Comparing LuNa to LuHan

Original post: October, 2017

Made by madmantyrone

This is just a repost from my original in OroJackson.

I used to read One Piece when I was like 10-14 years old and stopped for several years. And back then I wasn’t really into shipping at all cause I didn’t understand romance and thought LuHan was surely gonna happen. Because its simple. And One Piece surely seems like a simple story.

But its not at all. When I reread it I realized that Oda put forth a far more intricate story with far more intricate themes and ideas, such as that of slavery, class conflict, systematic oppression, government tyranny, racism, and even romance. Its really well layered with the typical battle shounen plotline of the characters fighting and getting stronger. And its also covered up by the goofy gags. But its definitely there. The story appeals to children and adults and thats why most One Piece readers aren’t children or teenagers…..but grown ass men and women.

http://www.mangatherapy.com/post/3601503033/one-piece-popularity

So One Piece is obviously not a simple shounen so I dont expect its romances to follow a quick and simple plotlines as well. Especially for Luffy and Nami, who are definitely Oda’s most beloved characters(or so it seems). And if Oda is following such a complicated plotline to establish Sanji and Pudding’s romance(I know I’m jumping the gun here), obviously Luffy and Nami’s romance would be extremely well developed and meaningful and fortunately for Oda, he’s already structured his story so that they will have a natural and meaningful pairing with each other if he decides to go through with it. And after my reread of One Piece, it became blatantly obvious to me that he was setting a romance up between Luffy and Nami, and LuHan was just a red herring.

Here are the common romance tropes in adventure novels that apply to LuNa.

Couple meet in some sort of miraculous way

Luffy literally fell from the sky and met Nami. I take it as metaphor that he was a gift from the heavens to Nami and from his actions since he definitely is.

Heroine is hiding a painful secret and finally asks for help from Hero

Nami breaks down after all hope is lost and asks Luffy for help.

Father figure gives away daughter

I see Genzo’s scene as blatantly romantic in nature and almost conformation that LuNa will be canon in the end. Genzo literally tells Luffy to keep Nami smiling or else he’ll come to kill him. The only way Luffy can fulfill that promise is if he ends up marrying Nami and staying with her forever, lol.

Heroine constantly worries for and cares about Hero who gets himself in danger constantly

We see this literally all the damn time. In every arc Nami’s present. And its done in a not so obvious way cause Nami is slightly tsundere so she tries to pass it off as annoyance. Case in point when she was worried Luffy was taking too long to come back in Jaya so she pretends to be pissed off at him.

Heroine relies on Hero as an emotional anchor.

First started in arlong park and has constantly been a theme since. When she was worried about Robin and Sanji, she relied on Luffy for support. When she was scared of Enel, Luffy gave her strength.
Hero comes to save Heroine

Granted this is done with other princess type characters like Vivi, Shirahoshi, and Rebecca. But Nami gets saved by Luffy by far the most. I think Oda made her the main princess of the story. BUT Nami can take care of herself and is extremely useful and self sufficient so she’s obviously far better than the typical princess.

I’m sure I’m missing some tropes so if anyone wants to add in, please go ahead. So we’re at the point in the story when the heroine has full affinity for and faith in the hero. I think going by the typical romance tropes that Oda seems to follow, the next logical step is the Hero being emotionally reliant on the Heroine and for her to save him, which is what we’re starting to get when Nami helped him beat a YC and when Nami protected him fron a Yonko. Also Luffy has always been dependent on Nami for navigation and day to day life so theres always been a give and take between them. This time though, Luffy is starting to become emotionally reliant on Nami because this arc Luffy shared his thoughts and feelings about Sanji with her and she was there to comfort him.

With all of that, lets compare it to Hancock.

Like with Nami, Luffy does meet Hancock in a miraculous way, but the rest of the tropes are incomplete. Hancock does reveal a painful secret but Luffy doesn’t really do anything to lift that burden(think he will in the future though). She doesnt rely on him as an emotional anchor and rather sees him as something that makes her feel good almost like a drug, lol. Theres no give and take there. And Luffy did rely on her but not nearly to the extent as he does with Nami. Luffy has never shared his feelings with Hancock and unlike Nami he doesn’t need her to complete his goals.

So its obvious Hancock is far lacking. She has the superficial qualities of having puppy eyes and overly romantic displays for Luffy but on a deeper level theres really not much there at all. In fact Hancock does not even love Luffy in the first place.

This panel is right after Luffy loses Ace

Now dont get me wrong without Hancock Luffy would never have gotten so far in Impel Down/Marineford and she does clearly care for him but she misses his character completely. She was there when Luffy watched his brother killed in front of him and there when he was fighting for his life. She should know exactly what sort of trauma he’s going through. But rather than worry about his emotional well being, her primary worry is feeding him. And again this isn’t cause she doesn’t care about him, its cause she’s so blinded by the way Luffy makes her feel that she cant understand that food isn’t what Luffy needs at all.

When she hears Luffy’s awake she cant wait to go see him and feed him not even vaguely aware just how much trauma he is experiencing at the moment. Thats because infatuations are selfish in nature, in an infatuation the object of desire is simply something a person needs to have because it makes them feel good. To Hancock, Luffy is nothing more than simply a thing that makes her feel warm and fuzzy inside. Contrast that to real love where its not just that the object of love makes you feel good, the object of love makes you feel terrible as well. Because in real love you’re emotionally tied to the person of affection.

Constrast that to Nami

Nami wasn’t even there. She was likely thousands of miles away and didn’t even know half of what Luffy went through. Yet all it took was news that Ace died for Nami to immediately understand just how much pain Luffy was going through. Unlike Hancock, Nami immediately understands just what it is that Luffy needs which is emotional support and is doing everything in her power to provide that to him. Its absolutely clear that Nami understands and is emotionally connected to Luffy.

Now it isn’t just Nami that felt like that, it was pretty much all of his crew especially Ussop. Thats because all of them love Luffy in their own way. Because all of them understand Luffy far better than Hancock does. But what all this does imo is it takes Hancock out of the Luffybowl cause how could she ever hope to make Luffy fall in love with her when she doesn’t even understand his basic character and isn’t really in love with him?

This also shows that Nami is a far better match for him cause she understands who Luffy really is and loves him for who he is. And rather than downplaying that in the following arcs, Oda decides to build on that idea even more in the following arcs especially WCI.

And tying it back to the original point. Oda has created an extremely well layered and meaningful story filled with adult themes and even has a mostly adult audience. On top of that he’s built up a relationship between the main hero and heroine using common romantic tropes for over 880 chapters now. Now which ship would he end the story with? LuHan?

The ship which anyone with any experience can tell you is an infatuation and unhealthy. Hancock’s feelings toward Luffy is something that I finally understood when I was a teenager as did most of us I bet. Its hormonal and shallow and will lead nowhere. Thats why when Hancock sees Luffy, she sees an idealized version distant from reality. When she talks to Luffy, she cant even look at him properly and takes everything he says out of context and over-analyzes. Just like teenagers do when they have a crush. I think Oda understands this fully as should most of his audience by now.

And with LuNa? I think nothing more really needs to be said. Cause either Oda is setting up one of the greatest friendship between a male and female character in manga history or he’s pushing it towards a full blown romance. Either way, Hancock’s got nothing on our girl Nami.

Special thanks to yagamitaichi7 for encouraging me to post here and provided the panels.

BONUS (made by Warlordgab)

The previous post draws a clear difference between a well-developed relationship and a mere crush/infatuation. A deep companionship based on emotional support and mutual trust/faith is the best foundation for a solid romantic bond. And the way Oda writes his story and characters certainly proves he values greatly the emotional connections he carefully crafted

Those who constantly draw inter-series comparisons prove they have no real argument to prove their premises make sense inside the series’ framework, and that they’re so selfish they don’t care if their favored outcome is a underdeveloped relationship based on a shallow perception of what love is

But if they insist to go all OP/DBZ. Dragon Ball had their own “Hebihime” (Snake Princess), and she didn’t end up with the hero: