The Pride of One Piece Series: The Wonder Womxn of the New World
HAPPY PRIDE MONTH! PROTECT THE DOLLS!
There is much to criticize about how Toei, One Piece’s animation production company, draws the women of One Piece as overdeveloped stock images of their view of the Madonna-Whore archetype. The criticism is warranted both to Eiichiro Oda’s art style and permissiveness to oversexualize his women characters and to Toei for taking those manga drawings and unnecessarily sensationalizing them to the extreme.
However, this is meant to be a fun newsletter, despite all the critical queer and feminist awareness. So, let’s always keep in mind that Patriarchy absolutely sucks, and have some fun right now with the ladies and theydiesss!
(This is how a cerebral, neuroexpansive Spirit with diverse understandings of the way of the worlds they enjoy (and thus enjoys analyzing and critiquing remains level-headed in this ethically conflicted world.)
One Piece boasts some of my favorite women, trans, and fem(me) anime characters in all of shonen. These women have rich backstories, exhibit strength, and are powerful in their own right, and when stacked up to their male counterparts. The dimensions of their humanity, along with their magnanimous powers and influence over their worlds, are central to their arcs and evolve throughout their involvement with the overall plot.
We love a gender-fluid baddie here! Oda-sensei excels at being gender-inclusive and embracing the diverse representation of queer, trans, and nonbinary characters as a normal and powerful contribution to the One Piece universe and Luffy’s cause. So, the next two women are a part of what queer One Piece fans call Queer Piece.
So, I want to highlight some of my favorite Queer Piece ladies and theydies in a Missy Elliott presents: Ladies Night-style by matching them up with queer Black female rappers who remind me of them for Pride Month.
The Baddest: Boa Hancock, the Snake Empress of Amazon Lily
Starting us off is who my Substack profile picture honors. (Can y’all even see my pfp? Idk.) Anyway!
Boa Hancock is my kind of shonen woman. One of the former Seven Warlords and the Snake Empress of Amazon Lily, a women-only island. She’s fierce, feminine, and fine. She’s sexy, and she knows it. She is powerful and protective as a leader and fiercely loyal to those she loves— her sisters, her warriors, and the girls and women of her nation. Hancock is cunning and cruel to her enemies, namely men and Marines.
Formerly enslaved and now liberated with the power of the Love-Love Fruit, Hancock’s beauty, sensuality, and sex appeal, this Gorgon empress can turn her adversaries into admirers. Anyone she desires is ultimately weak enough to fall for her love trap, turns to stone... Except for Luffy1.
So, of course, she’s Megan the Stallion. It’s a perfect match, too, because Megan, the queen of anime, has already cosplayed as Hancock and even named a song, BOA, after her. There’s also a strong lesbian energy in Boa Hancock, and Megan makes amazing content for every sapphic awakening, WLW fantasy, and yuri fanfic (and the biphobia, almost worth it).
Speaking of yuri, the sexy and steamy rarepair that is Boa/Nico…
Sometimes, it’s Demon Time
Demon Child of Ohara: Dr. Nico Robin
Beautiful, brilliant, and an enemy of the World Government for earning her doctorate in archaeology at the age of eight, Robin is one of the most captivating women in One Piece. She is kind, serene, a deep thinker, creatively insightful, and possesses unsettling power in certain ways thanks to her eating the Flower-Flower Fruit (Hana Hana no Mi), a Paramecia-type Devil Fruit that allows the user to replicate and sprout pieces of their body, like her arms and legs, from the surface of any object or living thing (yes, including people). Additionally, pinkish-white petal-like particles appear and swirl away from the sprouting and vanishing parts, as well as around her.
The World Government hunted her because she was the last living person with knowledge of the most significant time period in history. The Lost Century was deliberately erased to eliminate all traces of sociopolitical liberation. This era produced the world’s first and greatest pirate in the OP world. Without Robin, Luffy and the Straw Hats would not be able to decipher the ancient texts that reveal the location of the final island where One Piece is.
She also has a very nerdy, weird, and creepy, dry sense of humor….Just like Doja Cat.
Queer Piece is not only fandom lingo, it’s canon. Oda has never been shy about centering queer characters and transgender characters are some of his most beautifully designed. The Revolutionary Army’s founding member pushes the queer agenda in the universe, and the Muva of Impel Down’s level 5.5: the secret "Okama Paradise.”
Queen Mother: “Miracle Person” Emporio Ivankov
The Queen of the Kamabakka Kingdom, known as "Okama King" the Muva of Queer Piece, Emporio “Iva” Ivankov, is also the Mother and a commanding officer of the Revolutionary Army. Formerly a slave of the World Nobles and prisoner of Impel Down, As Iva uses he/she pronouns interchangeably, and identifies as a cross-dressing non-binary person, they fall under the transgender umbrella.
Iva is on this list because Iva can transform themselves into a woman, making their body soft, flexible, and resistant to blunt force. Iva saves Luffy’s life twice with hormone injections so that he can have the strength to save his brother. Iva ate the Horu Horu no Mi (Horm-Horm Fruit), a Paramecia-type Devil Fruit which enables him to create a range of special hormones that can modify the recipient’s body in any way he wishes, effectively allowing him to "remodel a human from the inside."
With this power, he can freely alter any of the recipient's physical aspects, including sex, growth, skin pigment, stamina, emotions, and many other things. Iva is liberal and willing to perform sex and gender changes on whoever desires, which helped hundreds of prisoners escape their gender conformities and live the lives they couldn’t on the outside, in the secret Okama Paradise, also known as the "Prisoners' Secret Flower Garden", Newkama Land, a "paradise within hell.”
Singer, mentor, performer, survivor, revolutionary leader…
No one else fits the bill better than Big Freedia, the ICONIC gender-fluid New Orleans Bounce rapper. Freedia has talked about the hardships of being a queer and trans Black woman in hip-hop. But it hasn’t stopped her from being a trailblazing Muva of Bounce Music.
Being a member of Queer Piece and the queer side of the OP fandom has been one of the most affirming creative experiences of my life. I have found so many artists and writers who have enriched the OP universe for me. It’s fun sharing the love of queer ships with other gworls who get it.
In the following series newsletter, we meet some of my favorite canon and headcanon queer ships in the OPU: the pirate king and his doctor wife, the cat burglar and her princess, the empress and the archeologist, the beast prince and his late pirate boyfriend, and the original and iconic MLM One Piece ship that precedes many fans’ awareness of the animanga, itself—the swordsman and the chef!
