 One of the more enduring controversies of One Piece has always been Goldie Rogers, specifically his moustache. Primarily because it wasn't always meant to be a moustache. In fact, in the first chapter and episode, this sprawling growth is quite clearly nose hair. That's what it was meant to be and it was changed for reasons and I will personally never forgive them for doing that. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line review or source for everything One Piece and today we are back to examine some of the biggest controversies in One Piece. And may I just say that this video was pretty perfectly timed because we've already had a pretty massive one in 2021, which is simultaneously kind of funny and kind of sad. We're getting into it. But in case you're unaware, a controversy is simply a prolonged public disagreement and as such most One Piece discussion on the internet can technically be considered a controversy such as the ever classic Zora versus Sanji debate. But this video is designed to focus on mostly bigger things. Factors surrounding One Piece itself that have made an impact on a larger scale then simply within the fan base itself. For the most part anyway, there will still be some fan base based stuff because One Piece fans tend to have very strong and polarizing opinions. Before we head into them though, it's time for a quick round of controversy or non-troversy. A very simple mini game, the rules of which are as follows. I am going to present you with a hypothetical controversy to do with One Piece and it is simply your job to guess whether it is real or not. A controversy or a non-troversy. And if you guessing correctly, then your punishment will be to subscribe to the Grand Line review, which will result in regular One Piece content being uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. And if you do guess correctly, then aren't you a clever and all lucky cookie? But here is our controversy. Etura Oda, the author of One Piece, once got in trouble for drawing this image in the author comment section of the volume release. Is this a controversy or a non-troversy? Choose now and we shall reveal the answer in three, two, one, and bam, it is actually a controversy. One that we will discuss however, if you guess non-troversy, then you know the thing it is you need to do. Press the old button thing and please do comment if you are a new member of the Grand Fleet. Welcome. Let's begin right here though. Why was this image so controversial? Well, in case you're unaware and you probably are, this is a drawing of Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese soldier who remained on the battlefield 28 years following the conclusion of World War II, mostly hiding out in caves and such out of fear of being captured. So you could say that he was someone who remained more or less on quote unquote active duty, even though the war had ended and his name has become quite famous in Japan. Now, cut to the release of One Piece, volume 89. One of my favorite volume covers actually featuring Luffy versus Carter Curry. It is so damn cool. And in these volumes, Oda normally kicks things off with some sort of irrelevant comment about what he does in his free time or anything else paired with some sort of little drawing. And in this case, we find this image of Sergeant Yokoi with a comment that is as follows. You know how sometimes when you're sharing a plate of fried chicken with people, there's that one last piece that gets left on the plate. I've decided to give it a name, Sergeant Yokoi. So I'm like, Sergeant Yokoi is still in the field. Somebody end the war. Little kids who don't know who I'm talking about, look him up. With much embarrassment that I start volume 89. And little did he know how true that final statement would become because Yokoi is a very divisive figure in Japan with many people seeing him as the epitome of patriotism while others see him as a symbol of regression. Either way, this debate somehow made its way into One Piece and the backlash was strong enough to force Shueisha to issue a public apology. In the author's comment section of One Piece volume 89, which went on sale June 4th, there was an inconsiderate message. The editors together with the author regret our actions. In the future, we will take greater care in such matters. And as a result, the author comment, of course, never made it into the English edition of the volume. And instead, you were just greeted with a delightful picture of Luffy, which is probably how One Piece is best kept. For a fan-based specific controversy, now let's touch on pre versus post time skip Frankie. Now, I must admit, before I started making YouTube videos, I had no idea how much of an issue this apparently was, but people have incredibly strong opinions on Frankie with quite a proportion of people believing that Frankie's design was completely ruined post time skip, whilst others such as myself believe it is a major improvement. And to be perfectly honest, I now have a lot of trouble looking at pre time skip Frankie because to me, he is just kind of bland in comparison. I really love our super giant mecha man, but I will say that I am definitely in the minority here because I conducted a poll on this matter and it would seem that the fan base have an approximately 60, 40 split in favor of pre time skip Frankie. And in the comments of said poll, most people mentioned that it's because of the hair. They essentially just want the old school Frankie Ace Ventura hairstyle back, which is fair, I suppose. But these Frankie design arguments can become surprisingly heated, almost bordering Zoro versus Sanji territory. It's kind of insane, but this will be something of an enduring controversy for the rest of the series I imagine. Unless there's another time skip and Frankie gets an even newer design that either everyone loves or everyone hates. You know, a unifying third factor, one way or the other. Moving onwards though, I want to touch on what I would refer to as a phantom controversy, something that is widely accepted, but not actually true. So I suppose a better term would probably be conspiracy theory, but this has to do with a certain Pell. This man along with other P named figures is infamous for not doing something very, very important. And that important thing was dying. Pell lifted a bomb designed to destroy the entirety of Alabama, took the blaster point blank range and survived because of reasons. The only one I've ever even come close to accepting is that Falcons are technically the fastest animals in the world, but only when it comes to diving speed. So maybe very, very, maybe he got out of the way in time, but still, no, that is ridiculous. However, if someone asks why Pell survived on your average one piece discussionary forum, you will inevitably run into the answer that it was because of 9-11, which was admittedly an event that occurred very, very close to the chapter where Pell's sacrifice happened, which was chapter 208, released on November 18th, 2001. So there's this general idea floating out there that Otis storytelling here was considered insensitive, received backlash and generated controversy. And so in response, Oda and his editors made the decision to keep Pell alive, which was revealed in chapter 217, released in February, 2002. Is this thought plausible? Yes, absolutely. Is it in any way confirmed? No, absolutely not. People will very mysteriously claim that Oda or Shuaisha has made a statement regarding the matter, but this is not the case. What's happened here is that someone on the internet has believed the hearsay of someone else on the internet who has taken someone else's internet theory as canon and so on and so forth. It is effectively a web of misinformation. So this is a legitimate non-troversy, which is kind of an oxymoron, but I thought I did need to address it because it does come up a lot. And if anyone can offer me proof, then I would love to see it, but I don't think it exists. Moving on though, let's talk about a comma because this is an ongoing controversy and it will probably continue all the way until the end of time, but specifically regarding how Oda chooses to portray queer and trans people, which are these generally fairly hideous and terrifying designs clad in pretty, pretty dresses. In addition to the visual portrayal, they're also frequently and almost exclusively used for gags with a few massively prominent exceptions, of course. Bon Clay and Poryo Ivankov and Inazuma, to be precise. In terms of a comma or new comma, these are pretty phenomenal characters that do manage to break the mold of their design. That is not true for most of them though and your standard or comma will be a hairy-legged five o'clock shadow-clad joke. And also they will very, very often border that line of being a sexual predator. And to be honest, I don't know what the reaction is in Japan but Western fans often get taken aback by the comma. With that said, in recent years, Oda has made an effort to portray more legitimate trans characters like Kiku, for example. But I suppose even that comes with controversies of its own within the fan base and people refusing to refer to Kiku as she, even though every other character in the series does. And I'm sure that this video is going to receive a flood of comments just because I said that because that's what happens. That's the internet. And I should also say that there is another controversial figure in the series in this regard who I was planning on covering in this video, that they are currently a manga exclusive character. So I'm going to hold off on that because the debate is bound to reignite once they are finally animated. In any case, next up, we have a pretty interesting one. This is the very recent controversy that I alluded to in the intro, which involves the editors of One Piece. So in the manga, Real Machira Oda is of course the author of One Piece, but he does have creative and business-related input from three people currently, being the manga editors, Takano and Iwasaki, as well as the media editor, Naito, who was a former manga editor as well. So why is any of this information important? Well, because these guys are as much of a public face as One Piece is at Chura Oda himself, and they frequently make appearances in media as well as create content for the official One Piece YouTube channel and even host live streams, generally celebrating One Piece in one way or another. And that last part, well, that's how they got in a little bit of trouble this time around because the editors were hosting a live stream to promote the 1000 Logs Project, I believe, which is a very cool thing and well worth checking out. However, in what can only be described as a very unfortunate stream, whilst they were showing the website off, we also saw some of the browsing history from one of the editors, which included a gasp pornographic website, one which features a word that can be tricky to say on YouTube without triggering the bots, but it starts with a hen and ends in a tie. And we've censored the address out for this video, but rest assured for the sake of research and nothing else, I have thoroughly investigated the material on this website and I have come to the conclusion that it is definitely porn. Interestingly enough, though, believe it or not, this is not the real problem here. The main issue at play is that this was not an official porn emporium, rather it was a website that hosted illegally distributed scan lations. Oh no, that's pretty ironic for someone working at a manga publishing company reading pirated scans of other manga. So it was a one-two punch of controversy and Shueisha responded immediately by taking the stream down, privating the video and citing technical issues. And there has been no update ever since. And I do just want to be clear, I will never judge anyone based on, shall we put this their content preferences? But due to how hawkish Shueisha is regarding DMCA takedowns, I will certainly take this moment to revel in the fact that even their employees read scan lations. Yeah, the hypocrisy is pretty phenomenal. Meanwhile, if I even post a single panel from their official releases for fair use purposes, I am putting this entire channel at risk. So there's that. But as for another intriguing controversy, let's take a trip to Turkey, which to the best of my knowledge is the only country in the world that has actually banned One Piece, specifically the One Piece anime, I should say. The series ran in Turkey for about 52 episodes before it was abruptly taken off air by the Radio and Television Supreme Council. And the reasoning was very simple. It was because of smoking. The council took issue with cigarette and cigar use by Sanji and smoker respectively. And thus they mercilessly banned the anime from ever being shown on television in Turkey. Which to be fair, I could absolutely see happening in Australia, America, the UK and any other location that had to suffer through the four kids dub. I mean, Sanji's cigarettes weren't turned into lollipops for no reason. Their ears and always will be a very real concern about promoting smoking to children. And in fact, even One Piece's intended age demographic of early to late teenagers, that would still be a concern. So four kids didn't censor the smoking. I'm certain that the One Piece anime would have been banned in many English speaking countries as well. If anything, it really does make me wonder what the Turkish dub producers were doing, you know, leaving it in in the first place. That's, that's foolish. With that said, the One Piece manga is still available in Turkey. Although apparently even that had some problems, lots of delays caused by needing to translate sound effects into Turkish that didn't have this pragmatic equivalent in the language, still at least Turkish fans can read the glorious source material. But if you're interested in looking into some more One Piece controversies, then I'd highly recommend my initial video on the topic because there's some pretty crazy stuff in there as well. Meanwhile, please do leave your thoughts on these controversies in the comments below or even join my Discord server. But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.