I see a lot of people claiming that Yamato’s Okuchi no Makami devil fruit is a big point against her, but the more I look into it, the more I believe this actually helps her case tremendously. To explain, it is necessary to look at the other times Oda has taken major inspiration from another story for one of his character arcs.
First off, let’s get the most obvious out of the Way. Gold Roger was clearly based on Captain Olivier Levasseur, the real life “Pirate King” who left his treasure for other pirates to find as he was executed. While this is copied 1 to 1, it is all explained on the first page of the entire series. As such, it isn’t really a character arc, so I won’t be counting it.
In the whole series, there have been four character arcs that I know of based on other stories. The specification of character arcs and not story arcs is important. Interestingly, each of the four have been Strawhats. The first of these is Ussop in the syrup village arc.
First off, let’s get the most obvious out of the Way. Gold Roger was clearly based on Captain Olivier Levasseur, the real life “Pirate King” who left his treasure for other pirates to find as he was executed. While this is copied 1 to 1, it is all explained on the first page of the entire series. As such, it isn’t really a character arc, so I won’t be counting it.
In the whole series, there have been four character arcs that I know of based on other stories. The specification of character arcs and not story arcs is important. Interestingly, each of the four have been Strawhats. The first of these is Ussop in the syrup village arc.
While Ussop’s design is clearly based on Pinocchio, his character arc was much more in line with “The Boy who Cried Wolf”. In The Boy who Cried Wolf, a shepherd boy causes a ruckus every day by telling everyone that a wolf was attacking the sheep, just to have some excitement since his job was so boring. The people in the town would run to help each day, and find that he was lying. One day, the boy really did see a wolf, but he had lied about it so many times that no one believed him, and in the end, he was eaten by the wolf.
Ussop’s arc starts off exactly the same way, but with pirates instead of a wolf. Every day he yells about pirates, and when pirates finally do come, no one believes him. There are a couple of important distinctions here though. The first one is obviously the outcome of the story. In the boy who cried wolf, no one helped and the boy died. In One Piece, people did help and the boy lived. This is already very different from the fable. The part I think people miss, however, is the way the message is flipped on its head. The Boy who Cried Wolf is a cautionary tale about the consequences of lying. It portrays the liar as having selfish reasons and getting what he deserved in the end. The obvious takeaway is that lying is selfish and wrong.
In One Piece, however, Not only does Ussop not get punished for his lies, but he is portrayed as a hero. It is revealed in the end that his lying about pirates was just him coping with his mother’s death. He believed until the end that his father, the pirate, would come back, and that seeing him would help his mother recover. He started lying about pirates arriving to make her think his father had come home. This is a stark contrast to the lazy, selfish motivations of the boy in the fable. Furthermore, Ussop ends his arc with what could be considered an honorable lie. He wanted to make the village believe that there really were no pirates, and that he was simply lying again, thus keeping them from worrying about being attacked again for the rest of their lives.
The message here is clearly the opposite of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Instead of Lying being lazy, selfish, and wrong, it’s something that can be used for good, as seen with Ussop’s mother and his final lie to the village. Furthermore, Ussop is portrayed as honorable and misunderstood, as opposed to the selfish liar in The Boy who Cried Wolf. Oda took the simple message of the story and made it the opposite of what it originally was. You’ll see this is not the only time he has done this.
Ussop’s arc starts off exactly the same way, but with pirates instead of a wolf. Every day he yells about pirates, and when pirates finally do come, no one believes him. There are a couple of important distinctions here though. The first one is obviously the outcome of the story. In the boy who cried wolf, no one helped and the boy died. In One Piece, people did help and the boy lived. This is already very different from the fable. The part I think people miss, however, is the way the message is flipped on its head. The Boy who Cried Wolf is a cautionary tale about the consequences of lying. It portrays the liar as having selfish reasons and getting what he deserved in the end. The obvious takeaway is that lying is selfish and wrong.
In One Piece, however, Not only does Ussop not get punished for his lies, but he is portrayed as a hero. It is revealed in the end that his lying about pirates was just him coping with his mother’s death. He believed until the end that his father, the pirate, would come back, and that seeing him would help his mother recover. He started lying about pirates arriving to make her think his father had come home. This is a stark contrast to the lazy, selfish motivations of the boy in the fable. Furthermore, Ussop ends his arc with what could be considered an honorable lie. He wanted to make the village believe that there really were no pirates, and that he was simply lying again, thus keeping them from worrying about being attacked again for the rest of their lives.
The message here is clearly the opposite of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Instead of Lying being lazy, selfish, and wrong, it’s something that can be used for good, as seen with Ussop’s mother and his final lie to the village. Furthermore, Ussop is portrayed as honorable and misunderstood, as opposed to the selfish liar in The Boy who Cried Wolf. Oda took the simple message of the story and made it the opposite of what it originally was. You’ll see this is not the only time he has done this.
The second character arc clearly based on another story is Chopper in Drum Kingdom, clearly inspired by Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Just like Rudolph, Chopper is a reindeer with a different colored nose who was rejected by his herd for being different. The Santa clause theme is also pretty strong in general in Drum Kingdom, with the flying sleigh fake out and Dr. Hiriluk coming down chimneys.
In the original Rudolph story, the other reindeer ended up in trouble one day when the fog was too thick for Santa to see on Christmas eve, so they needed Rudolph to fly the sleigh with his bright nose to shine through the fog. After this, Rudolph is accepted back into the herd. The message here is that being different isn’t bad, and you should accept people for who they are.
Once again, in the One Piece version, the message is entirely different. Chopper is never accepted by the herd, and is even attacked by them simply for passing through the same area as them. He joins the Strawhat pirates instead, because they don’t care that he’s different. The message here is that your real friends are the ones who accept you with no questions asked, not the ones who rejected you, even if they are your family. It’s not only a very different message, but the exact opposite of what happened in Rudolph.
In the original Rudolph story, the other reindeer ended up in trouble one day when the fog was too thick for Santa to see on Christmas eve, so they needed Rudolph to fly the sleigh with his bright nose to shine through the fog. After this, Rudolph is accepted back into the herd. The message here is that being different isn’t bad, and you should accept people for who they are.
Once again, in the One Piece version, the message is entirely different. Chopper is never accepted by the herd, and is even attacked by them simply for passing through the same area as them. He joins the Strawhat pirates instead, because they don’t care that he’s different. The message here is that your real friends are the ones who accept you with no questions asked, not the ones who rejected you, even if they are your family. It’s not only a very different message, but the exact opposite of what happened in Rudolph.
The third character that fits this mold is Franky, who is clearly based on Popeye the sailor man. This one much less similar to the source, but the way the adaptation is handled is the same. Besides the obvious design similarities, Franky is also a sailor (kind of) who fights off pirates and gets stronger when he drinks Cola (like Popeye with spinach). In the cartoon, Popeye is portrayed as dumb, often saying things like “Leave us not jump to seclusions” and “Where’s the entrance to the exit?”. He’s crude and vulgar, and doesn’t have much substance besides constantly fighting the pirate Bluto over Olive Oyl.
Franky is initially portrayed as similar in some ways. He seems like a crude and vulgar person who likes to fight and not much else. But as we get to know him, we see he is very different. He cries over Ussop’s love for the Going Merry, he’s actually very intelligent, he’s a respectable member of society who spends his days giving better lives to the robbers and troublemakers in Water 7. And in the end, he became a pirate instead of fighting them.
There isn’t really a message in Popeye besides “Eat your vegetables”, so it’s not exactly the same as the last two, but it’s a very different direction than Popeye from a character perspective. With Popeye, what you see is what you get. There nothing there below the surface level. With Franky, the Popeye likeness on the surface is a façade, and he is really a complex, emotional, and deep person. This is, quite again, a big difference from the source material, especially in regards to the ending of his character arc. The distinction of Popeye fighting pirates and Franky becoming a pirate is where it becomes another opposite.
Franky is initially portrayed as similar in some ways. He seems like a crude and vulgar person who likes to fight and not much else. But as we get to know him, we see he is very different. He cries over Ussop’s love for the Going Merry, he’s actually very intelligent, he’s a respectable member of society who spends his days giving better lives to the robbers and troublemakers in Water 7. And in the end, he became a pirate instead of fighting them.
There isn’t really a message in Popeye besides “Eat your vegetables”, so it’s not exactly the same as the last two, but it’s a very different direction than Popeye from a character perspective. With Popeye, what you see is what you get. There nothing there below the surface level. With Franky, the Popeye likeness on the surface is a façade, and he is really a complex, emotional, and deep person. This is, quite again, a big difference from the source material, especially in regards to the ending of his character arc. The distinction of Popeye fighting pirates and Franky becoming a pirate is where it becomes another opposite.
The final Character arc based on a different story, as far as I know, is Brook, being based on Jack Skellington from “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. He’s a singing skeleton with a heart of gold, living in a monster themed place, complete with an evil doctor creating a zombie servant girl and keeping her captive. Other than the premise, however, Brook’s story is entirely different. That said, while the journey is different, the theme is exactly the opposite. While the Nightmare Before Christmas is about sticking to what you know and returning to your roots, Brook’s character arc is about moving on.
This brings us to Wano and Yamato’s similarities to the story of Okuchi no Makami. You’re probably thinking I’m going to say “Since all the character’s arcs are the opposite of the original story, Yamato will be the opposite too, so being based on a character that stayed behind to protect the country is a good thing”, but that’s not it exactly. I think it’s a factor, but there’s a lot more to it. Before I go into this, it’s important to note that with each arc based on another story, the connection to the source material gets looser and looser, but having a drastically different ending is still constant. Ussop’s story practically ripped of the source 1 to 1 until the climax, Chopper’s story added a lot of major differences, but was still clearly based the source, Franky’s story was different enough that many people didn’t even notice at first, and Brook’s only resembled the source in the premise alone. We should expect the next fable connection to be even less prominent in the character’s arc than it was for Brook, but to still end entirely differently from it.
As for the fable of Okuchi no Makami, a lot of people are not familiar with it, so let me give you a brief overview. The famed hero and emperor Yamatotakeru was stranded with his army in the mountains, with a dense fog blocking their way. A great white wolf (Okuchi no Makami) appeared and guided them through the fog. As thanks, Yamatotakeru appointed the wolf to rule over the other deities in the Mitsumine region as the guardian of the land.
The anti-Yamato arguments claim that Yamato’s story will continue like the fable, and Luffy, as stand in for the hero, will order Yamato to give up her dreams and stay to protect Wano. This does not fit for a number of reasons. For one, Okuchi no Makami staying to protect Wano is exactly the same ending as the fable. This has not happened even once in One Piece. For two, it is very unlike Luffy to order someone to give up on their dreams. I do think her story will be based on the fable, but I think the reference has already happened, and we just missed it.
People gravitate toward Luffy as the stand in for Yamatotakeru since he is the hero, but just as fitting is Kaido since he is the emperor. In addition, Kaido has already given this same offer to Yamato in chapter 985 when he told her to become shogun of Wano, and again in 1020 when he tells her to protect Wano for him. Kaido is the emperor, and he tells “Okuchi no Makami” to rule the region as its’ guardian just like the fable. Unlike the fable, however, the emperor is malevolent instead of benevolent, and Okuchi no Makami refuses the offer and opposes him instead. This fits the running trend of turning the fable on its head and doing a vastly different or even opposite ending, and we don’t have to speculate about whether or not it will happen in the future like the anti-Yamato version because it already did happen. This interpretation also doesn’t require Yamato to give up on her dreams, which would be strange considering One Piece’s emphasis on following your dreams no matter what.
In that sense, this is another point in Yamato’s favor. Just like four previous strawhats, her story was based on a fable, but the fable was turned on its head. It already happened, and it fits the mold exactly. The only thing that would break the mold now is if she didn’t join the strawhats like the last four. I am even more confident in her chances now that her devil fruit reveal shows that her story was based on a fable just like Ussop, Chopper, Franky, and Brook, and I believe the previous examples suggest that she will end up differently than the character she is based on, so she probably won’t stay in Wano.
As for the fable of Okuchi no Makami, a lot of people are not familiar with it, so let me give you a brief overview. The famed hero and emperor Yamatotakeru was stranded with his army in the mountains, with a dense fog blocking their way. A great white wolf (Okuchi no Makami) appeared and guided them through the fog. As thanks, Yamatotakeru appointed the wolf to rule over the other deities in the Mitsumine region as the guardian of the land.
The anti-Yamato arguments claim that Yamato’s story will continue like the fable, and Luffy, as stand in for the hero, will order Yamato to give up her dreams and stay to protect Wano. This does not fit for a number of reasons. For one, Okuchi no Makami staying to protect Wano is exactly the same ending as the fable. This has not happened even once in One Piece. For two, it is very unlike Luffy to order someone to give up on their dreams. I do think her story will be based on the fable, but I think the reference has already happened, and we just missed it.
People gravitate toward Luffy as the stand in for Yamatotakeru since he is the hero, but just as fitting is Kaido since he is the emperor. In addition, Kaido has already given this same offer to Yamato in chapter 985 when he told her to become shogun of Wano, and again in 1020 when he tells her to protect Wano for him. Kaido is the emperor, and he tells “Okuchi no Makami” to rule the region as its’ guardian just like the fable. Unlike the fable, however, the emperor is malevolent instead of benevolent, and Okuchi no Makami refuses the offer and opposes him instead. This fits the running trend of turning the fable on its head and doing a vastly different or even opposite ending, and we don’t have to speculate about whether or not it will happen in the future like the anti-Yamato version because it already did happen. This interpretation also doesn’t require Yamato to give up on her dreams, which would be strange considering One Piece’s emphasis on following your dreams no matter what.
In that sense, this is another point in Yamato’s favor. Just like four previous strawhats, her story was based on a fable, but the fable was turned on its head. It already happened, and it fits the mold exactly. The only thing that would break the mold now is if she didn’t join the strawhats like the last four. I am even more confident in her chances now that her devil fruit reveal shows that her story was based on a fable just like Ussop, Chopper, Franky, and Brook, and I believe the previous examples suggest that she will end up differently than the character she is based on, so she probably won’t stay in Wano.
If the boy who cried wolf goes from dying because no one believed him to living because people did believe him, Rudolph goes from making amends and rejoining his herd to cutting ties with his herd completely and leaving with another group, Popeye goes from fighting pirates to becoming a pirate, and Jack Skellington goes from reconnecting with his past to moving on from his past, then why should we expect Okuchi no Makami to go from becoming the guardian of the land to also becoming the guardian of the land? It would make much more sense for her to go from accepting the emperor’s offer to rule the land as its’ guardian to rejecting the emperor’s offer and overthrowing him instead.
I know there is more going on in the discussion about Yamato, and I could still very well be wrong. I’m not pretending I’ve cracked the code and know what’s going to happen. But the precedent of these fable based character arcs leading to new recruits is very strong, and Yamato would be the first one in the entire series to end differently.
I know there is more going on in the discussion about Yamato, and I could still very well be wrong. I’m not pretending I’ve cracked the code and know what’s going to happen. But the precedent of these fable based character arcs leading to new recruits is very strong, and Yamato would be the first one in the entire series to end differently.
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