I’ve been a Star Trek fan my whole life, but although my older sibling was interested in anime so I was introduced to various such as Noozles, Fushigi Yuugi, Lain, and Sailor Moon at a young age, none of them ever really grabbed me. Even when my friends tried to get me into it by showing my the first episode of Cowboy Bebop in middle school didn’t do it, although their gatekeep-y attitude probably had more to do with it, as I have since watched Cowboy Bebop and loved it. I even took a college film course on Anime to expand my horizons and it failed to move me to what I would consider an anime fan. Up until quite recently, the only anime I would really have likely cited as being a fan of would be Hayao Miyazaki’s films, which have reached a wide enough audience that liking them is pretty mainstream.
But when the One Piece live action was released, I did the obvious thing and didn’t watch it, and instead started the One Piece anime, and fell in love. After watching more than a thousand episodes of it, I honestly consider myself not only a huge fan, and thus probably by extension an anime fan more generally - although One Piece too has become fairly mainstream, but still I think not as widely accepted as high art as Miyazaki - and moreover consider it probably the most important piece of art to have been released in my lifetime. To someone who has never watched One Piece, this probably sounds stupid, and it may in fact sound stupid even to some people who have, but One Piece is not just long, but deep. It possess an enormously intricately detailed world, filled with characters who manage to be both incredibly absurd yet fully realized and relatable as real people, facing morally complex challenges handled with deep nuance and informed by an equally deep knowledge of history, and it speaks to the exact issues we are facing right now in this world of rising fascism. It’s great.
Do you know what other franchise that could describe? I want to say Star Trek, but honestly, I think the real answer is Babylon 5. Deep Space 9 also fits well as an answer, but it is just one entry, and Star Trek as a whole has been more inconsistent on how fully realized its world and setting are and how deep its characters are. But Star Trek certainly has always aspired to be a political work, much like One Piece, with direct relevance to the challenges we face in the current times, and has a similarly sprawling universe with at least some well realized characters.
Moreover, the structure of storytelling in the two is remarkably similar. The crew arrives at a new location, meeting a unique culture with a specific problem that has some significant moral complexity to it. The characters may struggle to determine the exact right course of action, or struggle against the overwhelming forces lined up against them by oppressors, but ultimately the right course of action becomes clear and the problem is solved through the expert skills of the crew. That describes the plot of most Star Trek episodes and most One Piece island arcs. Star Trek usually has more moral ambiguity in it - sometimes the lesson of the episode is there is no easy answer, whereas in One Piece its always pretty obvious by the end who is good and who is bad - Luffy and whoever he allies with is good, and whoever he punches is bad, but there is just as thorough an exploration of the morality leading up to Luffy allying with them, even if Luffy’s actual reasons can be summed up as, “they shared food with me.” And of course the solutions differ - Star Trek prefers scientific solutions to diplomatic ones, and diplomatic ones to violent ones, whereas One Piece, while it does contains themes emphasizing the importance of science and diplomacy to solving social problems, narratively most things are solved by Luffy punching them. But at the end of the day, the shows really are very similar.
One big difference though is the level of realism. Star Trek is a heightened reality set in the future. Our heroes are galaxy class experts in what they do, often the best of the best, and they have futuristic technology we can only dream, but they are human, with human frailties, and we don’t generally expect them to be throwing buildings at people - even alien races with super strength usually set the limit at throwing people across a room, not spaceships into someone’s face. One Piece, however, is far more heightened, with the main characters often putting super heroes to shame. It is a regular occurrence for someone to throw a building at someone else, and if no one in Egghead gets a spaceship thrown at them (I only have watched to Wano don’t tell me) I bet it will happen before it is done.
Why am I saying all this, besides “If you like Star Trek maybe you’ll like One Piece, and vice versa”? Well because it helps me to conceptualize an issue I am having with Star Trek Discovery. Star Trek Discovery’s reality is not heightened to One Piece levels, but it is heightened higher than most Star Trek. There is a scene in the first episode of Season 3 where two of our characters are surrounded by tons of enemies, all with guns, and they look at each other, exchange knowing looks, and proceed to murder them all. Its honestly shocking for Star Trek, which normally eschews showing its heroes murdering people, yet here they are literally vaporizing Andorians and Orions left and right. It feels really wrong to me. This isn’t the only scene like this, but it is perhaps the most egregious example. Similarly, multiple times in the first two seasons, someone lifted someone else one handed by their neck. I dunno why it keeps happening, but if I had a nickel for every time, I’d have like forty cents, which won’t buy a damn thing but is way more than is reasonable. Star Trek fights before this were like, two karate chops to the back of the neck, so it stands out that suddenly everyone is the Undertaker.
Now, is there anything actually wrong with Star Trek being like this? I mean, no. I don’t think a show cannot involve senseless violence and still have a reasonable prosocial message. If I did, I wouldn’t like One Piece. But it is something about Discovery which makes it feel like “not Star Trek” to me. I think its probably not a super fair reason to feel that way - how heightened a setting is is basically a matter of personal taste more than anything else, and “Star Trek but more awesome” definitely sounds like something someone might like. Fuck, I do like it, when its called One Piece. But I don’t when it is called Star Trek. 🤷♀️
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