On January 3, 2021, Shueisha's shonen, mega-series, One Piece, reached a milestone that few syndicated stories ever do. It reached its 1,000th Chapter, solidifying a tenure of 20+ years that will still be ongoing way past this writing. It was such a seminal feat that Shonen Jump decided to celebrate by hosting its largest character poll yet, the One Piece World Top 100. While the publication typically limits its character polls to just its home region of Japan, the publishers decided to really explore how far Monkey D. Luffy's story has reached by starting a character poll that asked for the insight of the entire world.
In 1997, creator Eiichiro Oda started a journey that he thought would only explore the inches of his canvas. In typical One Piece fashion, that journey would come to grow, expand, and explore new worlds. While the Straw Hats have yet to see the end of their world, the One Piece WT 100 has proven that they've touched nearly every corner of this one; and with results just coming in, its findings are pretty remarkable.
According to the One Piece WT 100, different regions of the world, shifts in the story, and surprising surges in votes have contributed to some interesting cultural findings. "Big News" Morgans, the One Piece's world's main nose (or beak) for global news, ranked 80th overall but ranked 38th within the U.S., showing the country's proclivity for world affairs. "Red Flag" X Drake, whose character design is Turkish inspired, ranked 41st overall but ranked 2nd in Turkey.
© Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha
Carrot, who ranked 17th overall not too long ago, suddenly found herself in 8th place once voting closed. Following suit, Nami, who was 7th in the first half of voting, jumped to 3rd, making her the most popular female character in the series. Last but not least, Yamato, a new character of relatively little screen time since her debut, has immediately touched a chord with the One Piece faithful and has skyrocketed to the top 10 slots of different regions, including North America, Oceania, Europe, and Africa.
© Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha
Besides the fact that Yamato should be a Straw Hat soon, these results show both how far One Piece has touched the world and how deeply it has touched different walks of life. While it is simply only one story, its attention to detail and sense of diversity have not gone unnoticed. While a character like Enel, whose tenure within the series was short and has rarely been looked back to, may not be popular with some fans, he did receive a lot of votes within Indonesia for his Indonesian-inspired character design. Even though Sir Crocodile has yet to make an appearance since the Paramount War, he still managed to rank 17th, three spaces above Donquixote Doflamingo, who just had a major arc not too long ago.
As much as some fans can love one character or hate another to pieces, there's always another narrative going on outside. Just like the series itself, where there's always a bigger story going on outside the adventures of the Straw Hats, there are various other people across the world reading or watching the series, having their own interpretations and their own adventures, who can still love the series all the same.
In commemoration of this unity and diversity (as well as the pure fact that Monkey D. Luffy ranked 1st overall), Luffy's voice actors from 11 different regions of the world, including Japan, Brazil, Germany, South America, North America, and Italy, will be sharing their different takes on some iconic voice lines from the series. This will be found on the Official One Piece YouTube Channel, where the special video series, the One Piece Times, will also be covering the results of the poll. Eiichiro Oda also had some kind words to share with his fans:
© Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha
WORLD TOP 100! Usually, this character ranking poll is only done in Japan but by opening it up to the world through the internet, I was able to see in real time a glimpse of which characters are popular in different regions of the world and some characters went up in the rankings since the midterm results, so it was truly entertaining.
I heard that there seemed to be some movements online organized by fans to come together to cast votes for unexpected characters. That didn’t get past the production team (laugh). It’s amazing how different the preferences towards these characters are all over the world and it was so fun seeing how it went down for Robin and Carrot.
As I promised, I’ll be creating a cool piece with the characters who ranked in the top 50 plus some others so please look forward to it.
Thank you so much to all the ONE PIECE fans all over the world for casting so many votes!
-Eiichiro Oda
While One Piece makes no claim to be for everyone, many still wonder how the series could have possibly reached the audience it has or lasted as long as it will continue to. The answer isn't that hard to come by, especially for those who have given the series their faith to this day.
One Piece is the story of a thousand different stories. Besides having dozens of iterations across manga, films, and video games, every arc is vastly different than the one before it. Every arc houses dozens of different, individual journeys. Every interaction is the beginning of one adventure, the end of another, or the stepping stone for one still underway. There's always something to be surprised by, nothing to get bored with, and everything to look forward to with every new character that steps onto the page.