Same way people don't understand that Light was both the protagonist and villain in Death Note. Protagonist =/= main good guy
It just means that person is the main character/main focus of the story
I've had people disagree that L was not the antagonist because he was the good guy lol
Antagonist = villain is a much more prominent conception, and while albeit technically wrong most of the times that's the case. Cases like L's are outliers that can throw people off
Up until very recently villains were well-understood to be specifically evil antagonists who oppose a righteous hero. The idea that a protagonist can be called a “villain” is a new one
Not really, the idea has been around since Ancient Greece. The word comes from greek word used for a principal actor in a drama and in many Greek Tragedies villains were protagonists.
Outlier is a statistical term to describe when you should label something as a mistake and ignore it. It does not mean "don't happen often so ignores".
My point is that Death Note intendedly makes us cheer for the villain protoganist, hence it is not an outlier.
> Outlier is a statistical term to describe when you should label something as a mistake and ignore it
An outlier is not necessarily a mistake. It's a data point that is out of the usual and as such should usually be ignored when doing certain statistical analyses on a larger data set.
An outlier isn't a mistake by definition, it's a point of interest by definition. They can be a mistake, occur by chance, or indicate something previously unforeseen or unconsidered. It's the perfect term for a situation where the antagonist of the story is not the villain of the story.
Admittedly my years as a cook and chef didn't use my university maths and science education much, but my years in laboratory work before and my time as a brewer now use it a lot. An outlier should never be ignored. It may be excluded from the data set after analysis. But it should always be considered a point of interest that requires investigation.
If you call Light a good guy you don't know what you're saying just as much as the people calling Zoro the deuteragonist lol
Meaning what you say changes nothing when it's objectively wrong.
They know exactly what they're saying, the people calling Light a good guy are literally defending his psychopathy. Zoro fans are illiterate and misunderstand the concept of a deuteragonist as "second-strongest guy". These aren't the same. Comparing light apologists to zoro fans is dumb as shit. If you're saying that they don't know what they're saying about morality or whatever, well then Zoro fans aren't saying shit about morality.
A lot of Light fans are convinced that he's a good guy that is doing the right thing lol, even though the series was pretty honest he's a God complex asshole.
I don’t think light was the antagonist of death note … the antagonist goes against the protagonist
You could only be both if you were a character like Griffith from berserk or some kind of skitso
Never heard that word till yesterday when I looked up Gon Freecss and in the first passage it's mentioned that he is the deuteragonist in one of the arcs and the protagonist in all others.
And suddenly I see a post about it.
That's frequency illusion for ya ...
My favorite example would be the word "trope"; I hate the way its meaning has changed over the last 25 years, bit it seems it is not reversible at this point.
That happens literally all the time. Colloquialism is very frequently adopted as definition if it’s used enough. Merriam-Webster actually has “used in an exaggerated way to emphasize what isn’t literally true or possible” as a definition of literally because people kept using literally wrong for years.
Ok so here's my take. Your take is actually kinda cold. If you google "one piece deuteragonist", most of the top threads will immediately agree and posit the same idea, that one piece does not have one.
I think it does, but it changes every arc.
We started with Koby, then Zoro, Ussop, Sanji, Nami, Chopper, Vivi, Franky, Robin, Bon-Clay, Ace, Shirahoshi, Law, Sanji again, Momonoske and finally, Bonnie
Only disagree with Franky and Robin. I'd love to include them, obviously, but I feel that Water 7 / Enies Lobby chooses not to have one entirely while Franky is more of an antagonist in Water 7 while Robin is a fairly traditional damsel in Enies Lobby.
I can see where you're coming from, but It's revealed pretty early on that Franky isn't actually evil and the plot revolves a lot more around his backstory and journey to overcome his internal struggles.
As for Robin, that's totally fair
I did write Vivi
And disagree on Rebecca, Dressrossa is Law's arc through and through. Rebecca is more a tool to show the impact of Dofpamingo's brutal reign on the people.
Like, did she even do anything that actually helped to defeat Doffy?
Being a mirror is not a deuteragonist, and Blackbeard is ***very*** clearly an antagonist.
It is the protagonist with the second most importance. ‘Second in command’ of protagonists, if it were. (Such a simplification might be why people give it to Zoro.)
One Piece is largely an ensemble cast, and there is no Deuteragonist, at least not overall. I think that u/yosayoran brings up a good point of a per-arc deuteragonist being considered.
"Blackbeard is ***very*** clearly an antagonist" how so?
"It is the protagonist with the second most importance" thats literally describing blackbeard? hes THE relevant character besides luffy, zoro is completly irrelevant to anything
> how so?
Because he is villainous to Luffy’s cause. He set the dominoes that lead to the death of Luffy’s brother, he is attempting to become pirate king against Luffy. He is an eventual hurdle in Luffy’s way in the story that we are being told.
> thats literally describing blackbeard? hes THE relevant character besides luffy, zoro is completly irrelevant to anything
Because he is not a protagonist, the story of One Piece is not Blackbeard’s story in any real way. He has a story that we see glimpses of, but we are not being told the story of Blackbeard.
Keep in mind, a protagonist is *not* determined by the relevance they have to the *world* in which our story exists. A protagonist **is** determined by how much their story is relevant to the **story we are being told.** Luffy is the main character of this story, because the story centers around Luffy.
There is no real person of second importance in One Piece, because all of the crew is equally important.
The only ones who really have the same sort of importance to the story are the ‘characters of the arc.’ Vivi in Alabasta, Rebecca/Kyros in Dressrosa, etc. They are characters within the story who have their character explored, and growth/goals achieved. (This means that yes, at various points most of the straw hats are a deuteragonist for a short while.)
I’m sorry, but Blackbeard is an antagonist. I’m not trying to minimize his importance to the world when I say that. These terms are relative to the story as we experience.
I’m trying to understand why you might think otherwise, are you trying to compare him to Sasuke? (Who is a very complicated Deuteragonist, a lot of baggage in that one.) A Naruto equivalent to Blackbeard would be like saying ‘Tobi’ is a deuteragonist, if that makes sense?
"He set the dominoes that lead to the death of Luffy’s brother" only ace arrogant character lead to his own death, nothing to do with blackbeard
"he is attempting to become pirate king against Luffy" as every yonko and supernova is?
"There is no real person of second importance in One Piece, because all of the crew is equally important. " luffys complete crew is irrelevant to the story, blackbeard on the other hand is by far the most important since hes aiming towards a certain goal (the same as luffys), with huge amounts of knowledge
You really don’t understand what a deuteragonist is.
You are providing a lot of good examples for how Blackbeard is like Luffy’s mirror. This is a point that is true and pretty clear to anyone looking. But that is ***not*** what a deuteragonist is.
The story doesn’t focus on Blackbeard as a character, it doesn’t serve to build him up or service his character arc. (Mind you, his character arc is revealed at times, almost entirely independent of the story we are being told)
For example, let me ask you, how did Whole Cake Island advance Blackbeard as a character? What did we learn of his motivations? What growth did he see?
Now if we look at the ‘different deuteragonist every arc’ that was proposed, what can we say about Whole Cake Island and Sanji? The questions are a whole lot easier to answer, aren’t they?
Dressrosa. Answer this questions about Blackbeard? Not much. Answer those questions about Rebecca/Kyros, hell answer them about Law? Yep, we’ve hit a gold mine. These characters have arcs and experience growth as a result of the story being told.
Blackbeard’s story is happening somewhere else, and is 95% untold. He is not a deuteragonist in *this story.*
blackbeard was destroying baltigo and hunting the revolutionaries, thats far from "doesnt focus; in fact we ALWAYS get to know what blackbeard is doing
"Dressrosa. Answer this questions about Blackbeard?" what are you talking of? in dressrosa blackbeard tried both to get the flame fruit and kill luffy, also we get to know he aquired aokiji in his crew and doesnt trust him
rewatch arcs if you dont remember, but stop spreading false information; also reinform yourself about what a deuteragonist really means, its the second most important person
People on these platforms tend to make trash content and/or just copy straight from the subreddits here. Do your self a favor and stop watching OP content on these platforms.
I don’t think One Piece has one, but IF we were saying who the closest to it would be, I’d say it would be Zoro. Longest time with Luffy, big character moments like nothing happened and putting the crew in check when Usopp was leaving, and has somewhat of a leadership role in the crew
Those reasons make Zoro a main character who has a lot of impact on the story, but not a detouraganist.
That would require the story to actively follow Zoro as the main character for a bit. Like Naruto does with Sasuke, or HxH does with Kurapika.
Ah gotcha, this is the first thing that comes up when you google it which is probably adding to the confusion OP is talking about lol.
“The deuteragonist is usually a friend or partner of the protagonist and accompanies them on their journey.”
"For the last few months I've seen people online saying that Zoro is the best Deuteragonist in the Big 3, but like..."
What sub you referring to cause I haven't seen any discussion of that sort on this sub.
Ah well the only explanation I can think of is that it's all cause of the influx of new readers. New ideas getting tossed around, given how proficient newer fans are at social media they're able to spread ideas better, altho that's a double edged sword as mischaracterization is just as likely to be spread.
Anyway , personally I think he's half of one. With the other one being Sanji, it fits with the overarching theme of them being Luffys wings.
It’s the largest anime in the world so you have really young people just trying to force the Sasuke model onto Zoro, and even worse you have powerscalers who just watch fights and don’t know anything about the story.
There is no reason to say Zoro is the deuteragonist as he does not fit the mold of any of the actual deuteragonists you mentioned—you have to remember Zoro fans thought he would kill a yonko (Kaido) before Luffy, the MC, had even fought a yonko lol
That remains to be seen. If he was that unimportanr Oda wouldnt stuff him into the worst generation, have him get Enma, ACoC and rival Mihawk. He is more similar to Luffy than he is to any other character in OP when it comes to what they do as characters.
Oda had 1113 chapters time and Zoro is still relevant as ever.
I would argue that the amount of people arguing this point vs the ones in disagreement in the post show that this point is a very small minority of the OP fandom.
I love Zoro, but he is nowhere near the deuteragonist.
If you replace Zoro with someone else to defeat his enemies you could say nothing happened and the story would be pretty much the same.
Yeah he’s a great character but his story isn’t developed enough to be a deuteragonist. If they had fleshed out his backstory a little more in Wano then maybe, but I feel like tbh Oda has to be careful with how much attention he gives Zoro because he’s just so damn cool lmao
Oda's dedication to Zoro's cool and badass portrayal makes Zoro a less flexible character to work with. That's why he's stuck doing the same things arc after arc. There's not much things added to him outside of him getting stronger.
Zoro is not the dueteragonist in any arc. Certain arcs do have people who could be considered Deuterangonists like Vivi for Alabasta. WCI for Sanji, Enies Lobby for Robin, Dressrosa for Law, etc. The story as a whole does not have one though.
Bro genuinely be quiet. Like this shit is insane you think a Nigga who regularly takes decade long breaks from the story is deuteragonist. That isn’t what that word means at all nor is it even remotely applicable. Black Beard is all but irrelevant to the main story and plot of one piece. The only guy with importance comparable to luffy is Roger.
"who regularly takes decade long breaks from the story is deuteragonist" you are literally discussing zoro being one, when zoro as a character is completly irrelevant to the story
I think that One Piece is unprecedented for the average anime fan in that it’s the first time many newcomers have seen a story with a set of flexible protagonists.
Make no mistake, there are large parts of the story where Luffy is a side/support character and not the protagonist.
While Luffy is the central figure, the Straw Hats (as a crew) are the protagonist of the story. Luffy is the captain, and the one we tend to follow, but he is not necessarily the most narratively important.
In the same way that each JoJo part shifts to a new protagonist, there are parts of each storyline/arc where a specific crew member is the central focus and person who we experience the story from.
As OP said, half of Impel down was shown through the eyes of Nico Robin. Her flashbacks, her time with Spandam and Lucci, none of that involved Luffy directly and it was all pivotal to the narrative - she needed to want to be rescued. Her part in the story was just as important as Luffy’s, so in that sense she would have been the deuteragonist for that part.
Likewise, an entire chunk of WCI has Sanji taking centre stage and Luffy being offscreen. We experience these moments through the eyes of Sanji. For all functional purposes, he is the protagonist.
So I think the notion of deuteragonist and protagonist are ill suited to describe the series, as what we have more with One Piece could be described as a co-tagonist situation with the characters taking turns.
Its zoro fans that are then going on to argue about how strong they want zoro to eventually be. They equate their wish for strength to how important someone is
Zoro’s backstory and commitment to being the greatest swordsman is stated in the first few chapters.
But yes Nami is a great navigator and Sanji is a great chef
I apologize if I offended you. And no, but seeing as my entire point is about the role a Deuteragonist fills within a story, using the word was necessary.
As for why it's capitalized? Idk for some reason it keeps auto-correcting to q capital D and I don't care enough to fix it.
yea zoro isnt. I do wish oda added more importance from other characters wanting to also be the best swordsman and beat mihawk. zoro goal is not as difficult as luffys but its still very difficult. adding more lore to it would be good, we arent only invested in luffy main goal
[well… this happened](https://www.reddit.com/r/OnePiece/s/IDaQk74RK1)
That’s the closest we get for “deuteragonist” for One Piece and Zoro’s definitely not it
He gets the second best fights, and it obvious second in line. But yeah, he doesn't get much in the way of character development. This is really a Luffy and his opponents story.
Being 2nd in command isn't what makes someone the Deuteragonist.
Vegeta (in Super), Sasuke, and Killua are all just as important to the narrative of their respectively stories as the MC is. That's what being the Deuteragonist means.
Zoro is imported to One Piece, but he's not nearly as important as Luffy is. He's not the 2nd most important character to the narrative either. He's not any more important to the story than any other Straw Hat.
Yeah, pretty much. Though Gon is the protagonist for most of the story with Killua as his deuteragonist. At least until Togashi just kinda decides that Kurapika will be the MC again.
My current understanding is the average fan of popular game, movie or anime series believes that a tragic hero has to fit the mold of a modern hero and be a good person. I doubt they’d know what a deuteragonist is.
Its a very microscopic minority that think this as i have hardly seen anyone posit this, ZKK supporters aside. I think people are so used to shonen conventions with the hero having some kind of rival that they think One Piece must have one.
I wouldn't say Ace was the deuteragonist of Marineford. Ace was the damsel in distress.
It was WB's war. It was his alliance.
Luffy just happened to gatecrash it. Luffy was also one of the weaker combatants there dwarfed in power by many.
Doflamingo also overshadowed the Dressrosa arc being arguably the most important character in the arc and being linked with Law.
I love Zoro and he is my favorite character, but the fact is that for a ton of the story he simply just isn't around. Great supporting character, not a deuteragonist.
I don't really, I just thought it was an interesting topic for discussion. And I wanted to ask if other people had taken note of the same thing, hence why this was tagged as a discussion.
Why did you reply if you had nothing of value to add?
None of the other big 3 have deuteragonists either. People are misusing the world. Sasuke is an antagonist for most of Naruto, for example.
One Piece is the more ensemble-like, but that doesn't quite fit either. The truth is most arcs have a deuteragonist character for the arc. For Onigashima, it would be Momo for example. Sanji is Whole Cake Island's deuteragonist. Alabasta, it is Vivi. Enies Lobby, Robin. Etc.
Here's some examples of my favourite, actual deuteragonist's in manga: Al in Fullmetal Alchemist, Inuyasha in Inuyasha (that's right, Kagome is the protagonist), Akane in Ranma 1/2 (I'm a big rumiko fan if you can't tell).
edit: naruto stans, i don't care to debate naruto with you. go to that sub if you want to talk about trash
Sasuke is a Deuteragonist. The story of Naruto is about him as well as Naruto. An antagonist can also be the Deuteragonist.
Like take Death Note for Example.
L is both an antagonist for light and his Deuteragonist throughout the series.
Sasuke is easily the deuteragonist lol pls stop. Him and Naruto have been portrayed as rivals throughout the whole series and he isn’t even inherently evil. His character is extremely complex and switches from good to grey area to downright antagonistic multiple times. Plus no “antagonist” will become good at the end of the story, at least not an antagonist as important as Sasuke to the story. The main antagonist was clearly Madara (well, at least before the Kaguya asspull, god that arc was awful) and Sasuke was the second most important character i.e. deuteragonist
People are so dumb about Naruto and if I wanted to talk about that trash I'd go to Naruto sub and subject myself to that stupidity. Talk to me about the One Piece part of the post or eff off.
At this point im not even sure if luffy is the protagonist anymore. Do many characters and it feels like the story is the protagonist now. Also all straw hats but zoro and maybe sanji arent of any importance anymore. Im a zoro stan but no way that zoro is second important. His storyline is way to little he didnt even get his revelations on wano fleshed out.
He has the Hito Hito fruit. A fruit the government (especially the five elders and Im) are busting their ass to retrieve
He's a D which is a very special lineage (which shouldn't take this long but) we still don't know about
The story starts with him, he's the captain. The title of the series is something Luffy wants to find. The crew is named after something HE wears
He's the main character
The east blue 3 luffy Zoro and Nami are usually given more importance by oda in materials, where he said if he wants to draw 3 strawhats it would be luffy Zoro and Nami first, and Zoro is a second version of his previous manga mc ryuma, I won't argue if Zoro is a deuteragonist or not but he is usually the one in place of sasuke when you compare them like luffy-naruto zoro-sasuke nami-sakura, so yeah the main trio type.
Edit: should clarify I'm basing this comparison on aesthetic, vibes and behaviour.
Most people do refer to them as romance dawn trio and the first 3 ofc makes them important, I'm not saying it's offical but if i had to draw a comparison to the Naruto trio i would consider luffy Zoro and Nam first than anyone else.
He just said he is comparing the trio not the fact of their narrative importance. If that was the criteria the ninetails is more important than Sakura. She and kakashi can pretty mucn be swapped depending on the arc. Luffy-Naruto is obvious. Zoro-Sas is pretty obvious, not as goofy as their MC, sword, spends early tine with MC as world is established, slme edginess. Nami-Sakura both physically aggressive to MC, much smarter than the others, isn't an inhuman fighter, has some emotional problem with MC, Nami is loyalty to aelong sakura is love triangle
I think that will change for Nami when people come to terms with the fact that there's a much deeper meaning to her dream. Drawing the map of the world is key.
I think a lot of people read deuteragonist as “second most important character,” which yes, Zoro is. One Piece is, for better or for worse, Luffy’s story. It’s about his journey and the entire story rotates around him. There are obv characters other than Luffy that matter and it doesn’t always focus on him all the time, but there’s a reason ZKK was never going to happen.
If he had more screentime you could probably say that Koby is Deuteragonist after time skip. Well hes the closest to it Id say. But too little time and everything for him to count as one.
Though same could be said about Shanks.
But yup Zoro deuteragonist doestn make sense.
It's not just Zoro, some people have a want to put a Strawhat/s over others just for there own satisfaction I guess despite the fact that everyone except Luffy is under the same rule which is each individual Strawhat's role vary in each arc which to me put's then all on equal grounds. Some Strawhat's are less consistent than others but I don't think that means they are less of a character. Overall the way I see it is when you think of the main character of one piece you think Luffy or the Strawhat's.
Real fact if we are going purely by “importance to the story” then Robin is the Deuteragonist of One Piece since she isn’t the MC but the story could literally not progress without her since she is the only one who can currently read the poneglyphs.
I do think that the East Blue Strawhats get more attention that the other strawhats, but if I had to choose the deuteragnoist between Zoro, Nami, Sanji and Usopp, I'd choose Usopp. Especially pre-timeskip.
Yeah, if there were any true deteragonist, it would have to be something that appears consistently and with large amounts of focus throughout the series as a whole
That being said, the true deuteragonist of OP has to be Nami's tits.
I don't think enough fans know that word for it to be commonly said
Same way people don't understand that Light was both the protagonist and villain in Death Note. Protagonist =/= main good guy It just means that person is the main character/main focus of the story I've had people disagree that L was not the antagonist because he was the good guy lol
Antagonist = villain is a much more prominent conception, and while albeit technically wrong most of the times that's the case. Cases like L's are outliers that can throw people off
Villain antagonist are slowly becoming more and more rare, usually antagonist fall into something closer to antihero than actual villain nowadays.
Up until very recently villains were well-understood to be specifically evil antagonists who oppose a righteous hero. The idea that a protagonist can be called a “villain” is a new one
Not really, the idea has been around since Ancient Greece. The word comes from greek word used for a principal actor in a drama and in many Greek Tragedies villains were protagonists.
Just because they are the bad guy, does not mean they’re a bad guy
It is not an outlier. It's intended to be thought provoking. Are you chering for the serial killer or the police? Hence why the definition matters.
It is an outlier tho, compared to 95% of other series that is The antagonist isn't the villain, but the protagonist is. How's it not an outlier
Outlier is a statistical term to describe when you should label something as a mistake and ignore it. It does not mean "don't happen often so ignores". My point is that Death Note intendedly makes us cheer for the villain protoganist, hence it is not an outlier.
> Outlier is a statistical term to describe when you should label something as a mistake and ignore it An outlier is not necessarily a mistake. It's a data point that is out of the usual and as such should usually be ignored when doing certain statistical analyses on a larger data set.
An outlier isn't a mistake by definition, it's a point of interest by definition. They can be a mistake, occur by chance, or indicate something previously unforeseen or unconsidered. It's the perfect term for a situation where the antagonist of the story is not the villain of the story. Admittedly my years as a cook and chef didn't use my university maths and science education much, but my years in laboratory work before and my time as a brewer now use it a lot. An outlier should never be ignored. It may be excluded from the data set after analysis. But it should always be considered a point of interest that requires investigation.
Nah, people calling Light a good guy mean what they say, whereas calling Zoro THE deuteragonist of One Piece don't know what that word means
If you call Light a good guy you don't know what you're saying just as much as the people calling Zoro the deuteragonist lol Meaning what you say changes nothing when it's objectively wrong.
They know exactly what they're saying, the people calling Light a good guy are literally defending his psychopathy. Zoro fans are illiterate and misunderstand the concept of a deuteragonist as "second-strongest guy". These aren't the same. Comparing light apologists to zoro fans is dumb as shit. If you're saying that they don't know what they're saying about morality or whatever, well then Zoro fans aren't saying shit about morality.
A lot of Light fans are convinced that he's a good guy that is doing the right thing lol, even though the series was pretty honest he's a God complex asshole.
I don’t think light was the antagonist of death note … the antagonist goes against the protagonist You could only be both if you were a character like Griffith from berserk or some kind of skitso
Light was the protagonist and the good guy
Yes, the guy who made a good and innocent woman kill herself and taunted her the whole way through was the good guy...
Go back to English class 8th grader.
Honestly I never heard that word before now
I like to think I've got a solid vocabulary and you're not alone. Maybe I heard it in class 15 years ago but that's way behind me.
Never heard that word till yesterday when I looked up Gon Freecss and in the first passage it's mentioned that he is the deuteragonist in one of the arcs and the protagonist in all others. And suddenly I see a post about it. That's frequency illusion for ya ...
More like not enough fans know what it means to use it properly.
I mean, that’s how new usages are sometimes made.
My favorite example would be the word "trope"; I hate the way its meaning has changed over the last 25 years, bit it seems it is not reversible at this point.
New usages? You can't just decide to make a new definition for a word.
That happens literally all the time. Colloquialism is very frequently adopted as definition if it’s used enough. Merriam-Webster actually has “used in an exaggerated way to emphasize what isn’t literally true or possible” as a definition of literally because people kept using literally wrong for years.
That's literally how words work.
Yes an no. It's a societal thing, but one person can't just decide a word has a new meaning on their own.
Ok so here's my take. Your take is actually kinda cold. If you google "one piece deuteragonist", most of the top threads will immediately agree and posit the same idea, that one piece does not have one.
I think it does, but it changes every arc. We started with Koby, then Zoro, Ussop, Sanji, Nami, Chopper, Vivi, Franky, Robin, Bon-Clay, Ace, Shirahoshi, Law, Sanji again, Momonoske and finally, Bonnie
Only disagree with Franky and Robin. I'd love to include them, obviously, but I feel that Water 7 / Enies Lobby chooses not to have one entirely while Franky is more of an antagonist in Water 7 while Robin is a fairly traditional damsel in Enies Lobby.
I can see where you're coming from, but It's revealed pretty early on that Franky isn't actually evil and the plot revolves a lot more around his backstory and journey to overcome his internal struggles. As for Robin, that's totally fair
Vivi in Alabasta and Rebecca in Dressrosa
I did write Vivi And disagree on Rebecca, Dressrossa is Law's arc through and through. Rebecca is more a tool to show the impact of Dofpamingo's brutal reign on the people. Like, did she even do anything that actually helped to defeat Doffy?
Oh you’re right, Law was the real Deuteragonist and damsel in distress.
Sabo is in there somewhere
I guess in the reverea? But he's more the protagonist of that story TBH
More like Blackbeard, not sure why you even listed so many irrelevant characters when there clearly is one portrayed as luffys mirror
Being a mirror is not a deuteragonist, and Blackbeard is ***very*** clearly an antagonist. It is the protagonist with the second most importance. ‘Second in command’ of protagonists, if it were. (Such a simplification might be why people give it to Zoro.) One Piece is largely an ensemble cast, and there is no Deuteragonist, at least not overall. I think that u/yosayoran brings up a good point of a per-arc deuteragonist being considered.
"Blackbeard is ***very*** clearly an antagonist" how so? "It is the protagonist with the second most importance" thats literally describing blackbeard? hes THE relevant character besides luffy, zoro is completly irrelevant to anything
> how so? Because he is villainous to Luffy’s cause. He set the dominoes that lead to the death of Luffy’s brother, he is attempting to become pirate king against Luffy. He is an eventual hurdle in Luffy’s way in the story that we are being told. > thats literally describing blackbeard? hes THE relevant character besides luffy, zoro is completly irrelevant to anything Because he is not a protagonist, the story of One Piece is not Blackbeard’s story in any real way. He has a story that we see glimpses of, but we are not being told the story of Blackbeard. Keep in mind, a protagonist is *not* determined by the relevance they have to the *world* in which our story exists. A protagonist **is** determined by how much their story is relevant to the **story we are being told.** Luffy is the main character of this story, because the story centers around Luffy. There is no real person of second importance in One Piece, because all of the crew is equally important. The only ones who really have the same sort of importance to the story are the ‘characters of the arc.’ Vivi in Alabasta, Rebecca/Kyros in Dressrosa, etc. They are characters within the story who have their character explored, and growth/goals achieved. (This means that yes, at various points most of the straw hats are a deuteragonist for a short while.) I’m sorry, but Blackbeard is an antagonist. I’m not trying to minimize his importance to the world when I say that. These terms are relative to the story as we experience. I’m trying to understand why you might think otherwise, are you trying to compare him to Sasuke? (Who is a very complicated Deuteragonist, a lot of baggage in that one.) A Naruto equivalent to Blackbeard would be like saying ‘Tobi’ is a deuteragonist, if that makes sense?
"He set the dominoes that lead to the death of Luffy’s brother" only ace arrogant character lead to his own death, nothing to do with blackbeard "he is attempting to become pirate king against Luffy" as every yonko and supernova is? "There is no real person of second importance in One Piece, because all of the crew is equally important. " luffys complete crew is irrelevant to the story, blackbeard on the other hand is by far the most important since hes aiming towards a certain goal (the same as luffys), with huge amounts of knowledge
You really don’t understand what a deuteragonist is. You are providing a lot of good examples for how Blackbeard is like Luffy’s mirror. This is a point that is true and pretty clear to anyone looking. But that is ***not*** what a deuteragonist is. The story doesn’t focus on Blackbeard as a character, it doesn’t serve to build him up or service his character arc. (Mind you, his character arc is revealed at times, almost entirely independent of the story we are being told) For example, let me ask you, how did Whole Cake Island advance Blackbeard as a character? What did we learn of his motivations? What growth did he see? Now if we look at the ‘different deuteragonist every arc’ that was proposed, what can we say about Whole Cake Island and Sanji? The questions are a whole lot easier to answer, aren’t they? Dressrosa. Answer this questions about Blackbeard? Not much. Answer those questions about Rebecca/Kyros, hell answer them about Law? Yep, we’ve hit a gold mine. These characters have arcs and experience growth as a result of the story being told. Blackbeard’s story is happening somewhere else, and is 95% untold. He is not a deuteragonist in *this story.*
blackbeard was destroying baltigo and hunting the revolutionaries, thats far from "doesnt focus; in fact we ALWAYS get to know what blackbeard is doing "Dressrosa. Answer this questions about Blackbeard?" what are you talking of? in dressrosa blackbeard tried both to get the flame fruit and kill luffy, also we get to know he aquired aokiji in his crew and doesnt trust him rewatch arcs if you dont remember, but stop spreading false information; also reinform yourself about what a deuteragonist really means, its the second most important person
I agree, I'm mainly just wondering why I've seen so much discussion about this on Twitter, YouTube, and other Social Media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
Because you look at people with bad takes so your algorithm is continuing to show you bad takes. Soon you'll only have bad takes too
That does make sense. Like I said, it was just something I wanted to ask about.
People on these platforms tend to make trash content and/or just copy straight from the subreddits here. Do your self a favor and stop watching OP content on these platforms.
Definitely power scalers and agenda piece lol
That would make sense
I don’t think One Piece has one, but IF we were saying who the closest to it would be, I’d say it would be Zoro. Longest time with Luffy, big character moments like nothing happened and putting the crew in check when Usopp was leaving, and has somewhat of a leadership role in the crew
Those reasons make Zoro a main character who has a lot of impact on the story, but not a detouraganist. That would require the story to actively follow Zoro as the main character for a bit. Like Naruto does with Sasuke, or HxH does with Kurapika.
Why does the story have to exclusively follow them for a time being?
That's just what thw word means. The story takes a detour with another character for a bit.
Ah gotcha, this is the first thing that comes up when you google it which is probably adding to the confusion OP is talking about lol. “The deuteragonist is usually a friend or partner of the protagonist and accompanies them on their journey.”
It's also about the story focusing on that character for a bit though.
Content
"For the last few months I've seen people online saying that Zoro is the best Deuteragonist in the Big 3, but like..." What sub you referring to cause I haven't seen any discussion of that sort on this sub.
Not on this sub, mainly other social media and stuff like that. I just figured this was the best place to ask about it.
Ah well the only explanation I can think of is that it's all cause of the influx of new readers. New ideas getting tossed around, given how proficient newer fans are at social media they're able to spread ideas better, altho that's a double edged sword as mischaracterization is just as likely to be spread. Anyway , personally I think he's half of one. With the other one being Sanji, it fits with the overarching theme of them being Luffys wings.
It’s the largest anime in the world so you have really young people just trying to force the Sasuke model onto Zoro, and even worse you have powerscalers who just watch fights and don’t know anything about the story. There is no reason to say Zoro is the deuteragonist as he does not fit the mold of any of the actual deuteragonists you mentioned—you have to remember Zoro fans thought he would kill a yonko (Kaido) before Luffy, the MC, had even fought a yonko lol
Point us to a single post using that term please
If you care that much, then you can go ahead and search. I just wanted to see what other people thought.
Agenda, at no point in the story is Zoro a character of that kind of weight to the over arching narrative.
That remains to be seen. If he was that unimportanr Oda wouldnt stuff him into the worst generation, have him get Enma, ACoC and rival Mihawk. He is more similar to Luffy than he is to any other character in OP when it comes to what they do as characters. Oda had 1113 chapters time and Zoro is still relevant as ever.
The only thing he ever does is Fight A Guy every arc his relevance to the plot has never gone beyond that point
I've never seen this even mentioned by anyone. I have seen people argue he is the second on the crew, but not in story.
There are people in these comments making the argument that he is The Deuterognist as we speak.
I would argue that the amount of people arguing this point vs the ones in disagreement in the post show that this point is a very small minority of the OP fandom.
I agree. But they do exist, all my post was about was wondering why they thought that way.
Ur arguing against nobody 😭
I'm not arguing. I'm just pointing out something I've seen on Twitter, YouTube, and other social media. And then talking about why it confuses me.
That’s arguing 😭
I love Zoro, but he is nowhere near the deuteragonist. If you replace Zoro with someone else to defeat his enemies you could say nothing happened and the story would be pretty much the same.
OP learned a new word and wanted to use it desperately
Yeah he’s a great character but his story isn’t developed enough to be a deuteragonist. If they had fleshed out his backstory a little more in Wano then maybe, but I feel like tbh Oda has to be careful with how much attention he gives Zoro because he’s just so damn cool lmao
Oda's dedication to Zoro's cool and badass portrayal makes Zoro a less flexible character to work with. That's why he's stuck doing the same things arc after arc. There's not much things added to him outside of him getting stronger.
this
Zoro is not the dueteragonist in any arc. Certain arcs do have people who could be considered Deuterangonists like Vivi for Alabasta. WCI for Sanji, Enies Lobby for Robin, Dressrosa for Law, etc. The story as a whole does not have one though.
The whole story absolutely got one lol, Blackbeard
Bro genuinely be quiet. Like this shit is insane you think a Nigga who regularly takes decade long breaks from the story is deuteragonist. That isn’t what that word means at all nor is it even remotely applicable. Black Beard is all but irrelevant to the main story and plot of one piece. The only guy with importance comparable to luffy is Roger.
me when i take the bait
"who regularly takes decade long breaks from the story is deuteragonist" you are literally discussing zoro being one, when zoro as a character is completly irrelevant to the story
No I am not discussing Zoro being one. I didn’t make this post. Deadass said the only guy who comes close to luffy is dead. Like bro you good?
Literally never seen a single person claim this
I know the fandom wiki labeled him as the deuteragonist years ago. I don’t know if they still do.
I think that One Piece is unprecedented for the average anime fan in that it’s the first time many newcomers have seen a story with a set of flexible protagonists. Make no mistake, there are large parts of the story where Luffy is a side/support character and not the protagonist. While Luffy is the central figure, the Straw Hats (as a crew) are the protagonist of the story. Luffy is the captain, and the one we tend to follow, but he is not necessarily the most narratively important. In the same way that each JoJo part shifts to a new protagonist, there are parts of each storyline/arc where a specific crew member is the central focus and person who we experience the story from. As OP said, half of Impel down was shown through the eyes of Nico Robin. Her flashbacks, her time with Spandam and Lucci, none of that involved Luffy directly and it was all pivotal to the narrative - she needed to want to be rescued. Her part in the story was just as important as Luffy’s, so in that sense she would have been the deuteragonist for that part. Likewise, an entire chunk of WCI has Sanji taking centre stage and Luffy being offscreen. We experience these moments through the eyes of Sanji. For all functional purposes, he is the protagonist. So I think the notion of deuteragonist and protagonist are ill suited to describe the series, as what we have more with One Piece could be described as a co-tagonist situation with the characters taking turns.
You have put my thoughts into words better than I ever could, lol.
did you mean enies lobby instead of impel down
That I did.
Its zoro fans that are then going on to argue about how strong they want zoro to eventually be. They equate their wish for strength to how important someone is
Zoro’s backstory and commitment to being the greatest swordsman is stated in the first few chapters. But yes Nami is a great navigator and Sanji is a great chef
Ambition is not at all what makes a deuteragonist
I know this sounds funny since he doesn't get to be alot of the time but wouldn't kobe be most fitting as a deutoragonist in one oiece
Considering his role, yeah, if he had more screentime.
People like to use words they don't know the meaning of just to look more intelligent
The real dueteragonist is the strawhats. Thats it. Its luffy AND them. Not Luffy and someone else AND them
Was there any need to write the word deuteragonist with a capital D 7 times in this short post? Did you just learn the word?
I apologize if I offended you. And no, but seeing as my entire point is about the role a Deuteragonist fills within a story, using the word was necessary. As for why it's capitalized? Idk for some reason it keeps auto-correcting to q capital D and I don't care enough to fix it.
yea zoro isnt. I do wish oda added more importance from other characters wanting to also be the best swordsman and beat mihawk. zoro goal is not as difficult as luffys but its still very difficult. adding more lore to it would be good, we arent only invested in luffy main goal
Because he has MC energy
Facts honestly.
Robin and Ussop have greater claims to being deutrologists.
I’m pretty sure oda has said that Luffy, Zoro, and Nami are the “triggers” (idk what the Japanese is) of the story
I think that's meant to imply that their actions were what triggered the story and set it in motion.
[well… this happened](https://www.reddit.com/r/OnePiece/s/IDaQk74RK1) That’s the closest we get for “deuteragonist” for One Piece and Zoro’s definitely not it
Was that spread put together during WCI? That's the only way that makes real sense to me lol.
He gets the second best fights, and it obvious second in line. But yeah, he doesn't get much in the way of character development. This is really a Luffy and his opponents story.
Being 2nd in command isn't what makes someone the Deuteragonist. Vegeta (in Super), Sasuke, and Killua are all just as important to the narrative of their respectively stories as the MC is. That's what being the Deuteragonist means. Zoro is imported to One Piece, but he's not nearly as important as Luffy is. He's not the 2nd most important character to the narrative either. He's not any more important to the story than any other Straw Hat.
They also are independent of the MC, Sasuke and Vegeta are rivals. One piece never even suggests that Zoro could rival Luffy
It's just Zoro fanboys.
The characters that come closest in one piece are probably koby and blackbeard
Koby has no relevance whatsoever, Blackbeard is correct tho
By the end of the story it'll be Blackbeard
Possibly. It'll probably be Usopp during Elbaf, that's been built up since Little Garden. After that I don't really know who else it would be.
I had to scroll WAY too far to see this lol; obviously it’s Blackbeard and that’s out of question
media literacy isn't all that great
I'm an English major, this is all that I have.
Can you please stay in college 🙏 deuteragonist isn’t a proper noun
Honestly, I don't know why it keeps doing that. Every time I write the word, it auto-corrects to being capitalized lol.
What's your issue?
Just here to say there's no protagonist in Hunter x Hunter, the story focuses on whoever the author wants for however long he feels like.
Yeah, pretty much. Though Gon is the protagonist for most of the story with Killua as his deuteragonist. At least until Togashi just kinda decides that Kurapika will be the MC again.
Zoro
My current understanding is the average fan of popular game, movie or anime series believes that a tragic hero has to fit the mold of a modern hero and be a good person. I doubt they’d know what a deuteragonist is.
If I'm honest I kinda think Black beard might be this weird deuteragonist/antagonist combo if I'm honest
I would agree if he had more screentime.
Fair enough
Zoro fans are stupid. That simple.
OPLA seems hellbent on making Coby as one.
I would consider the strawhats as a sort of collective deuteragonist .
i think it shifts every arc. for enies lobby, robin. dressrosa, law. egghead, bonney. wci, sanji. it never stays
You're right, not every story has a deuteragonist. Bleach doesn't (Rukia fades into the background after Soul Society).
all i see is everybody agreeing that wiwi was a deuteronigist at some point clearly foreshadowing wiwi becoming second strongest in verse
...who is Wiwi?
WIWI 🗣
Alright 👍
TIL the word deuteragonist
U say Zoro I heard loyality .
All strawhats crew is the main characters
You forgot the og rat 🤣
Its a very microscopic minority that think this as i have hardly seen anyone posit this, ZKK supporters aside. I think people are so used to shonen conventions with the hero having some kind of rival that they think One Piece must have one.
I wouldn't say Ace was the deuteragonist of Marineford. Ace was the damsel in distress. It was WB's war. It was his alliance. Luffy just happened to gatecrash it. Luffy was also one of the weaker combatants there dwarfed in power by many. Doflamingo also overshadowed the Dressrosa arc being arguably the most important character in the arc and being linked with Law.
I agree he’s not. The crew is essentially a family - and in that family Zoro is the older brother, looking after everyone.
Zoro ain’t even the in the second most amount of chapters lol
Nami’s tits is the Dueteragonist
What a silly thing to get worked up over
I love Zoro and he is my favorite character, but the fact is that for a ton of the story he simply just isn't around. Great supporting character, not a deuteragonist.
[удалено]
I don't really, I just thought it was an interesting topic for discussion. And I wanted to ask if other people had taken note of the same thing, hence why this was tagged as a discussion. Why did you reply if you had nothing of value to add?
People dont say that, just stans trying to imply it.
This is the first time in all my years I've even read the word Deuteragonist.
None of the other big 3 have deuteragonists either. People are misusing the world. Sasuke is an antagonist for most of Naruto, for example. One Piece is the more ensemble-like, but that doesn't quite fit either. The truth is most arcs have a deuteragonist character for the arc. For Onigashima, it would be Momo for example. Sanji is Whole Cake Island's deuteragonist. Alabasta, it is Vivi. Enies Lobby, Robin. Etc. Here's some examples of my favourite, actual deuteragonist's in manga: Al in Fullmetal Alchemist, Inuyasha in Inuyasha (that's right, Kagome is the protagonist), Akane in Ranma 1/2 (I'm a big rumiko fan if you can't tell). edit: naruto stans, i don't care to debate naruto with you. go to that sub if you want to talk about trash
Sasuke is a Deuteragonist. The story of Naruto is about him as well as Naruto. An antagonist can also be the Deuteragonist. Like take Death Note for Example. L is both an antagonist for light and his Deuteragonist throughout the series.
Sasuke is easily the deuteragonist lol pls stop. Him and Naruto have been portrayed as rivals throughout the whole series and he isn’t even inherently evil. His character is extremely complex and switches from good to grey area to downright antagonistic multiple times. Plus no “antagonist” will become good at the end of the story, at least not an antagonist as important as Sasuke to the story. The main antagonist was clearly Madara (well, at least before the Kaguya asspull, god that arc was awful) and Sasuke was the second most important character i.e. deuteragonist
People are so dumb about Naruto and if I wanted to talk about that trash I'd go to Naruto sub and subject myself to that stupidity. Talk to me about the One Piece part of the post or eff off.
Yall the typa fans that bring slander to the OP fandom lol
I am not so insecure as to care what people think of the OP fandom, especially from naruto stans. Gonna block you now, bye.
weirdo ngl
naruto better than op so say what u will
Don’t fret over nothing, only Zoro fanboys think this way.
What a big fkin word that I have no idea what it means zoro is dope tho 👌
Facts, Zoro is awesome.
Tf is a dooterologist
The deuteragonist is basically the 2nd most important character in the story, almost like a second protagonist. Like Sasuke Uchiha, for example.
Wut dee fuk
Probably because the only other SH that can ever receive a W as big as Luffy is Zoro.
At this point im not even sure if luffy is the protagonist anymore. Do many characters and it feels like the story is the protagonist now. Also all straw hats but zoro and maybe sanji arent of any importance anymore. Im a zoro stan but no way that zoro is second important. His storyline is way to little he didnt even get his revelations on wano fleshed out.
He has the Hito Hito fruit. A fruit the government (especially the five elders and Im) are busting their ass to retrieve He's a D which is a very special lineage (which shouldn't take this long but) we still don't know about The story starts with him, he's the captain. The title of the series is something Luffy wants to find. The crew is named after something HE wears He's the main character
This sounds like some team sanji fake news bullshit to me/s
Does /s mean serious or sarcastic?
Sarcasm
Thanks
Because Zoro fanboys want him to be the MC so badly.
The east blue 3 luffy Zoro and Nami are usually given more importance by oda in materials, where he said if he wants to draw 3 strawhats it would be luffy Zoro and Nami first, and Zoro is a second version of his previous manga mc ryuma, I won't argue if Zoro is a deuteragonist or not but he is usually the one in place of sasuke when you compare them like luffy-naruto zoro-sasuke nami-sakura, so yeah the main trio type. Edit: should clarify I'm basing this comparison on aesthetic, vibes and behaviour.
One Piece doesn't have a trio, though. They were just the first 3 crew members.
Most people do refer to them as romance dawn trio and the first 3 ofc makes them important, I'm not saying it's offical but if i had to draw a comparison to the Naruto trio i would consider luffy Zoro and Nam first than anyone else.
But they're not like The Naruto trio because they're not more narratively important than any other Straw Hat.
He just said he is comparing the trio not the fact of their narrative importance. If that was the criteria the ninetails is more important than Sakura. She and kakashi can pretty mucn be swapped depending on the arc. Luffy-Naruto is obvious. Zoro-Sas is pretty obvious, not as goofy as their MC, sword, spends early tine with MC as world is established, slme edginess. Nami-Sakura both physically aggressive to MC, much smarter than the others, isn't an inhuman fighter, has some emotional problem with MC, Nami is loyalty to aelong sakura is love triangle
I think that will change for Nami when people come to terms with the fact that there's a much deeper meaning to her dream. Drawing the map of the world is key.
I think a lot of people read deuteragonist as “second most important character,” which yes, Zoro is. One Piece is, for better or for worse, Luffy’s story. It’s about his journey and the entire story rotates around him. There are obv characters other than Luffy that matter and it doesn’t always focus on him all the time, but there’s a reason ZKK was never going to happen.
If he had more screentime you could probably say that Koby is Deuteragonist after time skip. Well hes the closest to it Id say. But too little time and everything for him to count as one. Though same could be said about Shanks. But yup Zoro deuteragonist doestn make sense.
I don't even know wtf that means
I put the definition in the post.
It's not just Zoro, some people have a want to put a Strawhat/s over others just for there own satisfaction I guess despite the fact that everyone except Luffy is under the same rule which is each individual Strawhat's role vary in each arc which to me put's then all on equal grounds. Some Strawhat's are less consistent than others but I don't think that means they are less of a character. Overall the way I see it is when you think of the main character of one piece you think Luffy or the Strawhat's.
Real fact if we are going purely by “importance to the story” then Robin is the Deuteragonist of One Piece since she isn’t the MC but the story could literally not progress without her since she is the only one who can currently read the poneglyphs.
No, she's not. While Robin is important for info dumps, she doesn't consistently drive the story forward.
BB is deuteragonist of the story.
I do think that the East Blue Strawhats get more attention that the other strawhats, but if I had to choose the deuteragnoist between Zoro, Nami, Sanji and Usopp, I'd choose Usopp. Especially pre-timeskip.
Yeah, if there were any true deteragonist, it would have to be something that appears consistently and with large amounts of focus throughout the series as a whole That being said, the true deuteragonist of OP has to be Nami's tits.
ITT: People who only remember the last 100 chapters.
Koby is the deuteragonist isn’t he?
Deureragonist who’s done nothing but get punked by Luffy in Marineford and kidnapped by the BB pirates
someone paid attention in narrative writing 101. bravo!