CURIOSITIES

According to Oda, people often speculate that Sanji’s character is modeled after Leonardo DiCaprio, but he is actually modeled after Steve Buscemi as he appeared in “Reservoir Dogs”.

D: Hello, Oda-sensei! I have a question. Is Whitebeard, Edward Newgate, a Logia or a Paramecia? I personally think he’s Logia, since he took Aokiji’s attack without turning to ice, but…? P.N. NY

O: I guess that’s difficult. The answer is Paramecia. “Gura Gura no mi” is said to be the most powerful of the many paramecia fruits. It’s easy to think that he’s an “Earthquake Human” and must be Logia, but if that was so, he’d have to become an earthquake himself. Whitebeard creates earthquakes, in other words he’s a “Vibration Human”. That means he’s a Paramecia who isn’t any weaker than the Logias.

D: What’s the name of Law’s sword? How many tattoos does Law-san have? Odacchi… please draw all of Law’s tattoos!!!! (≧□≦)

O: OK, got it! Here are the drawing of Law’s tattoos taken from my notes. → He has heart themed tattoos, but I wonder if there is a reason for that? The name of his sword is Kikoku (鬼哭 Kikoku?, literally meaning “Demon’s Cry”). It has no rank. It is a “cursed sword”.

D: I was looking up trivia on the Straw Hats, and I found that although they’ve all been given a favorite food, I can’t find anything about their least favorite. So what are each of the Straw Hats’ least favorite foods? P.N. Ice Cream Nyangoro

O: Here you go. The reasons are inside the parentheses.

	A certain place’s cherry pie (No reason)		Chocolate (Too sweet)		Orangette (If she wants fruit, she’ll eat regular fruit)
	Mushrooms (Got sick once)		Konjac (No nutritional value)		Anything spicy (Not sweet enough)
	Chewing gum (Can’t swallow it)		Marshmallows (Not hard enough)		Lemon (No cheeks to make a sour face)

D: Question! “Whitebeard Edward Newgate”, “Blackbeard Marshall D. Teach”, “4th Squad Commander Thatch”. These three all appear to be based off the real-life 18th century Caribbean pirate, Edward Teach (or sometimes Edward Thatch), aka “Blackbeard”. Can you tell us more about this figure? P.N. G-on King

O: All three, yes. As a matter of fact, Whitebeard and Thatch just take his name, but Blackbeard himself is completely modeled after the man. The real-life pirate called Blackbeard had many names, and one of them was “Thatch”. He also went by “Drummond” and “Thache”. He would braid his very long black beard and light smoking wicks hanging from his hat, and with the six pistols and three swords he bore, must have been the very figure of the Devil in battle. Countless stories exist of him shooting his own crew to teach them a lesson, and so on. There are legends that he hid a great treasure, but it has never been found. Now’s your chance!

D: Greetings Oda-chi ♡ Appearing in SBS is like a dream for me. Anyway, I have tons of questions I want to ask, but here’s the one I’m most curious about, no doubt about it! Please tell me the ages and heights of the rookies ♡ I’ll be waiting until the end of time P.N. Lui

O: Okay okay. This is how they were two years ago. Just add two years to those who’ve reappeared in the present. And go ahead and assume that their heights haven’t changed. Because of her ability, Bonney’s age is just an estimation.

D: Which is faster, between Captain Kuro’s “Shakushi” and CP9’s “Soru”? TELL ME. by Niku-oh

O: Ah yes. I got a surprising number of questions about this one. Captain Kuro’s Shakushi (introduced in Volume 5) was a pretty tough one. To answer the question, speedwise they are about the same. But when Captain Kuro uses his trick, the speed is so great that he doesn’t even know who he’s attacking, but CP9 has complete control of their move at the same speed. So if there were a competition, CP9 would be overwhelmingly stronger.

D: Odacchi sensei!! Hear me out!! Please draw the 7 Shichibukai who made Luffy and Whitebeard suffer two years ago in the battle at Marineford as kids!! P.N. Harada Yutaka

O: Yeah. Sure-. Now I wonder how they look two years later~~. These are the ones that were in the Shichibukai at the time before the war actually began.

(From left to right, top to bottom. Row One: Jinbe, Dracule Mihawk, Gekko Moriah. Row Two: Boa Hancock, Sir Crocodile (former Shichibukai), Bartholomew Kuma. Row Three: Donquixote Doflamingo, Marshall D. Teach.)

D: What is the name for the guns in One Piece? Looks like it’s not a type that uses rope.

O: They are “flintlock” type, because of the stone called flint; just consider this type one level higher than the type that uses rope.

D: Nice to meet you. I’m always reading One Piece. Here’s my question: when I reread from volume 1, I noticed that Luffy doesn’t have a lot of thought bubbles. Why is that? Thanks for your answer. -Mizuiro Ribon

O: I see~ You’ve noticed something interesting in the 54 volumes we have. Just like how I write “ore” in hiragana, I’ve just been doing it for so long that it’s become something like my policy. I decided this in the beginning. For Luffy, it would be something like,

This is the kind of stuff that goes on in Luffy’s mind. For the readers, I wanted to make him a straight shooting kind of man, so I wrote him thinking like, “If he’s thinking it, he’ll say it” and “Action speaks louder than words”. In the Sky Island arc, he dealt with the Montblanc Cricket situation by saying thing in his heart, but he’s saying it with the same voice, so I decided that it was OK. From, here on, Luffy will act before he thinks!!