Introduction
Hello, everyone!
It is simultaneously a sad and glorious day for me, my friends. With the first volume of the second season of the Vivre Card Databook, Oda has finally graced us with Jinbe's official theme color, a revelation that I've been eagerly awaiting for several years now, and...
...it's ocher. Huh.
Not a deeper blue like azure or indigo as I envisioned, nor a greenish aqua like others have suggested, not even a sunny orange or yellow as I've occasionally seen thrown around, but ocher, a light brown.
Specifically, the variety of ocher in question is oudoiro (黄土色), or "yellow earth color" in Japanese, implying that Oda is referring to a shade that leans more towards yellow than orange or red. As near as I can find, this tends to be on the darker end of the ocher spectrum and doesn't really show up in Jinbe's color scheme at all. Honestly, it seems more like an Usopp color to me given that his original outfit was made up more of yellowish-browns or olives than true yellows.
It wasn't until Enies Lobby when Usopp donned the Sogeking mask that he really incorporated yellow into his outfit, though it may be worth noting that the SBS that established the crew's theme colors was right after Sogeking's introduction. Beyond that, Usopp didn't use yellow as the base color of his outfits until after the timeskip, though some color pages did make his bandana look more yellow than others.
Looking through Jinbe's outfits, it seems like Oda goes out of his way to incorporate some amount of orange into each of them, so I would think that he'd go with something like vermilion or saffron.
It isn't unheard of for a Straw Hat's theme color not to show up in their color scheme very often, such as Sanji's outfits past his introduction having a tendency not to feature much blue and instead favoring yellow or red, but Jinbe's outfits very clearly tend to incorporate orange and yellow.
My best guess is that Oda's decision to go with ocher isn't outfit-based like with Luffy, Usopp, or Robin, but rather hair-based like with Nami, Zoro, and Franky. Though mostly black-haired, Jinbe's most notable trait aside from his Fishman traits would probably be the two light brown streaks in his hair and his curly light brown eyebrows and sideburns. Though they are a lighter brown than the oudoiro shade of ocher cited by Oda, I would say more of a khaki or a tan, they do certainly give a consistent splash of brown in his color scheme, making it a bit easier to swallow.
This is supported by Jinbe's fourth and fifth outfits, those that he wore when officially leaving the Big Mom Pirates in order to join the Straw Hat Crew and when rejoining the crew for the raid on Onigashima: the light brown flowery accents around the skull and crossbones on outfit four and the concentric squares on outfit five are quite close to the color of his hair. If his theme color is meant to come from his hair, it would make sense for that color to start appearing more often in his outfits at the point where he's officially allying himself with the Straw Hat Crew. This was also the case with Robin, who only started wearing purple when she joined the Straw Hats.
Robin's first outfit is a very dark blue, looking almost black, while her second outfit, the one she wore when inviting herself into the Straw Hat Crew, is entirely purple, both light and dark. This may imply that theme colors aren't necessarily derived from the first outfit a character wears, rather the color they're wearing during a key moment or when allying themselves with the Straw Hats. That's a topic for later though.
For the moment, because of what colors Oda has used when depicting Jinbe, I'm inclined to consider the lighter, yellower brown as the ocher Oda intended, but honestly, Jinbe's theme color isn't really what we're here to talk about. Whether Oda wanted to use true ocher or khaki or cream or tan or whatever doesn't matter. It's some kind of brown, and that's something we can expect to see reflected in color pages like Chapter 872's Mugiwara 56, and that's all there is to it.
No, what we're here to discuss is what this means going forward.
Previous Theory
As I said earlier, this is a sad day for me. While I'm very happy to finally know Jinbe's color, it is quite upsetting to see it be something other than a shade of blue...
...because it means that I was wrong.
Yes, I know, my track record up to this point has been infallible, but it was bound to happen sooner or later.
As you may recall, I once referenced my original color theory as one of the miscellaneous patterns that helped suggest Monet as a possible Straw Hat in my Grand Monet Theory. To summarize, I suggested that Oda was likely basing the theme colors for the Straw Hats off of either the Red-Yellow-Blue (RYB) or Red-Green-Blue (RGB) color models and that RYB couldn't possibly be the basis because it couldn't properly account for Franky or Chopper.
Though depicted in the same spot on the wheel, the magenta used in RYB is not comparable to the rose used in RGB, and certainly not to the pink (ピンク, pinku, pink transliterated into katakana) that Oda uses as Chopper's theme color. Similarly, the teal used in RYB is much darker than Franky's light blue (水色, mizuiro, lit. water color, aqua), which in turn is much closer to the cyan used in RGB. Consequently, I suggested that the RGB model was more likely, especially because it included a third blue option, azure, for Jinbe.
I then suggested that Monet would fill the chartreuse slot, Carrot the spring green/viridian slot because of her consistent usage of green in her outfits, and Pudding the magenta slot as her character arc so greatly lent itself to implying she'd be recruited.
Of course, both of these options preclude any shade of brown, up to and including ocher. Therefore, the revelation that Jinbe's theme color is ocher immediately throws out the possibility of either the RYB or RGB color models being the basis for the Straw Hat theme colors.
However, this does not mean that we cannot continue to make speculations based on the known theme colors.
Implications
Rather than forcing the crew to adhere to the frameworks of real-life color theory principles, it seems that the intended structure may be more internal. Because Oda didn't go with the most obvious route of using a third blue, it would appear that he is trying to be more balanced by sticking to only two variants of each basic color. Shout out to Oro Jackson user DevilChild93 for suggesting this in the comments of my original theory all the way back in 2017 and even calling that Jinbe would get a yellow-like color, even if you guessed lemon instead of ocher. You were truly ahead of your time.
To that end, let's start by basing our new framework around RYB rather than RGB, as it only really has two each of blue and green, then edit everything else as needed. Since their colors line up perfectly, we can safely put Luffy in red, Nami in orange, Usopp in yellow, Zoro in green, Sanji in blue, and Robin in purple. We'll also put Brook in the center to cover his black and white theme.
As we've established, Chopper and Franky are left out because there is no pink or light blue/cyan on this wheel, instead opting for a dark magenta and a teal. To that end, we'll swap them out for their appropriate colors. Because pink is typically achieved by mixing white and red, we will consider pink to be our secondary red.
Franky's cyan, obviously, is our secondary blue. This means that no other iterations of blue such as azure, cobalt, sky, or navy will be considered. Sorry to anyone who was hoping for a hooloovoo Straw Hat.
Now, while amber and vermilion both fit a lot of Jinbe's orange outfits, we have to remove one of them in the interest of adding in ocher. Given that ocher is closer to yellow than red (it is called yellow earth color, after all), I think it's safe to put it between orange and yellow rather than between orange and red, especially since we're currently operating under the assumption that it refers to Jinbe's blonde streaks.
This leaves us with a slot open for a secondary orange, green and purple, though since everyone else we've looked at in the secondary color slots has deviated from the RYB model, these slots are not necessarily going to be vermilion, chartreuse, and violet.
For the secondary orange slot, Oda may not want something that at a glance could be viewed as or confused with Nami's orange (オレンジ, orenji). Therefore, he could use the popular fan request of brown (茶色, chairo, lit. tea color). Though brown is colloquially considered its own color, it is actually a dark shade of orange. Since we're already using a yellow shade of brown with ocher, it's somewhat odd that Oda didn't refer to Jinbe's color as chairo and instead opted for the less common oudoiro. It's entirely possible that this was to leave room for a character who uses a more traditional shade of brown while also allowing Jinbe to be the secondary yellow and not pigeonholing him into the secondary orange position.
Of course, a sufficiently dark orange such as vermilion (朱色, shuiro, lit. cinnabar color) could easily be differentiated from Nami's bright orenji, so it may be a moot point. Since Oda used orenji, the more commonly used term for orange in modern Japanese, as opposed to the more traditional daidaiiro (橙色, lit. bitter orange color), it's also possible that Oda would present them as two different colors. I'm not inclined to believe he would, but it's a possibility. Since Oda clearly isn't worried about referencing the colors he's already used, he could also use akadaidai (赤橙, red-orange), but unlike oudoiro (yellow earth color) which only references the color it's supposed to be related to, akadaidai could confuse whether it's supposed to be considered a red or an orange, so I don't think that's what he'd go with. Lastly, even though amber (琥珀色, kohakuiro OR アンバー, anbaa) is a shade between orange and yellow and our secondary yellow slot has been used, we're more worried about category than placement, so it doesn't really matter if our secondary orange has some yellow in it.
Green also has a number of ways to differentiate from Zoro's green (緑, midori OR ryoku), including lighter and yellow-ish shades such as the aforementioned chartreuse (若草色, wakakusairo, lit. fresh grass green OR シャルトルーズ, sharutoruuzu), jade (ジェイド, jeido, OR 翡翠色, hisuiiro, lit. jade/kingfisher green) and matchairo (抹茶色, lit. tea-green, yellow-green), deeper shades like emerald (エメラルドグリーン, emurarudo guriin), or more blue-ish shades like kamonohairo (鴨の羽色, lit. duck feather color, teal green) and turquoise (トルコ石色, torukoishiiro, lit. turquoise stone color, OR 青緑, aomidori/seiryoku, lit. blue-green). Again, I'm inclined to avoid the blues on the basis that Oda has clearly made an effort to distance himself from them, but it wouldn't be unreasonable for him to work in more blues by making them closer to green. Of course, there are several more possible names Oda could use, these are just ones that I'm tossing out based on the colors I've seen from our candidates. I find matchairo particularly interesting on the basis that it uses the same kanji as chairo, which again could serve as an explanation for why Jinbe's color is oudoiro instead of chairo; if Oda already intends to use a tea color, he may have wanted to avoid that overlap.
Purple (紫, murasaki) can either be fairly simple by sticking to more neutral shades of purple or somewhat more complicated by veering a bit closer to red or blue. If Oda wants it to look closer to Robin's purple, he could use the previously established and somewhat deeper violet (菫色, sumeiro, lit. violet color) or lighter shades like lavender (藤色, fujiiro, lit. wisteria color OR ラベンダー色, rabendaairo) or lilac (淡紫色, tanshishoku, lit. light purple color OR ライラック色, rairakkuiro). If Oda is willing to dip a bit close to blue, he could use a more purple shade of indigo (藍色, aiiro), though it's hard to say if he'd still consider it indigo if it isn't the traditional deep Japan blue.
The redder end of the purple spectrum is where we have to get a bit technical. Lighter red-purples like magenta (マゼンタ, mazenta) or fuchsia (フューシャ, fyuusha) are traditionally more like pinks than purples, whereas deeper shades like maroon (栗色, lit. chestnut color OR マルーン, maruun) or burgundy (葡萄酒色, budoushuiro, lit. wine color OR バーガンディー, baagandi) are traditionally more brown or red. Depending on how they're portrayed, they can look more purple, and I believe that the examples I've found fit that mold on the basis that they tend to look similar to the shade of magenta seen in RYB.
I think it's also worth noting that if we assume there are two Straw Hats for each set of colors and assume that the traditional Straw Hat 13 Theory isn't necessarily correct, we would still need a counterpart to Brook's black and white, which Oda presented as white (black) [白(黒), shiro (kuro)], implying to me that white is meant to be the more central theme. That said, the kanji in question can also be taken to mean monochrome (白黒, shirokuro), suggesting that he covers the entire colorless spectrum. Still, if Brook is meant to represent the two extremes, logically the secondary monochrome color would be the neutral grey (灰色, haiiro, lit. ash color). Given the longstanding acceptance of the Straw Hat 13 Theory and the various pieces of evidence that back it up such as the MFMM Pattern, I'm inclined to believe that Oda does not intend to give us a fourteenth grey Straw Hat. If he were going to give us a fourteenth, I would imagine he would have only given Brook one color to make space for the second. Who knows, though, perhaps he wanted to have all three, black, white, and grey, without having fifteen Straw Hats. Or he figured we'd theorize about black or white if he only used one and is trying to slip grey under our noses.
Finally, if we assume her theme is related despite being an honorary rather than official Straw Hat, we need to consider Vivi's theme of white and gold. Like with Brook's white (black), Oda presented Vivi's theme as white (gold) [白(金), shiro (kin)], implying that white is more important while also differentiating how her color scheme would look in comparison to Brook's. Interestingly, the kanji for white and gold together can be read as shirogane (silver) or hakkin (platinum), implying that her color might not be a "white," but a metallic grey or white. It should be noted though that these readings do not refer to color but the associated metals, and those kanji are not typically used to refer to silver in the first place. If he wanted to refer to the colors, he would probably have directly said silver (銀, gin OR シルバー, shirubaa) or platinum (プラチナ, purachina). Taking her colors at face value, Vivi's gold introduces the possibility that someone could bring silver to the table, possibly in place of grey, though I would imagine they'd be an honorary Straw Hat as well.
Only time will tell which of these colors Oda will end up actually using, but using this framework, we can examine the color schemes of the many candidates for recruitment and conjecture who is eligible for which categories. I'll mainly be focusing on characters who are either currently present in the story or have exhibited evidence that they could be recruited, but I'll acknowledge other possible candidates and honorable mentions in less explicit detail. For simplicity, I'm going to break this down by color and only cover the characters who work best within the category being discussed. I'll explain what other colors I feel work for them, but I only want to talk about any given character once.
When defining how well a character works for each color, I'll be looking at every non-flashback outfit that I can find, prioritizing colors that are either present in a character's first appearance, consistent in all of their appearances, or prevalent when they become an ally to the Straw Hats. Colors will generally be drawn from a character's outfits, but unusual hair colors will also be considered (i.e., not blond, brunet, or titian). Among the Straw Hats, those with unusual hair colors have exclusively had their theme colors match their hair:
Before we get into who does work for each category, I want to cover the characters who in my opinion don't work for any category.
Eliminations
Despite how broad of a net we're casting with all of the colors we're looking at today, many characters sadly do not fit into our framework either due to not having any of the necessary colors in their color schemes or by not having enough of any given color.
I think it goes without saying at this point, but just for the sake of covering all of our bases, let's talk about Vivi's colors. Since Vivi is an honorary Straw Hat rather than being in the main group, I feel that the implications of her two colors, white and gold, can be ignored. There is no worry about her white overlapping with Brook's black and white, and there is no worry about her gold supplanting Jinbe's ocher as the secondary yellow. If that absolutely needed to happen, I suppose ocher could be moved to the secondary orange slot on the basis of being a brown, but I don't personally believe Vivi will ever become an official Straw Hat on the basis of her character arc, even if she does reunite with the crew to aid them in the final battle as we likely all expect.
Similarly, I've theorized that Momonosuke will be counted as an honorary Straw Hat, and his lack of a unique color may back this up.
Based on his name, his sole consistent outfit and his pink dragon form, I think it's safe to say that Momo's color is going to be pink. Similar to the distinction between orenji and daidaiiro, though, the wording for Momo's pink will likely be the more traditional momoiro (桃色, lit. peach color), the kanji typically used for pink, as opposed to Chopper's more colloquial pinku. Momoiro can be deeper than pinku, especially since Chopper's pink likely derives specifically from sakurairo (桜色, lit. cherry blossom color), a paler shade. Still, the two are a bit too close, and based on how things have gone up to this point, I don't envision the two-of-each-color framework including two pinks. Like I said, if Momo is an honorary Straw Hat like Vivi, this overlap is perfectly acceptable, but if he were to become an official Straw Hat, he'd need to find a different color, and his entire character just doesn't seem to have anything else available at the moment.
Our next candidate to unfortunately be disqualified for his heavy usage of pink is Bentham, whose strong friendship with Luffy has led to some speculation that he could join the crew while others have denied the possibility because of his current status in the depths of Impel Down.
Bentham's pink Okama Way coat is easily the most iconic part of his design, making it difficult to argue that anything else could possibly be his theme color. That said, his mascara is just as enduring a feature, being the only thing he retained when a prisoner at Impel Down, so its purplish-red burgundy could work in a pinch. However, his coat really just seems to be the more notable part of his design to me, so sad as it makes me to say, I don't think his chances are too high.
Next we come to a candidate who used to be a fairly popular pick following beck's Scaling the Red Line, but seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years, likely due to a lack of focus: Tashigi.
The blue of her original jacket stands out as her most iconic visual, though it was replaced by a pink Captain's jacket post-timeskip. Pink is also a recurring color for her, being a floral pattern in a few of her outfits as well as the predominant color in some of her shirts, so it could be argued to be her theme color, though this still wouldn't help her case. The green of her blade, Shigure, could work on the basis that it's her most consistent color across all appearances and is her most important symbol, but I don't exactly think green when I think of Tashigi. This is also why I don't think there's much of an argument to be made for the lavender of her original gloves; they're just too small of a detail to stick in readers' minds. The only other option she really has is the fuchsia shirt she wears at Punk Hazard, but again, I don't associate that color with her, and I don't think Oda would wait until her post-timeskip appearance to introduce her most thematic color.
Another character that seems to have lost a lot of support over the last few years is Caesar, presumably in part because of how poorly he got along with the crew and in part because his story implies he's going to try to stay out of the spotlight as much as possible.
Originally, fans seemed to believe that his colors would be either white because of his gaseous labcoat or violet because of his gloves and lipstick. White obviously isn't an option, but violet is still certainly a possibility. However, much more prominent in his original outfit was the yellow striped jumpsuit beneath his coat, though this was ignored until his reappearance on Whole Cake Island under the guise of Gastino, an entirely yellow-clad mobster. This moment, wherein Caesar begrudgingly became an ally to Luffy, solidified to me that yellow was meant to be his theme color, which unfortunately means that his chances have drastically decreased with the reveal of Jinbe's yellowish ochre. I suppose one could argue that his suit is on the more orange side of yellow and could qualify him for amber, but given how badly he meshes with the crew, I'm not inclined to split hairs to try to justify him.
Though we're talking about eliminations, there is one character I still think could be recruited regardless of their theme color: Laboon. I believe that Laboon will be recruited as the Pet of the Straw Hat Crew, similar to how Carue is Vivi's pet or Zeus is Nami's. If Vivi had joined, Carue likely wouldn't have been assigned his own color or number to fit in with the Straw Hat 13, nor do I imagine Zeus will after reconciling with Nami. Similarly, I think Laboon will either be counted separately from the crew proper or will be counted as an extension of Brook. Since white is implied to be Brook's primary theme color, his secondary black could be extended to Laboon, whose skin is entirely black. In the anime, Laboon is depicted as a teal blue, but that doesn't reflect his depiction in the manga and doesn't fit anyway, so I think it's likely that Oda will have Laboon piggyback off of Brook if he even has any intention of giving Laboon a color at all.
Come to think of it, maybe that's why Vivi is white and gold; the gold might be representative of Carue...Hm...
Next, since we started with the characters I find unlikely, I think it's only appropriate that we work our way up and cover each color category from what I find least to most likely.
Hello, everyone!
It is simultaneously a sad and glorious day for me, my friends. With the first volume of the second season of the Vivre Card Databook, Oda has finally graced us with Jinbe's official theme color, a revelation that I've been eagerly awaiting for several years now, and...
...it's ocher. Huh.
Not a deeper blue like azure or indigo as I envisioned, nor a greenish aqua like others have suggested, not even a sunny orange or yellow as I've occasionally seen thrown around, but ocher, a light brown.
Specifically, the variety of ocher in question is oudoiro (黄土色), or "yellow earth color" in Japanese, implying that Oda is referring to a shade that leans more towards yellow than orange or red. As near as I can find, this tends to be on the darker end of the ocher spectrum and doesn't really show up in Jinbe's color scheme at all. Honestly, it seems more like an Usopp color to me given that his original outfit was made up more of yellowish-browns or olives than true yellows.
It wasn't until Enies Lobby when Usopp donned the Sogeking mask that he really incorporated yellow into his outfit, though it may be worth noting that the SBS that established the crew's theme colors was right after Sogeking's introduction. Beyond that, Usopp didn't use yellow as the base color of his outfits until after the timeskip, though some color pages did make his bandana look more yellow than others.
Looking through Jinbe's outfits, it seems like Oda goes out of his way to incorporate some amount of orange into each of them, so I would think that he'd go with something like vermilion or saffron.
It isn't unheard of for a Straw Hat's theme color not to show up in their color scheme very often, such as Sanji's outfits past his introduction having a tendency not to feature much blue and instead favoring yellow or red, but Jinbe's outfits very clearly tend to incorporate orange and yellow.
My best guess is that Oda's decision to go with ocher isn't outfit-based like with Luffy, Usopp, or Robin, but rather hair-based like with Nami, Zoro, and Franky. Though mostly black-haired, Jinbe's most notable trait aside from his Fishman traits would probably be the two light brown streaks in his hair and his curly light brown eyebrows and sideburns. Though they are a lighter brown than the oudoiro shade of ocher cited by Oda, I would say more of a khaki or a tan, they do certainly give a consistent splash of brown in his color scheme, making it a bit easier to swallow.
This is supported by Jinbe's fourth and fifth outfits, those that he wore when officially leaving the Big Mom Pirates in order to join the Straw Hat Crew and when rejoining the crew for the raid on Onigashima: the light brown flowery accents around the skull and crossbones on outfit four and the concentric squares on outfit five are quite close to the color of his hair. If his theme color is meant to come from his hair, it would make sense for that color to start appearing more often in his outfits at the point where he's officially allying himself with the Straw Hat Crew. This was also the case with Robin, who only started wearing purple when she joined the Straw Hats.
Robin's first outfit is a very dark blue, looking almost black, while her second outfit, the one she wore when inviting herself into the Straw Hat Crew, is entirely purple, both light and dark. This may imply that theme colors aren't necessarily derived from the first outfit a character wears, rather the color they're wearing during a key moment or when allying themselves with the Straw Hats. That's a topic for later though.
For the moment, because of what colors Oda has used when depicting Jinbe, I'm inclined to consider the lighter, yellower brown as the ocher Oda intended, but honestly, Jinbe's theme color isn't really what we're here to talk about. Whether Oda wanted to use true ocher or khaki or cream or tan or whatever doesn't matter. It's some kind of brown, and that's something we can expect to see reflected in color pages like Chapter 872's Mugiwara 56, and that's all there is to it.
No, what we're here to discuss is what this means going forward.
Previous Theory
As I said earlier, this is a sad day for me. While I'm very happy to finally know Jinbe's color, it is quite upsetting to see it be something other than a shade of blue...
...because it means that I was wrong.
Yes, I know, my track record up to this point has been infallible, but it was bound to happen sooner or later.
As you may recall, I once referenced my original color theory as one of the miscellaneous patterns that helped suggest Monet as a possible Straw Hat in my Grand Monet Theory. To summarize, I suggested that Oda was likely basing the theme colors for the Straw Hats off of either the Red-Yellow-Blue (RYB) or Red-Green-Blue (RGB) color models and that RYB couldn't possibly be the basis because it couldn't properly account for Franky or Chopper.
Though depicted in the same spot on the wheel, the magenta used in RYB is not comparable to the rose used in RGB, and certainly not to the pink (ピンク, pinku, pink transliterated into katakana) that Oda uses as Chopper's theme color. Similarly, the teal used in RYB is much darker than Franky's light blue (水色, mizuiro, lit. water color, aqua), which in turn is much closer to the cyan used in RGB. Consequently, I suggested that the RGB model was more likely, especially because it included a third blue option, azure, for Jinbe.
I then suggested that Monet would fill the chartreuse slot, Carrot the spring green/viridian slot because of her consistent usage of green in her outfits, and Pudding the magenta slot as her character arc so greatly lent itself to implying she'd be recruited.
Of course, both of these options preclude any shade of brown, up to and including ocher. Therefore, the revelation that Jinbe's theme color is ocher immediately throws out the possibility of either the RYB or RGB color models being the basis for the Straw Hat theme colors.
However, this does not mean that we cannot continue to make speculations based on the known theme colors.
Implications
Rather than forcing the crew to adhere to the frameworks of real-life color theory principles, it seems that the intended structure may be more internal. Because Oda didn't go with the most obvious route of using a third blue, it would appear that he is trying to be more balanced by sticking to only two variants of each basic color. Shout out to Oro Jackson user DevilChild93 for suggesting this in the comments of my original theory all the way back in 2017 and even calling that Jinbe would get a yellow-like color, even if you guessed lemon instead of ocher. You were truly ahead of your time.
To that end, let's start by basing our new framework around RYB rather than RGB, as it only really has two each of blue and green, then edit everything else as needed. Since their colors line up perfectly, we can safely put Luffy in red, Nami in orange, Usopp in yellow, Zoro in green, Sanji in blue, and Robin in purple. We'll also put Brook in the center to cover his black and white theme.
As we've established, Chopper and Franky are left out because there is no pink or light blue/cyan on this wheel, instead opting for a dark magenta and a teal. To that end, we'll swap them out for their appropriate colors. Because pink is typically achieved by mixing white and red, we will consider pink to be our secondary red.
Franky's cyan, obviously, is our secondary blue. This means that no other iterations of blue such as azure, cobalt, sky, or navy will be considered. Sorry to anyone who was hoping for a hooloovoo Straw Hat.
Now, while amber and vermilion both fit a lot of Jinbe's orange outfits, we have to remove one of them in the interest of adding in ocher. Given that ocher is closer to yellow than red (it is called yellow earth color, after all), I think it's safe to put it between orange and yellow rather than between orange and red, especially since we're currently operating under the assumption that it refers to Jinbe's blonde streaks.
This leaves us with a slot open for a secondary orange, green and purple, though since everyone else we've looked at in the secondary color slots has deviated from the RYB model, these slots are not necessarily going to be vermilion, chartreuse, and violet.
For the secondary orange slot, Oda may not want something that at a glance could be viewed as or confused with Nami's orange (オレンジ, orenji). Therefore, he could use the popular fan request of brown (茶色, chairo, lit. tea color). Though brown is colloquially considered its own color, it is actually a dark shade of orange. Since we're already using a yellow shade of brown with ocher, it's somewhat odd that Oda didn't refer to Jinbe's color as chairo and instead opted for the less common oudoiro. It's entirely possible that this was to leave room for a character who uses a more traditional shade of brown while also allowing Jinbe to be the secondary yellow and not pigeonholing him into the secondary orange position.
Of course, a sufficiently dark orange such as vermilion (朱色, shuiro, lit. cinnabar color) could easily be differentiated from Nami's bright orenji, so it may be a moot point. Since Oda used orenji, the more commonly used term for orange in modern Japanese, as opposed to the more traditional daidaiiro (橙色, lit. bitter orange color), it's also possible that Oda would present them as two different colors. I'm not inclined to believe he would, but it's a possibility. Since Oda clearly isn't worried about referencing the colors he's already used, he could also use akadaidai (赤橙, red-orange), but unlike oudoiro (yellow earth color) which only references the color it's supposed to be related to, akadaidai could confuse whether it's supposed to be considered a red or an orange, so I don't think that's what he'd go with. Lastly, even though amber (琥珀色, kohakuiro OR アンバー, anbaa) is a shade between orange and yellow and our secondary yellow slot has been used, we're more worried about category than placement, so it doesn't really matter if our secondary orange has some yellow in it.
Green also has a number of ways to differentiate from Zoro's green (緑, midori OR ryoku), including lighter and yellow-ish shades such as the aforementioned chartreuse (若草色, wakakusairo, lit. fresh grass green OR シャルトルーズ, sharutoruuzu), jade (ジェイド, jeido, OR 翡翠色, hisuiiro, lit. jade/kingfisher green) and matchairo (抹茶色, lit. tea-green, yellow-green), deeper shades like emerald (エメラルドグリーン, emurarudo guriin), or more blue-ish shades like kamonohairo (鴨の羽色, lit. duck feather color, teal green) and turquoise (トルコ石色, torukoishiiro, lit. turquoise stone color, OR 青緑, aomidori/seiryoku, lit. blue-green). Again, I'm inclined to avoid the blues on the basis that Oda has clearly made an effort to distance himself from them, but it wouldn't be unreasonable for him to work in more blues by making them closer to green. Of course, there are several more possible names Oda could use, these are just ones that I'm tossing out based on the colors I've seen from our candidates. I find matchairo particularly interesting on the basis that it uses the same kanji as chairo, which again could serve as an explanation for why Jinbe's color is oudoiro instead of chairo; if Oda already intends to use a tea color, he may have wanted to avoid that overlap.
Purple (紫, murasaki) can either be fairly simple by sticking to more neutral shades of purple or somewhat more complicated by veering a bit closer to red or blue. If Oda wants it to look closer to Robin's purple, he could use the previously established and somewhat deeper violet (菫色, sumeiro, lit. violet color) or lighter shades like lavender (藤色, fujiiro, lit. wisteria color OR ラベンダー色, rabendaairo) or lilac (淡紫色, tanshishoku, lit. light purple color OR ライラック色, rairakkuiro). If Oda is willing to dip a bit close to blue, he could use a more purple shade of indigo (藍色, aiiro), though it's hard to say if he'd still consider it indigo if it isn't the traditional deep Japan blue.
The redder end of the purple spectrum is where we have to get a bit technical. Lighter red-purples like magenta (マゼンタ, mazenta) or fuchsia (フューシャ, fyuusha) are traditionally more like pinks than purples, whereas deeper shades like maroon (栗色, lit. chestnut color OR マルーン, maruun) or burgundy (葡萄酒色, budoushuiro, lit. wine color OR バーガンディー, baagandi) are traditionally more brown or red. Depending on how they're portrayed, they can look more purple, and I believe that the examples I've found fit that mold on the basis that they tend to look similar to the shade of magenta seen in RYB.
I think it's also worth noting that if we assume there are two Straw Hats for each set of colors and assume that the traditional Straw Hat 13 Theory isn't necessarily correct, we would still need a counterpart to Brook's black and white, which Oda presented as white (black) [白(黒), shiro (kuro)], implying to me that white is meant to be the more central theme. That said, the kanji in question can also be taken to mean monochrome (白黒, shirokuro), suggesting that he covers the entire colorless spectrum. Still, if Brook is meant to represent the two extremes, logically the secondary monochrome color would be the neutral grey (灰色, haiiro, lit. ash color). Given the longstanding acceptance of the Straw Hat 13 Theory and the various pieces of evidence that back it up such as the MFMM Pattern, I'm inclined to believe that Oda does not intend to give us a fourteenth grey Straw Hat. If he were going to give us a fourteenth, I would imagine he would have only given Brook one color to make space for the second. Who knows, though, perhaps he wanted to have all three, black, white, and grey, without having fifteen Straw Hats. Or he figured we'd theorize about black or white if he only used one and is trying to slip grey under our noses.
Finally, if we assume her theme is related despite being an honorary rather than official Straw Hat, we need to consider Vivi's theme of white and gold. Like with Brook's white (black), Oda presented Vivi's theme as white (gold) [白(金), shiro (kin)], implying that white is more important while also differentiating how her color scheme would look in comparison to Brook's. Interestingly, the kanji for white and gold together can be read as shirogane (silver) or hakkin (platinum), implying that her color might not be a "white," but a metallic grey or white. It should be noted though that these readings do not refer to color but the associated metals, and those kanji are not typically used to refer to silver in the first place. If he wanted to refer to the colors, he would probably have directly said silver (銀, gin OR シルバー, shirubaa) or platinum (プラチナ, purachina). Taking her colors at face value, Vivi's gold introduces the possibility that someone could bring silver to the table, possibly in place of grey, though I would imagine they'd be an honorary Straw Hat as well.
Only time will tell which of these colors Oda will end up actually using, but using this framework, we can examine the color schemes of the many candidates for recruitment and conjecture who is eligible for which categories. I'll mainly be focusing on characters who are either currently present in the story or have exhibited evidence that they could be recruited, but I'll acknowledge other possible candidates and honorable mentions in less explicit detail. For simplicity, I'm going to break this down by color and only cover the characters who work best within the category being discussed. I'll explain what other colors I feel work for them, but I only want to talk about any given character once.
When defining how well a character works for each color, I'll be looking at every non-flashback outfit that I can find, prioritizing colors that are either present in a character's first appearance, consistent in all of their appearances, or prevalent when they become an ally to the Straw Hats. Colors will generally be drawn from a character's outfits, but unusual hair colors will also be considered (i.e., not blond, brunet, or titian). Among the Straw Hats, those with unusual hair colors have exclusively had their theme colors match their hair:
- Luffy - black hair, red comes from the band on his Straw Hat and his classic red vest
- Zoro - green hair, though he also has a green haramaki
- Nami - orange hair, presumably not meant to be interpreted as a redhead, orange also derives from her love of tangerines
- Usopp - black hair, yellow comes from his bandana and possibly the Sogeking mask
- Sanji - blond hair, blue comes from his original blue dress shirt
- Chopper - light brown fur that's somewhat unusual for a human but perfectly normal for a deer, pink comes from his hat
- Robin - black hair, purple comes from the outfit she wore when boarding the Going Merry after Alabasta, most notably the cowboy hat she wore at Jaya that, while I can't find any version colored directly by Oda, seems to be the basis for her personal Jolly Roger which does depict a purple cowboy hat
- Franky - cyan hair, though he also has cyan stars on his forearms
- Brook - black hair, but it's hard to say if the black is based on his hair or his suit; white is based on his bones
- Jinbe - black and ocher hair; though light brown isn't really unusual, this particular shade is, plus it's not generally paired with black
Before we get into who does work for each category, I want to cover the characters who in my opinion don't work for any category.
Eliminations
Despite how broad of a net we're casting with all of the colors we're looking at today, many characters sadly do not fit into our framework either due to not having any of the necessary colors in their color schemes or by not having enough of any given color.
I think it goes without saying at this point, but just for the sake of covering all of our bases, let's talk about Vivi's colors. Since Vivi is an honorary Straw Hat rather than being in the main group, I feel that the implications of her two colors, white and gold, can be ignored. There is no worry about her white overlapping with Brook's black and white, and there is no worry about her gold supplanting Jinbe's ocher as the secondary yellow. If that absolutely needed to happen, I suppose ocher could be moved to the secondary orange slot on the basis of being a brown, but I don't personally believe Vivi will ever become an official Straw Hat on the basis of her character arc, even if she does reunite with the crew to aid them in the final battle as we likely all expect.
Similarly, I've theorized that Momonosuke will be counted as an honorary Straw Hat, and his lack of a unique color may back this up.
Based on his name, his sole consistent outfit and his pink dragon form, I think it's safe to say that Momo's color is going to be pink. Similar to the distinction between orenji and daidaiiro, though, the wording for Momo's pink will likely be the more traditional momoiro (桃色, lit. peach color), the kanji typically used for pink, as opposed to Chopper's more colloquial pinku. Momoiro can be deeper than pinku, especially since Chopper's pink likely derives specifically from sakurairo (桜色, lit. cherry blossom color), a paler shade. Still, the two are a bit too close, and based on how things have gone up to this point, I don't envision the two-of-each-color framework including two pinks. Like I said, if Momo is an honorary Straw Hat like Vivi, this overlap is perfectly acceptable, but if he were to become an official Straw Hat, he'd need to find a different color, and his entire character just doesn't seem to have anything else available at the moment.
Our next candidate to unfortunately be disqualified for his heavy usage of pink is Bentham, whose strong friendship with Luffy has led to some speculation that he could join the crew while others have denied the possibility because of his current status in the depths of Impel Down.
Bentham's pink Okama Way coat is easily the most iconic part of his design, making it difficult to argue that anything else could possibly be his theme color. That said, his mascara is just as enduring a feature, being the only thing he retained when a prisoner at Impel Down, so its purplish-red burgundy could work in a pinch. However, his coat really just seems to be the more notable part of his design to me, so sad as it makes me to say, I don't think his chances are too high.
Next we come to a candidate who used to be a fairly popular pick following beck's Scaling the Red Line, but seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years, likely due to a lack of focus: Tashigi.
The blue of her original jacket stands out as her most iconic visual, though it was replaced by a pink Captain's jacket post-timeskip. Pink is also a recurring color for her, being a floral pattern in a few of her outfits as well as the predominant color in some of her shirts, so it could be argued to be her theme color, though this still wouldn't help her case. The green of her blade, Shigure, could work on the basis that it's her most consistent color across all appearances and is her most important symbol, but I don't exactly think green when I think of Tashigi. This is also why I don't think there's much of an argument to be made for the lavender of her original gloves; they're just too small of a detail to stick in readers' minds. The only other option she really has is the fuchsia shirt she wears at Punk Hazard, but again, I don't associate that color with her, and I don't think Oda would wait until her post-timeskip appearance to introduce her most thematic color.
Another character that seems to have lost a lot of support over the last few years is Caesar, presumably in part because of how poorly he got along with the crew and in part because his story implies he's going to try to stay out of the spotlight as much as possible.
Originally, fans seemed to believe that his colors would be either white because of his gaseous labcoat or violet because of his gloves and lipstick. White obviously isn't an option, but violet is still certainly a possibility. However, much more prominent in his original outfit was the yellow striped jumpsuit beneath his coat, though this was ignored until his reappearance on Whole Cake Island under the guise of Gastino, an entirely yellow-clad mobster. This moment, wherein Caesar begrudgingly became an ally to Luffy, solidified to me that yellow was meant to be his theme color, which unfortunately means that his chances have drastically decreased with the reveal of Jinbe's yellowish ochre. I suppose one could argue that his suit is on the more orange side of yellow and could qualify him for amber, but given how badly he meshes with the crew, I'm not inclined to split hairs to try to justify him.
Though we're talking about eliminations, there is one character I still think could be recruited regardless of their theme color: Laboon. I believe that Laboon will be recruited as the Pet of the Straw Hat Crew, similar to how Carue is Vivi's pet or Zeus is Nami's. If Vivi had joined, Carue likely wouldn't have been assigned his own color or number to fit in with the Straw Hat 13, nor do I imagine Zeus will after reconciling with Nami. Similarly, I think Laboon will either be counted separately from the crew proper or will be counted as an extension of Brook. Since white is implied to be Brook's primary theme color, his secondary black could be extended to Laboon, whose skin is entirely black. In the anime, Laboon is depicted as a teal blue, but that doesn't reflect his depiction in the manga and doesn't fit anyway, so I think it's likely that Oda will have Laboon piggyback off of Brook if he even has any intention of giving Laboon a color at all.
Come to think of it, maybe that's why Vivi is white and gold; the gold might be representative of Carue...Hm...
Next, since we started with the characters I find unlikely, I think it's only appropriate that we work our way up and cover each color category from what I find least to most likely.
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