Why You Need to Shut Up And Watch One Piece

Monkey D. Luffy’d be right at home in the Bay. (Adam Dillon, Melvin Chavez)

The organizational landscape in the Bay Area can get a person down. There are enormous issues to overcome: The state is mandating our city to build 82,000 new units, our city government stands behind ineffective officials rather than local transit, and small-minded techies flame local writers as they opine about self-driving cars. Yes, this is the Bay Area in 2023. When it all gets to be too much, when just getting out of bed is the actual first enormous issue to overcome, when you’re under-slept and underpaid and overdone, a bit of mindful escapism can cure what ails. Might I suggest the best story ever told, Eiichiro Oda’s modern epic One Piece?

Don’t get it twisted: this is no mere manga-anime-combo but a testament to revolutionary politics. Oda’s story follows a band of pirates as they travel the seas in search of true freedom made real by the legendary treasure One Piece. Along the way, other aspirants to liberation and the world government itself beleaguer our heroes. At each stop of the journey the protagonists — the Straw Hat Pirates — liberate locals from puppet monarchies (for the fans, see the Dressrosa Arc), repel occupying forces alongside Indigenous warriors (Skypiea Arc), and even straight up punch the ruling-class bourgeoise (Sabaody Archipelago Arc). In fact, there are even shadow-funded government assailants hellbent on dismantling journalists fanning the flames of rebellion. Sound familiar?

Resting is important, as I’ve been reminded a lot lately. I pretty much hate doing it, though I deeply enjoy it by the end of the day. The inimitable Bay Area talent Dena Rod told me about Tricia Hersey’s Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, based on the author’s Nap Ministry in Atlanta. The Straw Hat Pirates could get behind this approach, as all their actions are taken from a place of passion, honesty, and praxis. To that end, Oda has made it clear his characters are meant to represent various parts of our real world; the writer confirmed his main character, Monkey D. Luffy, would be Brazilian — just like Pedagogy of the Oppressed author Paulo Freire. The driving theory behind the Straw Hat’s praxis? Rest, however that shows up for each of the crew members, as resistance.

(Wikimedia)

If there’s a place that taps into that pedagogy of the oppressed, it could be the Bay Area. Remember this is the birthplace of the Black Panther Party, where Ginsberg beat back the United States government’s ridiculous profanity laws, and the home to the country’s first Transgender Cultural District. There were pirates in Sausalito who fought the system and won, probably as literal a version of the One Piece saga in the Bay as it gets. Even Oakland original Guapdad 4000 is on One Piece, telling Crunchyroll the greatest anime hero of all time is the former pirate king Gol D. Roger. “He set the tone for the whole universe,” the rapper said.

We all need a breather when the Bay Area’s backwardness and circular nonsense is getting you down. It can feel like the mayor herself is ignoring her own commitments and words right there in city hall. So the next time your friend tells you to start reading or watching One Piece, give it a go. Sure, there are more than a thousand issues and episodes, and plenty of movies. (Don’t worry, you can skip the Long Ring Long Land Arc in all its Davy Back glory if you want.) Oda is writing what some consider to be a 21st-century equivalent of the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, but with overt anti-fascist and anti-imperial messages. There might not be a more allegorical story being written in modern times, complete with conversations regarding artificial intelligence, climate change, and coloniality.

Fantasy novelist Peter S. Beagle wrote in an introduction to The Return of the King we need “a green alternative to each day’s madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers — thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizer of dreams.” Whether it be Tolkein before him or Oda today, a bit of mindful escapism can be just what the doctor ordered to get through, and subvert, the malignant maladies of the present. So shut up, sit down, and sail the seas with One Piece.

Howdy! My name is Katy Atchison and I'm an Associate Editor for Broke-Ass Stuart.

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