Yoko Maki comes out of retirement to reimagine Luffy as the only boy at an all-girls high school.
No other currently running manga series embraces the style of shonen manga (boys’ comics) storytelling as fervently as One Piece does. Eiichiro Oda’s pirate saga is all about hot-blooded passion, adventurous ambition, and challenges of ever-increasing difficulty for its heroes that require ever-increasing amounts of shouting, punching, and manly tears to resolve.
But what if instead of being the standard-bearer for shonen manga and the flagship title of anthology Weekly Shonen Jump, One Piece was instead a shojo manga, or girls’ comic? Then maybe series star Luffy would look like this.
The redesign is the work of shojo manga artist Yoko Maki, whose resume includes the titles Aishiteiru Ze Baby, Romantica Clock, and Yamamoto Zenjirou to Moushimasu. Though Maki retired from active manga creation in 2019, she’s taken up pencil and pen again to produce a series of shojo-style illustrations of some of One Piece’s most prominent characters.
The artistic premise is that Luffy is a new transfer student at the previously all-girls Whole Cake Academy. Whereas the original Luffy uses his limb-stretching power to punch against evil-doers, the targets of shojo-version Luffy’s extending arms are walls, as he’s able to execute a romantic kabe don/wall pound maneuver from essentially anywhere he happens to be standing.
Between being the only boy on campus and his superhuman stretching powers, Luffy attracts the attention of Charlotte Linlin, a.k.a. Big Mom, who instead of being an elderly woman of intimidatingly towering stature…
is now a demure young lady who’s head of the student council, and used to be only interested in candy until the fateful day she met Luffy and fell for him.
Also part of this are Nami, who retains the striped sea green-and-white pattern of her bikini top, now shifted to a sweater vest worn over her school dress shirt, plus a number of other members of the One Piece cast.
▼ Nico Robin, who’s now a student librarian who’s read every book in the academy’s library.
▼ Boa Hancock, head of the Campus Beautification Committee, whose own beauty has won her many admirers, but feels the pangs of first love only once her path crosses Luffy’s.
▼ Carrot (left), head of the campus Animal Welfare Committee, and Vinsmoke Reiju (right), whose description says she has a skirt-chasing younger brother who occasionally tries to sneak onto the Whole Cake Academy, in what’s a thinly veiled reference to Straw Hat Pirates member Sanji.
▼ And last, Tashigi, who instead of being a captain in the Marines is now the captain of the kendo club.
Right now these eight are the only ones to have gotten a Maki redesign, and were commissioned as part of a promotion for the upcoming new installment in the One Piece: Pirate Warriors video game series (a play-on-words kanji character swap turns Pirate Warriors’ Japanese title, Kaizoku Muso/海賊無双, meaning ”Invincible Pirates,” into Kaizoku Muso/海賊夢想, “Dreamy Pirates”). However, with hundreds more One Piece characters left in the series, sould Maki ever want to draw more, she’s got plenty of candidates.
Related: One Piece Kaizoku Muso
Source, images: Press release
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
[ Read in Japanese ]