00:01
What kind of reindeer does Chopper like? What gender is Chopper? And what gender of reindeer does Chopper, is Chopper attracted to? I don't even know. For all we know, Chopper is like an aromantic asexual who doesn't care about that stuff at all, even when there's other reindeer around.
Okay, either way, um, nothing is cute.
エピソードの紹介
Konnichiwa! I am your host Mayu for 2AM OTTACK!. In this podcast, we talk all about anime, manga, movies, music, and history through our distinct perspectives. As a born and raised Japanese non-Ottaku, that's me, and an American anime fan, Cisco.
I was not planning to talk about this today, but it came just in time, and I'm a little bit nervous talking about this epic work today. So Cisco, what are we going to talk about?
We are talking about ONE PIECE FAN LETTER.
Okay, so let's dive into ONE PIECE FAN LETTER. ONE PIECE FAN LETTER is a special anime episode celebrating the 25th anniversary of ONE PIECE after its release. It's based on the short novel series ONE PIECE NOVEL STRAW HAT STORIES. Do you know about this?
Nope.
Okay, there was a novel about it.
There was a novel about it, okay.
Yeah, and ONE PIECE FAN LETTER is a story for people who don't chase for ONE PIECE.
Who don't chase? Oh, they're not looking for the ONE PIECE. They're not even pirates. Yeah, totally.
Do you want to explain briefly about this episode?
Sure. So, the episode has, I'd have to like count them, but like five or six kind of characters, all of whom get a little bit of screen time as, you know, with like some inner monologues and stuff so you get who they are and what they're thinking or what they're doing.
I think there may be four or five, and they're all linked together in ways that you don't understand at the beginning of the episode. But by the end, the sort of connection between each of the characters has sort of come together and become clear.
Three of them are Navy Marines, and one is like a little girl. And then is there somebody, am I forgetting? Oh, there is at least one other person. There's also a woman who owns or runs a book, or at least works at a bookstore.
Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, the girl at the bookstore really likes Soul King, who's a skeleton. Maybe, just hear me out, maybe it's a skeleton bookseller Honda-san reference.
What? Oh, really?
No, definitely not. But it's an interesting coincidence that the person who's most into Brooke of the people works at a bookstore and she likes a skeleton, you know? Okay, whatever. I mean, I don't know. I'm a big fan of a skeleton bookseller.
Oh, I love it so much. It's so funny.
I'm just going to stick with that as if it's on purpose. Okay, so I guess maybe there's five people, and she's not a Marine either. But there are a number of Marines that are involved in different ways.
And I think the impulse, the sort of pushing impulse, or the two impulses are the Marines are trying to release a weapon that will mess up the Straw Hats as they try to escape from Sabaody Archipelago.
I'm also realizing that I don't know how to pronounce some of the place names in One Piece because I've only ever read the English manga. And I haven't watched a lot of the episodes of the anime, so I don't know how they're said in Japanese or in English.
I think in Japanese it's like Shabaody or something like that. It's got an S-H sound. Anyway, so whatever. They're trying to get away. The Marines are planning to release a weapon. A special card in an envelope that will release this weapon is supposed to be delivered from headquarters or somewhere on the island to the ship that's going to release the weapon.
And at the same time, the young female protagonist, the young girl who idolizes Nami, is trying to deliver a letter to Nami, who she has figured out will be back on the archipelago that day.
So she's running to try to meet her. The Marines are trying to run and stop the Straw Hats. And I think almost all the Straw Hats make appearances at least briefly in the episode, but often very briefly, like one shot briefly, sort of as cameos without there being a lot of actual time spent on them.
ONE PIECEファンレターの概要
And they are not the point. They sort of show up kind of by accident. So it's an interesting one piece short in that it's not about the main cast. And many of the people in it seem like just regular people.
So basically, I'm pretty new to One Piece. But as soon as I watched the fan letter, I recognized Easter Egg, I think. I tried to find her name on the ending credit, but I didn't see it.
But I am pretty sure the girl's mother is by Mayumi Tanaka, aka Luffy.
You know, this was a thing that I did not notice myself. But after you said it, I was like, oh, I can kind of hear it. And it's definitely weird that that character isn't credited in the credits. They have enough lines to be given a credit. So it definitely feels intentional that the credit is not there.
To me, it was very obvious. So I didn't even look it up. I was like, later, I should check it just in case. There's no Wikipedia page on anything. There's no full information about One Piece fan letter yet, or somebody hasn't made it.
Nobody's made it yet. Okay.
Yeah. So I went to credit and looked at it many times to see Mayumi Tanaka's name, but her name was listed only for Luffy.
Got it.
This could be an Easter Egg.
Probably.
But I'm 99% sure.
Huh. Interesting.
When I watched Dun Dun Dun and Turbo Granny appeared, I was like, oh, that's Luffy.
I was not prepared for that either, to be honest.
But didn't you notice immediately?
No. You have a special ability to recognize people's voices really instantly. I think I'm better at it with American voice actors, probably, because I know their names already and have potentially seen them in a lot of things.
But even accounting for that, I think you are especially good at hearing somebody's voice and be like, I know who that is immediately.
Whereas I can only do it in certain kinds of situations.
Who is it?
I can definitely recognize Takehito Koyasu.
He was a major voice actor when I was watching anime in the 90s, and he was in a lot of different stuff.
And he has an extremely distinctive voice.
So when it's him, I can be like, oh, yeah.
And often when you recognize that so-and-so's voice actor is also doing the same thing for somebody else, I'll be like, oh, now that you mention it.
And if the voice actor isn't making any attempts to disguise the way that they sound from one character to another, then yes, even I can tell that the main guy from Dun Dun Dun is also the main Tanjiro from Demon Slayer because they sound exactly the same.
But I usually can't just pull that name out of a hat.
I don't know the actor's names usually.
And then additionally, I'll hear it and be like, oh, yeah, I've totally heard this before, but not instantly know where it's from.
Yeah.
Even though I'm no otaku, I grew up watching anime.
Right.
So I'm very familiar with some kind of voices, especially Tanaka Mayumi's voice because she's been in this anime for little kids for a long time.
Also, she did the voice for Pazu and...
Oh, wow.
What is that?
Laputa, right?
Laputa Castle in the Sky.
It's in my system.
It's in my brain.
I memorized that.
So I recognize it.
The voice cast sings the ending theme song, which is not unheard of in different anime, but this voice cast is not a voice cast of singers.
It's okay.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's still fun to hear them sing something.
And I think they're singing it in the characters' voices, essentially.
Right.
So it sounds like those nakamas are singing all together.
Totally.
And so it's totally worth it.
But it's more of an Easter egg or a cameo or a joke than it is like a really well-performed number.
Yeah.
So I think a lot of it is a letter to fans with a lot of those sort of Easter eggs folded into it, some of which I think I probably really missed and did not understand.
And I think occasionally there are moments in it where I can be like, oh, oh, I get it.
ファンの思いとキャラクターの関係
Like the joke here is this, right?
Like when they're interviewing the people in Water 7 about Frankie and stuff.
But I mean, I think the other thing is just like to be able to get One Piece jokes, you have to have a memory that's capable of pretty good recognition of stuff that happened over a thousand chapters ago.
Which I feel like you can kind of do.
Well, like, yes and no.
Again, I think in looking back on it, it's sort of notable that I watched the anime from the beginning up to about the Skypiea arc.
And then I stopped watching the anime.
And then I missed some of the arcs in between Skypiea and Water 7, which is where I started reading the manga.
And then I eventually went back and reread the whole beginning of the manga, which I had not read previously, in order to be like, okay, I've read everything.
I feel like there are gaps in my One Piece knowledge.
And just like being old, there's stuff from it that I don't remember.
I think the other problem is when I'm reading manga on a binge, I'll read dozens of chapters a day.
And I'm not paying as close attention to them as I could be.
Dozens of other mangas too? You mean?
Well, probably that too.
But no, no, no.
When I'm really committed to reading a manga, I can read like, okay, I don't know if I can read like a hundred.
I probably can read over a hundred chapters a day, if I'm being really honest about it.
I think each chapter is probably under five minutes.
So I definitely read Promised Neverland in about two days, two or three days.
And that's like a several hundred chapter manga.
So anyway, my point there is, I feel like I am not the best person to remember all of the One Piece lore with no flaws.
I would need to be a bigger fan in order to catch all the references than I am.
And I consider myself a big fan.
I think One Piece is amazing.
I hype it up to other people and try to talk them into getting into the show and everything else.
I think it's really good.
But I also recognize that it's so long that there's stuff I don't remember.
And I'm caught up.
I read the manga every week.
This fan letter is a callback to the midpoint.
Or maybe not.
I don't know which chapter Sabaody was.
But it feels like it was a long, long time ago from where it is now.
And so I kind of remember what happened at that point in the manga.
But I don't remember it really, really clearly.
I also think, honestly, it is both hard to remember things that happen in the manga when you read it all in a rush at once.
And it's also really hard to remember things when you're reading it one chapter per week.
It can be hard to hold all of the facts together.
And given that I read literally everything in the Shonen Jump app,
I'm trying to keep track of a lot of different manga at a time.
And so I think the more I consume, the harder it is to remember the details of any single one.
Despite all that, yes, this was a very fun short.
I wanted to talk about the puzzle piece part the girl was doing and the other main characters did.
A sense of her putting the pieces together.
Like, what is this letter?
And what does this card do?
And how am I helping the straw hats?
And some of those other things.
I guess I hadn't actually considered this until the very end.
But the girl has written a fan letter to Nami and is trying to deliver it.
And so I think in that sense, there's a little bit of her being in the position of the fans of the show,
trying to deliver this message to Oda-sensei or somebody about how much they like it.
And this idea of regular people sort of contributing.
And so maybe in a really meta way, it's him thanking the fans for pushing him to keep going
by preventing his ship from sinking.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm taking this too far.
I definitely think as you watch the short,
ファンの力
you as the person watching it are putting together the pieces of how these people are going to interact with each other.
And she's definitely doing sort of step-by-step.
She has figured out this special message from Nufi to his crewmates about where they're going to meet
and where their ship is and everything else.
And so she's kind of putting those together and then feeling like they're being torn apart and getting lost.
She was saying when she was captured, I just can't do anything.
The ship is sinking and Nami's going to die.
There's nothing I can do.
It's probably what viewers think.
Yeah, I can't do anything about this continuing.
But then by sending in her fan letter, she helps them keep going.
She uses her regular human people powers to encourage them to keep going.
自分の関係
I'm glad I went back to the episode and then watched it a second time because I felt like I understood it better.
Totally.
As a person who doesn't know One Piece.
If you understand One Piece, if you've been reading One Piece, love One Piece,
probably this is not a big new discovery.
Well, yeah. I mean, yes.
I don't know. Hearing you having gone back to it and watched it a second time and appreciating it more,
it strikes me that you don't actually need to know that much about One Piece in order to appreciate this short film.
I mean, it helps to get all the Easter eggs, right?
To get all the jokes and the references and who is this guy and who's that person.
But the core story of this isn't about One Piece's plot.
It's about the power of the fans.
Yeah.
My relationship with One Piece is very, very shallow.
Sure.
One thing I can say is...
What?
My relationship with One Piece is very shallow makes it sound like you hooked up once, but that was all.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. When I was a kid, I'm... What?
I can't believe you leaned into that statement.
Because that's exactly how I feel.
Because I kind of tried watching it.
I watched the first episode of One Piece when it was aired back in... I don't want to say when.
25 years ago.
Right.
And then I couldn't engage with it.
I mean, yeah.
I don't know. I also remember... I think I was in Japan during the year that the first season of One Piece aired.
And there was advertisements for it everywhere.
And I was like, oh, actually, I think this might have even been before it was on TV.
I think this might have been... No, it must have been its first year or around that time.
Yeah, maybe it was before it was on TV and they were just doing the promos for it coming.
Anyway, I remember seeing those things and being like, this is lame.
I don't want to watch this.
This looks like it's going to be bad.
So I can relate to that feeling of not being into it at first.
It took me a little while to decide that I actually wanted to invest in...
I mean, nothing compared to people who today are thinking about getting into One Piece.
But I think it was probably the year 2000 before I started being serious about One Piece.
I feel like I kind of regret I didn't try to watch it more.
Yeah, I mean, I've been in and out with One Piece is the other thing.
I think I started watching it in maybe the early 2000s.
And watched a big chunk of the show and then decided that it was getting too silly and stopped.
And then came back to it a couple of arcs later and was like, oh, this looks interesting again.
And read some of the manga for a while.
And then just lost my access to the manga site I was reading it on or whatever.
And then did not read it for a number of years.
And then picked it back up again in another later arc.
And went back and read all the stuff in between.
And then have stayed with it pretty seriously since then.
It's something where, maybe it's just me, but I think it's possible to fall in and out of interest in One Piece.
キャラクターと感情の深さ
Yeah, I guess if you never make it to the first good part of the story, I can really understand being like, why is everyone so crazy about this?
Did you have any favorite parts?
I definitely got a kick out of the parts involving Zoro and Sanji.
And the scene that's taking place in the bar where they're arguing about who's the best.
Because that's such an otaku thing to do.
To have a drunken fight about who's the best fighter in a given anime or manga is like...
I guess I actually haven't had that fight in a bar very often because I haven't been in a bar with other otaku very often.
But I can totally picture doing that.
And I've absolutely had this moment, stone cold sober, with both students and friends.
So I really related very hard to that ongoing scene in the bar.
But I think the other thing that's really notable, there's two things about this that I think are kind of notable.
One, a lot of what it feels like One Piece is about is the fun of devil fruit users.
And that like, oh, what's this power going to do?
Oh, how is this power going to get used to fight these other people with devil fruit powers?
It's one of the things that I respect most about One Piece as a series.
That it isn't just a shounen battle manga.
It totally could be, right?
It could just be dudes with devil fruit powers doing new tricks every single chapter.
And it's not.
There's a lot of time given to character development and plot points.
And people walking around just talking to each other.
And the world building and some of these other things.
And a lot of the emotions of the characters are really important.
Even when they don't have any special abilities.
And so I think what was awesome about this was that it focused on a girl who's not a devil fruit user.
Who doesn't have any special powers or tricks up her sleeve.
Which resonates with what it's about, where the plot goes and stuff.
I think I liked that.
That none of this was super OP.
Characters bashing their...
I guess there's some of that with when the Straw Hats do appear.
But it's mostly about emotion.
And about regular individuals making some choices.
ストーリーとテーマの分析
That carry them to some endings or some consequences of what they're trying to do.
And so I thought that was really sweet.
I did like the imagery of the puzzle pieces.
It's not all the way through it.
But it comes out at some key points in the short.
The actual One Piece spends almost no time at all talking about what the One Piece is.
And when you finally do find out what it's all about.
It does not...
I don't know.
So much of One Piece isn't about One Piece.
You know what I mean?
Had a real strong idea about puzzle pieces and shapes.
That was expressed consistently throughout the story.
In a way that was really different from the regular show.
The more I'm talking about it, the more I think I liked it.
What about those marine brothers story?
Yeah.
That was another key point.
I think it's one of the things that One Piece does really well.
The human emotion stories that are in it are all really relatable.
The younger brother is kind of a jerk.
The older brother is really long-suffering.
But the choices that he makes really make emotional sense anyway.
They feel very believable as characters.
Even though One Piece is a pretty cartoony anime as things go.
It's not striving for realism.
It doesn't have super clean lines.
A lot of it feels like a cartoon.
Both in terms of what's happening and the fantastical elements and everything else.
Yet the people in the story make a lot of sense.
Even when they're caricatures of a person.
I think this one, they're not actually very caricatured.
They all seem kind of...
I guess actually the commander is a little bit of a caricature.
ONE PIECEの魅力
But in a fun way that doesn't feel off somehow.
I think it's one of Oda-sensei's greatest accomplishments.
The humanity of his characters.
Without spoiling too much.
The way that the plot points are handled.
Even the overarching plot doesn't feel tremendously important.
But then somehow it feels very important to the characters that are involved in the story.
I think that also is what's nice about it.
It doesn't try to be bigger than it is.
It's not a total throwaway in the way that you might think it would be.
It's not just a bunch of easter eggs and cameos.
It has an internal logic.
Both a plot and a thing it's trying to say.
And it's a bunch of easter eggs and cameos.
Are you ready for word of the day?
I think I am.
What is today's word of the day?
I suggested that we go with 憧れ.
Which means kind of like to admire someone.
Or someone that you admire is like your 憧れ.
It's a word that comes up actually surprisingly a lot I think in anime.
It's a Japanese word that I learned fairly early on in my study of Japanese from anime.
You can use it as a verb, 憧れる, to sort of admire somebody.
But I think it goes a little bit beyond just what admire connotes in English.
To suggest really wanting to be like somebody.
And sort of looking up to and respecting them.
All of those meanings are in there, not just admiration.
It often combines admiration with a desire to be like someone.
To sort of see them as a role model.
And so for the young girl in the story, Nami is her 憧れ.
And her reason for looking up to Nami is that Nami does not have any devil fruit powers.
And is not freakishly strong or over trained.
She's like pretty smart.
And she uses her normal human brain to work out interesting ways to defend herself.
And protect the people she cares about.
And do her job on the ship.
And I think that it was really nice to include her as the sort of person people are looking up to.
That this young girl is looking up to.
Because of her intelligence.
One Piece has a famous problem with the busts of its female characters.
Just growing incessantly over time.
To ever more ridiculous sizes.
I mean, not only One Piece, right?
I mean, for sure not only One Piece.
Other animes don't have huge anime sized boobs.
Yeah, for sure they do.
But because One Piece started in 1990 whatever.
And is now 25 years later.
I wish how the boobs work in that way.
As you get older you just get bigger and bigger.
There's an argument that at the start of the series Nami is young.
And so she is literally going through a regular process of physical maturity.
But it really also seems like just like.
I don't know if bigger boobs became the style.
I mean, nobody hates bigger boobs, right?
It's just like inflation of money.
You never go the other direction.
I don't know.
But my point is.
Female characters in One Piece.
Especially the two main female characters in One Piece.
Tend to have very large physical endowments.
And so it's really nice to see the girl admiring Nami for kind of all the right reasons.
Not because she's got a wildly curvy figure.
But because she's really smart and also a normal person.
And so I really liked that aspect of it.
And I think that's what made me want to pick this word as our word of the day.
Is that her reasons for feeling akogare towards Nami.
Are these really cool reasons basically.
And I think Nobin gets a little bit more.
Her whole character and backstory.
Include a little bit more of her being an archaeologist and stuff.
From a young age.
I know you don't know any of this.
Anyway.
My point is.
I think it's significant that it's Nami that she's looking up to.
In this really kind of genuine sweet way.
And that was both one of my favorite things about it.
And why I thought that would make for a good word of the day.
Great.
キャラクターへの憧れ
Who's your akogare?
In One Piece?
Or anything.
Yeah.
I think my dad is my akogare in real life.
I know.
But in One Piece.
Who is my akogare?
There's so many characters.
It's really hard to pick.
I'm sure.
I'll just go with a basic one and say.
To some degree Sanji.
I wish I could cook that well.
And I admire him.
As one pervert to another.
So cool.
Yeah.
Not Zoro?
Yeah.
Zoro feels out of reach.
You know what I mean?
Like I'm not.
I'm not.
I don't like drinking as much as Zoro.
He drinks?
Oh yeah.
Sorry.
Yeah.
You really don't know anything about One Piece.
Yeah.
I don't drink as much as Zoro.
I don't want to be the world's most best swordsman ever.
Right?
He's like.
I don't know.
Maybe in real life.
I'm like a little bit more stoic and similar to Zoro.
Like I'm not like a ridiculously comic pervert like Sanji is.
But if I was living in an anime world.
I probably would be.
So he's my akogare.
Zoro is who I actually am.
Or Usopp is who I actually am.
Maybe if I'm trying to play that.
I think Chopper.
Chopper is your akogare?
Does it have gender?
I don't know.
So it's a mystery.
No.
Chopper.
Damn.
I'm pretty.
Chopper's a boy.
Right?
I don't know.
Chopper's a boy.
Right?
Chopper's a reindeer.
But I don't think Chopper's ever met any other reindeer in the whole show.
So I'm not sure we've ever gotten a sense of what Chopper's gender identity is.
チョッパーの性別と恋愛
Does Chopper like anybody?
That's what I'm saying.
Chopper's a reindeer.
So he theoretically likes reindeer.
Really?
Yeah.
He's a reindeer who ate the hitohito or the ningeningen fruit or something like that.
What?
Okay.
Okay.
Again, you don't know anything about No One Piece.
But Chopper is a reindeer who ate the human human fruit.
Okay.
And became a human.
He's not a human.
Correct.
Chopper's not a human.
Chopper is a reindeer.
Therefore, what kind of reindeer does Chopper like?
What gender is Chopper?
And what gender of reindeer is Chopper attracted to?
I don't even know.
For all we know, Chopper is an aromantic asexual who doesn't care about that stuff at all,
even when there's other reindeer around.
I mean, maybe there's one chapter somewhere where there's some allusion to this at all.
But I feel like no.
I feel like it's just a mystery.
Okay.
Either way, nothing is cute.
But cute isn't an akogare, though, right?
I really like that.
Like, you want to be a gender-mysterious reindeer human?
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
I don't know any other female characters, okay?
I'm in no position to judge here, because I said my akogare was Sanji.
So I'm going to be like, yes, anything you want is okay.
I only know Nami.
So yeah, I guess you haven't gotten to the part where Nobunaga is introduced to the story.
I know Luffy.
Yes.
Yeah, Luffy's a guy.
Yeah.
I can give akogare for men.
So I did a little extra research about Chopper after being faced with this, like, intense
moment of doubt about Chopper's gender and sexuality, and discovered that, in fact, Chopper
is a boy.
That's, like, canon established.
And he is attracted to female reindeer, because when he finally meets a female reindeer mink
in, like, the much, much later part of the story, he, like, makes a Sanji eyes at her
and is, like, clearly attracted to her.
So he's a reindeer, but he's a male reindeer, and he is attracted to female reindeer.
Mystery solved.
尾田先生のメッセージ
And what did Oda-sensei talk about him?
Oh, right.
And there's also a thing saying, you know, like, one of the messages that Oda-sensei
is trying to sort of send in one piece is the ability of different groups of people
to work together.
And this is, like, super true of Luffy's crew, who are, like, intentionally patterned
on people from all sorts of different parts of the world.
And you can see this in Zoro being, like, a swordsman, and, like, Sanji, like, all of
his moves are in French, right?
And, like, you know, so on and so forth.
And he said that if Chopper was, like, a person in the world, he would be Canadian, which
to me is, like, a little bit of typecasting, because just because he's a reindeer and
from, like, a cold area, doesn't have to be Canadian.
But, you know, whatever.
It's fine.
Like, he's nice.
Like, that strikes me as a very important Canadian attribute.
And he deals well with the cold.
So bingo.
Why not?
Okay.
I didn't think about reindeer part.
I thought, oh, yeah, Canadian people are, like, awesome.
Of course.
Interestingly, I don't know where Nami is supposed to represent.
Like, it's clear that Zoro is Japan and Sanji is France.
But past that, it's kind of unclear.
Like, where's Usopp supposed to be from?
Like, I don't know.
Like, what about, like, Doofy and Nami?
Like, I don't know what they're supposed to represent, actually.
It's hard to tell.
All right.
Anything else you'd like to add?
I mean, I kind of feel like we're not doing One Piece justice here, and we should, like,
at some point just talk about One Piece.
But, you know, maybe we'll do it when the new season comes out on Netflix.
Right?
The live auction?
Yeah.
Chopper is going to be in that one.
Right.
Right.
Maybe your akogare will be Dr. Kureha.
Yeah.
You never know.
Okay.
Well, that's good enough for now.
You know what?
I'm going to change mine.
My akogare is Robin because she's an archaeologist and super smart, and I respect that.
Does she have long black hair?
Yeah.
I think it's, like, bluish, though.
Makes sense.
I'll take it.
Whatever.
リスナーへの感謝
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