One Piece creator has a hard “no romance” rule for the main characters
By Dan Selcke
One Piece is about a group of young pirates determined to set out on the high seas to achieve their dreams. The manga by Eiichiro Oda has been running since 1997, well over two decades now. The anime kicked off just a couple years later, and has now produced over 1,000 episodes. Oh, the adventures these kids have had.
But few of them have been of a romantic nature. From the beginning, Oda has been firm that the main characters not get involved with each other, despite how much the fans may want it to happen. And according to co-showrunner Steven Maeda, that edict carried over to Netflix’s new live-action show. “One of the mandates from Eiichiro Oda was against romance on the crew,” he told TV Line. “That is a hard no, as far as the manga and the live-action show are concerned.”
Did you think you saw sparks between Nami and Sanji, or between Zoro and Luffy? You’re wrong, there’s nothing, move on, it’s never gonna happen. One Piece is a story about adventure and very purposefully not about romance. That’s the rule.
No romance for Luffy, Zoro, Nami and the rest of the pirate crew on One Piece
On one level, I think this is kinda crazy. For pretty much any long-running TV show, sexual tension between characters generates a ton of interest. TV series live and die on questions of will-they-won’t-they. So to foreclose the possibility is a bold move.
On the other hand, I think it’s genius, since it means fans will always want something the show will never give them, which will keep them watching. Look at what shippers write about on places like AO3, the world’s foremost repository of fan-fiction. Fan-fiction, if you’re just joining us, doesn’t have to be about characters getting together, but it almost always is. And the most popular pairings are always the ones that are never going to actually happen. The fact that they’re forever out of reach is what makes them exciting subjects.
For the record, looking at the original One Piece anime, by far the most popular pairing for fanfic writers is Zoro and Sanji, at over 8,000 fics. The Netflix show has far fewer fics associated with it, but they’re starting to crop up. Right now, the most popular pairing is Luffy and Zoro. Clearly, forbidding romance on the actual show isn’t going to stop fans from speculating about it. What it will do is generate a lot of passion among fans, which can be only be good for the base series.
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