Discussion One Piece people are dumb

[Deleted member 169696]

I just read Ace's novel by Boichi. Not sure if all of it should be considered 100% canon, but I suppose so.

Anyways, there's this guy in Deuce's flashback who says that there's no such thing as giants.

And then there are people who still doubt the existence of devil fruits.

This is a world where the Marineford War was broadcasted to so many islands it's fascinating how people wouldn't know what a devil fruit is or doubt that they exist, or that giants exist...

They have newspapers... Don't they like inform their readers on things such as who has what power?

I consider this to be a huge plothole, unless someone can explain this inconsistency to me... How come in some regions their knowledge is so limited, but in other places people seem to be much more informed. They read the same newspaper... Don't they?

 

[Fox666]

The war was broadcasted to Shabondy, however most of the world didn't see it in first hand.

Is it weird that people don't believe on Devil Fruits, having never seen any ability?

Even in the real world, the newspaper is full of stories about supernatural abilities.

 

[Nie Li]

You've gotten too used to Grand Line. Think back at the beginning of the series when everyone was astonished from meeting a DF user and freaked out at a man made of rubber.

They knew close to nothing about the Grand Line, their unique islands, especies and the powers that are so common in there. All about it was shrouded in mystery and legend and people just went on with their normal lives without being affected by yonkos, logias or giants.

 

[kkck]

It is a bit weird but to be fair devil fruits appear to be relatively unusual and by all appearances people outside the grand line can spend their entire lives without even seeing one or an user. Meanwhile the grand line and new world are places where fruit users (and COC users) gather. Add to that, OP does not exactly have social media and their long distance communication relies on snails.... And the one newspaper in circulation can be manipulated by the world government.

 

[thedude]

The SH's didn't know about giants until Little Garden if I remember it right. It's just people in their little islands far away from the real pirates on the grand line don't worry about those things, think a lot of them are just myths and legends.

Hell, we live in a time where people don't believe COVID is real...although I guess I would say they were stupid.

 

[Deleted member 169696]

Thanks for replying.

The thing is though, even if people outside of Grand Line are less likely to come across things like DFs or giants or whatever... They still read the same newspaper. And I find it super hard to believe that people at the newspaper would ignore such crucial information as a pirate's DF... And sometimes they even include photographs from the event, so everyone should know about all of that grandline-ish stuff.

Skypeia or Wano is still understandable, but the rest of the world...?

 

[hokageji]

I think the novel is Canon, and shows a lot of consistency within the OP world. One thing I failed to catch was whether the location shown was east blue, or was it grand line...

Anyways, even during the series East Blue saga, people showed surprise on Luffy's ability. Like when he stretched, i remember someone (probably Alvida or Coby) said something like " so DFs do exists... So by that, Deuce not knowing isn't that out there.

Also, the events of the novel happened before Marinfold, which confirmed the existence of the continent pullers. However, the fact that Deuce learned all these things from a book suggests he could be reading a book based on Montblanc Norland, considering how the book is referred to as a book of lies.

The papers probably only cover the heroics of the navy, and the WG. And its not in the world government's interest to encourage ordinary people travelling the world, so they probably cover news local to the area, like the specific blue.

 

[TitaniumOxide]

Let's compare the people of One Piece to our world. There are people who believe in folklores. People believe in ghosts. People believe in fake news. These are like tooth fairies and santas coming down the chimney type shit but for adults to buy into. Only difference here is that we have every tool from the internet to libraries to scholars who can independently verify what is truth and what isn't.

Now imagine you live in scattered islands with crazy weather and geographies in between with no internet. Information will be slower. Information can and will be altered as they still are today but in One Piece it seems worse. The person with enough influence can negotiate what is shown on the newspapers. In short, it is easy to keep the different populations on different islands ignorant to different things in the world. This doesn't necessarily make them dumb...it makes them ignorant but not entirely by choice. I imagine some islands never get any news simply because the news seagulls will not survive the hazardous trips. Their info may come only from traders who know special specific ways to get onto the island. Wano cannot be the only island with such physical barriers.

 

[Deleted member 169696]

I'm surprised actually to see how many of you defend this story. It's not perfect and this aspect of the story wasn't really well thought about by Oda.

They spread the same news worldwide. It's impossible to omit certain information when you cover all kinds of events in the New World.

Akainu vs Aokiji changing the climate of an island? How can you rationalize that? Without mentioning the dfs.

Even people unfamiliar with the concept of dfs should see these events with a bit of scepticism.

How can you publish a newspaper for decades covering all sorts of events and not have your readers know what a df is. Or whether or not giants exist.

This is nonsense.

People should stop worshipping Oda and calling him goda which is blasphemous to say the least.

In my honest opinion this story isn't getting better with time. It's becoming more of a cult where people would defend its flaws no matter what.

 

[M3J]

I think you're reading too much into it. Stuff like that is for a reason - Oda at the start wanted to make us think devil fruit powers were rare so when the crew did come up against enemies with fruit power, we'd think they'd be challenged immensely, especially after seeing how good Luffy is at fighting with his fruit. When Oda had his citizens think giants didn't exist, it was to make us go "holy shit, they do exist!" and possibly add suspense as they'd be assumed to be powerful. etc etc

Unless you're talking about during Ace's novel. Still makes sense because a lot of these people might not have gone outside or experienced much. It's similar to how many Americans are ignorant of things out of USA because they haven't traveled outside or cared to learn anything about other countries. Why would they when they're not going anywhere?

 

[Grandmaster Woro]

I just read Ace's novel by Boichi. Not sure if all of it should be considered 100% canon, but I suppose so.

Anyways, there's this guy in Deuce's flashback who says that there's no such thing as giants.

And then there are people who still doubt the existence of devil fruits.

This is a world where the Marineford War was broadcasted to so many islands it's fascinating how people wouldn't know what a devil fruit is or doubt that they exist, or that giants exist...

They have newspapers... Don't they like inform their readers on things such as who has what power?

I consider this to be a huge plothole, unless someone can explain this inconsistency to me... How come in some regions their knowledge is so limited, but in other places people seem to be much more informed. They read the same newspaper... Don't they?

yeah the newspaper and the people are not inconsistent
for instance, ulti and queen seemed to not even know who luffy is. Even though he is the guy who just beat the second strongest fighter in big mom pirates

 

[Fox666]

yeah the newspaper and the people are not inconsistent
for instance, ulti and queen seemed to not even know who luffy is. Even though he is the guy who just beat the second strongest fighter in big mom pirates

Wano is an isolated country, so it's not weird that even the Beast Pirates aren't well informed.

That said, maybe Queen knew, and just didn't cared about a bounty slightly higher than his, or even knew Morgan's article was exaggerated.

 

[goldb]

The thing is though, even if people outside of Grand Line are less likely to come across things like DFs or giants or whatever... They still read the same newspaper. And I find it super hard to believe that people at the newspaper would ignore such crucial information as a pirate's DF... And sometimes they even include photographs from the event, so everyone should know about all of that grandline-ish stuff.

Skypeia or Wano is still understandable, but the rest of the world...?

You're talking about 2 separate things here; distribution and content.

In terms of content (specifically your example of devil fruits) I don't know if it's something they ignore, as the pirate's devil fruit itself isn't always the news but their actions are (unless they used said devil fruit ability as a catalyst for their action). But sure let's say they even include each pirate and their devil fruit in their paper, they would have to capture these pirates in the moments they've displayed their abilities and also be able to name it; I'm not sure how rare the book of devil fruits are but I imagine they'd at least be able to have a few copies laying around their libraries. As you've said we have seen photos in the WE newspaper, so those that read these are aware of some pirates and the world as informed by the articles.

The larger issue though isn't the information published in the newspaper but its actual distribution. In that it doesn't seem to reach everyone. As you've also noted, based on location it seems some islands are too far removed from the routes the news coo take ( Skypeia for example) but also there seems to be a filter of who the newspapers are delivered to in certain locations (Wano is a known example as Kaido restricts news from outside reaching citizens, by extension I'm not sure how well informed even his own people are. WCI has its own paper but again, Big Mom and crew are informed of outside events, so I'd guess the WE is also filtered here to just her and her family/crew).

In instances where we know newspapers are reaching certain islands, we just don't know much about the distribution process; how does one sign up? we know it's not free as we once saw Nami pay a newscoo from aboard the Merry(IIRC), so does that mean you have to separately pay to receive a newspaper when they're doing their rounds if you're a pirate at sea?
We've also seen instances of countries where newspapers are just dropped from the sky, so obviously not all individual citizens are paying for those individually, so again how does the country sign up/pay for it?
If the WG can pay to alter information in newspapers, can they also stop the flow of news to certain parts of the world to keep them ignorant? For example, are countries not affiliated to the WG not receive newspapers?

So to me, there's a lot more to it than just saying people are dumb or ignorant. Because if you don't read the news and you've only seen things in books, it's easy to see how dismisive one can be about things that seem "larger than life". In most cases people might receive newspapers but just not give a shit about a lot of the content in it, I certainly don't read everything in a newspaper. Hopefully Oda addresses some of these things either in the story or SBS. It's more to just satifsy my own knowledge of the world within One Piece than it does affect my reading experience.

 

[Deleted member 169696]

@goldb I don't necessarily think that I'm talking about two separate things.

Morgans surely knows a lot and his reporters are quite sneaky and cunning to photograph all of the strawhats in very peculiar ways and in unusual situations.

DFs and giants are two things that people from the Paradise and especially the New World know very well about. Not only that. They are part of the Marine forces.

There's no way they would omit the fact that Oars Jr. participated in the war. I just can't see that. It sounds ridiculous. Maybe I'm missing something. So correct me if I'm wrong. Just doesn't seem to make sense to me.

And given how well aware the people in the Grand Line are about the dfs it should be very obvious to many if not all reporters that strong people like WB and/or Marine Admirals have df powers.

Kizaru was shooting laser beams all over the Sabaody Archipelago which was full of reporters. I just can't see how this wouldn't make news or why would anyone prevent this from being published.

After all they couldn't stop Morgans from publishing the article about Luffy... I guess sometimes the WG intervenes, sometimes it doesn't. So through the course of several decades you would imagine people would be quite knowledgeable about such things, but no.

And the newspaper isn't all that expensive either. Nami paid like 100-500 berries max. Which is roughly $0.90-4.50.

And each time the SH get new bounties we see how their friends in different places react. Including the East Blue. They can't possibly buy a newspaper by an accident and just accidentally come across the news. They are buying it regularly.

So it raises a question as to why at the time the story begins we see so many confused reactions from some of the pirates and citizens of the OP world as to what a df is or whether or not they exist.

Again, it's hard to justify this plothole imo.

Big events make news. And we've had plenty through the course of the story. And it's been just two years. Can you imagine how many newspapers they've issued before that? A lot.

They can't possibly talk about big events and big names in the pirate community without bringing up their abilities. Especially when it's suuuper obvious as with WB.

They can't avoid it every single time just so that some people in far off regions could see some things as mysterious. Why would they care about that? The WG doesn't seem to worry whatsoever about whether or not people know about giants or dfs.

It should have been common knowledge right from the beginning of the story. I guess Oda had other plans for how he will write One Piece in the beginning...

And as for the parallels between the real world and the world of OP. Yeah, some people are more ignorant than other... But not on that scale imo.

I mean in OP they all read the newspaper. And it's the same publisher... Like you've read about giants and then you wouldn't go to your neighbor and tell him about it?

Plus even some people in the NW seem to have problems with comprehending df abilities. Like those bounty hunters that tried to shoot Kizaru and were surprised that they couldn't hit him. Or was it a filler?

Anyways, it's easy to say that some people are just ignorant and that they don't want to write about certain topics in the newspaper. But it's not that easy to explain it logically.

 

[Grandmaster Woro]

Wano is an isolated country, so it's not weird that even the Beast Pirates aren't well informed.

That said, maybe Queen knew, and just didn't cared about a bounty slightly higher than his, or even knew Morgan's article was exaggerated.

newspaper still go to onigashima. This is why kaido knew what luffy did in WCI

 

[M3J]

Plus even some people in the NW seem to have problems with comprehending df abilities. Like those bounty hunters that tried to shoot Kizaru and were surprised that they couldn't hit him. Or was it a filler?

DId they know him or his power? They might know about Kizaru but not his power, devil fruit, or whatnot.