the rest of his body, as it is also made of rubber. Jozu (of the Whitebeard Pirates) can turn his into diamond, while Gladius (of the Donquixote Pirates) can make his explode.
The most disturbing Devil Fruit application to the nether regions belongs to Buggy, as his can actually detach and float around the room!
Scott has been writing for The Gamer since it launched in 2017 and also regularly contributes to Screen Rant. He has previously written gaming articles for websites like Cracked, Dorkly, Topless Robot, and TopTenz. He has been gaming since the days of the ZX Spectrum, when it used to take 40 minutes to load a game from a tape cassette player to a black and white TV set. Scott thinks Chrono Trigger is the best video game of all time, followed closely by Final Fantasy Tactics and Baldur’s Gate 2. He pretends that sorcerer is his favorite Dungeons & Dragons class in public but he secretly loves bards.
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