One Piece fans attempt to clear the air with author misquotes

Tristan Stringer
An image of Luffy in One Piece

One Piece fans are trying to set the record straight after saying they’ve had enough of the infamous streak of seemingly incorrect quotes from series creator Eiichiro Oda.

One Piece, at first, was a straightforward story: a young man sets off on an adventure with his friends to fulfill his dream. Now it’s a well-oiled machine of ongoing plots and mysterious characters causing background conspiracies as we try to enjoy the Straw Hats’ adventure, leaving fans confused about how things got so complex – but those that had followed the series also followed the word of Eiichiro Oda, like gospel, taking any droplets of lore they could to figure out what would happen in the series.

Theorists can get a lot of mileage out of a simple creator quote when it comes to attempting to figure out the story of their favorite series. Still, the smallest of quotes can be stretched too far, misinterpreted, or even directly misquoted to the degree where it’s not even close to what the creator said. One Piece fans are not innocent of this as fans try to clear up some infamous quotes series author Eiichiro Oda never said.

One Piece fans debunk Eiichiro Oda misquotes

Fans have rushed to the One Piece subreddit after u/Mountain-Scratch-201 called to debunk countless quotes promoted by theorists, many of which Eiichiro Oda never said or were otherwise misinterpreted.

Many of these misquotes often come from the Q&A segment called “SBS Question Corner,” which appears in every volume of One Piece, where author Eiichiro Oda answers fan questions. SBS, standing for “Shitsumon o Boshū Suru?” translates to “I’m taking questions?”

Usually, an author may give a poor summary of events for the sake of promotion while trying their best to keep things a secret to avoid spoiling what happens in the coming story. This was the case for the Impel Down arc when Luffy teamed up with former enemies to escape the prison fortress. This led fans to speculate, as u/januarysdaughter commented.

More recently, in Wano, fans fell victim to another teaser quote by Oda referring to Luffy’s showdown with the monstrous Kaidou, with u/andmer saying, “Some fans take “Kaidou won’t be defeated with just a big punch” way too literally,” followed by further clarification by u/javierm885778 replying:

We could go on all day as the list of misinterpreted quotes goes on for a long time, making a good read for those who want to check out the original Reddit post. Still, possibly the most infamous of Eiichiro Oda’s misquotes is one during the Skypiea arc mentioned by u/willgettwoh regarding the fate of a crew member.

This bold quote ultimately referred to the Going Merry’s fate after Enis Lobby, leading fans to think this was a bit of a cop-out, but real fans knew Merry was a fully-fledged crew member. Keeping an open mind and staying updated with how the creator teases the series’ future can be fun. Still, sometimes, it’s just better to read the story yourself and avoid too much speculation outside of the odd funny theory.