One Piece’s Gender-Flipped Straw Hats Are Even Stranger Than Fans Expect

The large cast of One Piece‘s bizarre characters is constantly expanding, with more than 1,000 chapters of the incredibly popular manga currently published. One of the latest addition is Yamato, the son of Kaido and possibly the next addition to the Straw Hat crew, whose exact gender is still a matter of discussion among fans. However, not every One Piece reader knows that the manga’s creator Eiichiro Oda has also gender-swapped many of his main characters.

The “experiment” started in the SBS (Oda’s Q&A section) for One Piece volume 56. As the storyline at that moment heavily featured Ivankov, a genderfluid character, one reader asked Oda to draw genderswapped versions of the Straw Hat Pirates. The result was funny and unexpectedly accurate, to the point that many readers asked for a follow-up drawing, this time detailing all the pirates of the “Worst Generation”, aka the Eleven Supernovas, and Oda obliged in volume 72. In volume 76 it was the turn of the Shichibukai, the Seven Warlords of the Sea, and finally, in volume 87, the mangaka accepted the request of yet another reader, this time to draw the original four Admirals of the Marine. While Oda-sensei jokingly expressed regret in the SBS, calling the drawings “creepy” and “weird”, it’s clear he had a lot of fun designing these characters, and also put some effort into it, judging from the results, that are still pretty weird in some cases.

Reddit user Competitive_Reading9 assembled all of the gender-swap artwork into one image and some of the results are quite strange. For example, Nico Robin’s male version is very muscular and burly, while the regular character is always calm and elegant. The most hilarious of the group, however, must be the skeleton musician, Brook, who obviously looks exactly the same.

The Straw Hats have also had their catchphrases reversed to amusing effects. For example, Luffy says he wants to eat some salad, while One Piece fans are well aware of his obsession with meat. It’s clear that the first group of drawings was done a bit hurryingly, while Oda put much more care into the swapped Supernovas and Shichibukai designs, which were particularly appreciated by fans. He even swapped Boa Hancock, the “most beautiful woman in the world”, into a man, who however didn’t lose the trademark arrogance of the Snake Empress, saying a ruder version of her catchphrase: “I can get away with anything because I’m so damn handsome!“

Fans have loved these genderswapped characters, especially the female versions of Scratchman Apoo and Mr. Crocodile, and often discuss them. They also ask questions such as if the Straw Hat cook Sanji, who is famous for his weakness towards ladies, would maintain his vow of never striking a woman if genderswapped. The genderswapped One Piece characters are not just really funny, they also prove Oda-sensei’s strength as a character designer and artist.

Source: Competitive_Reading9

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