Representations of Sexuality in Eiichiro Oda's One Piece

The paper analyzes Eiichiro Oda's One Piece and its depiction of sexuality and LGBT characters. The author puts forth that this representation is not only a positive representation, but is also important for the representation of LGBT in future anime and manga. In the first chapter, the author describes the history of male-male sexuality in Japan, starting from its recorded inception in writing, continuing into its proliferation in the Tokugawa period, and its declining in the Meiji period. This section highlights the major changes of male-male sexuality in Japan. The second chapter focuses on the latter half of the twentieth century, as LGBT began to take a new identity and a different kind of scrutiny by the public. The chapter continues through the decades as new terms are introduced and popularized to describe LGBT people. The chapter also describes some of the genres of male-male sexuality that became popular at the time. The third chapter is a focus on the title work: One Piece. In this chapter, the author analyzes several LGBT characters and their roles within the story. The author finds that the characters are developed thoroughly in contrast with most stereotypes in other works and in some ways reflect on Japanese society's treatment of LGBT. In the paper's conclusion the author examines another popular work directly influenced by One Piece that also contains LGBT characters. These characters also diverge from common stereotypes of LGBT characters, indicating a trend in popular works of depicting LGBT characters in a positive manner. The paper ultimately comes to the conclusion that this trend will continue in the future of anime and manga.