Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece will probably stay single forever.
One Piece is full of strange events and crazy adventures. But what doesn’t exist are romantic stories and love affairs. There is also a very simple reason for this, which the inventor Eiichiro Oda explained some time ago. The justification was already outdated back then and it doesn’t sound very plausible even today.
That’s why there are no romantic love stories in One Piece
That’s what it’s about: One Piece is a classic shonen manga that tells the story of a straw hat pirate, Monkey D. Luffy, who keeps getting stronger. The series has been running for many years, is extremely successful and has been filmed as an anime series and recently also as a Netflix series:
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One Piece: Second Netflix Trailer shows us more of the story and characters from the live-action series
The franchise enjoys great popularity, but also leaves a few wishes unfulfilled for some fans. For example after a little more romance or a love story. But that won’t happen, and probably not in general. If you’re looking for affairs of the heart, you’ve come to the wrong place with One Piece.
But why not? The rather outrageous and old-fashioned explanation is: One Piece is a shonen manga that is explicitly aimed at adolescent boys. And according to Eiichiro Oda, the male sex is apparently not interested in romance or love – although the author himself even christened the origin of One Piece Romance Dawn.
Eiichiro Oda has declared, he will not draw romantic scenes because One Piece is a manga series for boys. He’s always begged by female fans to draw a love story, but it’s not his job.
If you want to see something like this, you have to read a shoujo manga that is aimed at a female audience. Oda doesn’t care how many women fall in love with Luffy, but he doesn’t like it when he loves him back (via: Anime2You).
A little longer ago: Eiichiro Oda’s statements are from 2009. He may have changed his mind by now, but the great romance has still not broken out within the manga and anime series.
It seems, then, that nothing has changed in the rather old-fashioned notion that is riddled with clichés about gender roles.
