LuNa analysis: Strong World in the context of Oda’s story

 Original post: January, 2020

This post is a bit of a “remake” and a bit of an “update” of my first analysis on LuNa.

Thanks to several interviews and official sources, we know Oda played a significant role in the development of the One Piece Film series. In fact, it all started with a movie written by Oda himself: Strong World.

He put a lot of effort into this movie, and many fans both inside and outside Japan admit this movie had its fair share of LuNa moments. But, I’d like to focus on this matter from the perspective of the manga.

Let’s go back to the Arlong Park arc. Luffy always trusted Nami and put his faith in her even people around him were giving him seemingly good reasons not to do so. One remarkable example of this is in chapter 75 when Luffy is informed by Johnny (someone trustworthy) what Nami apparently did to Usopp, and Luffy not only kept holding onto his faith in Nami, he also threatened Johnny for saying such things about her:

Why is this so relevant? Because during the Whiskey Peak Arc he came to doubt Zoro because of the words of a random wounded man…

…and even doubted Robin during Water 7 before Nami told the crew the truth behind Robin’s desertion.

But not even once he doubted Nami

After listening to most of Nami’s recorded message, Luffy gets enraged! Why? Luffy never doubted Nami, he always relied on her blindly putting his faith in his navigator, to an extent greater than his trust in Zoro or Robin. So after thinking his navigator doubts him and his capabilities he got really angry…

…notice that he never got angry at Robin and Sanji for doubting his strength or power.

As another clever reader put it, he gets angry at Robin “for not worrying about her own safety, not because Robin doesn’t believe” in his strength…

And he got mad at Sanji for not being honest to himself when he tried to justify the choice of abandoning the crew and his dream.

But, from Luffy’s point of view, the one who’s not allowed to doubt his capabilities is Nami. There’s the probability he was expecting all his trust and faith in Nami to get reciprocated.

Turns out Nami does return that feeling. Why can we say that? Remember the movie’s ending: Nami finds out everyone in the crew got her hidden “save me” at the end of her message… everyone but Luffy. Then when Luffy is about to play the recorded proof of Nami’s unwavering faith in him, what does she do? She tries to get rid of the “edvidence” out of embarrassment  So the crew listening to the recording? Not a big deal for Nami. Luffy listening to the recording? She feels the need to destroy the edvidence.

We know these moments were completely intentional because Oda stated he wrote Strong World as “hero saves the heroine” story. Since Luffy is the hero (One Piece is pretty much about his journey), it makes sense the author would want to focus on how the hero’s relationship with the heroine (Nami) has a remarkable effect on him, and vice versa.

Someone once explained that Strong World encapsulates and sums up what One Piece is all about. That includes the exceptional strength of the bond between the hero (Luffy) and the heroine (Nami) of this manga.