Roger's List: Top 5 Plot Holes of One Piece

Sometimes, things just don't add up. Like this hilarious anime screw-up.

Welcome everyone to a brand new year! And with a new year, Roger's List has returned, with your host, Me. Roger himself.

You know, for a manga/anime series that has been going on for seventeen years now, One Piece has done a pretty swell job of keeping its story tight and consistent. How Mr. Oda manages to keep all his facts, character history, and plot threads so accurate and well interwoven with one another is a mystery.

His office probably looks like this.

However, as blasphemous as it may sound, Mr. Eiichiro Oda is only but a man, and no man in this world is perfect. It is only natural for a few cracks to have erupted from time to time throughout this otherwise grand tale. They are Roger's Top 5 Plot Holes of One Piece

Before we begin, I would like to state that any One Piece fans out there who believe they can rationalize any of the following plot holes and explain why they make sense, I more than welcome it.

Here we go.

5. Zoro the Atheist

That's some serious divine intervention for a non-believer.

In the Skypeia Arc, when the Straw Hats are told by Conis that their land is ruled by a god named Eneru, Zoro admits to his fellow crew members that he does not believe in God. However, Zoro's atheism is quite contradictory to several things he has said and done throughout the series. Way back at the begining of the series when we were told Zoro's back story, upon the death of his friend and rival Kuina, Zoro declared to his sensei that he would become the Worlds Greatest Swordsman, and he stated these exact lines:

"I will not stop until my name reaches the heavens."

Now, I suppose you could say that because this is something he said as a child, he may have lost his faith at some point growing up. Okay, fair enough, but in an arc that occurs after the crew's adventures in Sky Island, Zoro invokes the wrath of a Hindu god by the name of Asura to grant himself three heads and six arms. This results in a 9-Sword-Style technique that won him his victory against Kaku in Enies Lobby. It seems odd that a god would willingly provide its power to a man who doesn't even believe in him, or even for the man to take on powers of a being he doesn't believe in to begin with. If Zoro was suppose to have a back and fourth struggle with his faith throughout the series, it lacks clarity and thus creates an element of Zoro's character that seems quite inconsistent.

4. Usopp Giving Nami Her New Climatact

Cool weapon Nami. Where the heck you get it?

So while aboard the Rocket Man heading toward Enies Lobby, Nami reveals her new weapon to the crew: the Perfect Climatact which was made by Usopp. She claims that Usopp gave it to her, except Usopp, at this point, had left the crew. Okay, well he would have had to give it to her before his and Luffy's big fight, right? But wait, after Usopp left the crew, didn't Nami along with the others, stage a break-in at Iceberg's Office the night before Aqua Laguna when they had their first encounter with CP9. During that time, Nami still had her original Climatact. I was under the impression that that the Perfect Climatact was simply a modified version of her original weapon, so why would it still be in it's original state at that point?

We know that she and Usopp never ran into one another from that point until they were on the trains, because Usopp was all the way at Franky's Hideout getting captured by CP9. So...yeah this whole exchange of weapons is a huge mess. It's almost as confusing as--

3. Nami Pulling Her Climatact Out of Her Wedding Dress

"I was hiding it...inside your heart?"

Unlike Zoro's swords, Brook's Cane or Usopp's Kabuto where they actually have to keep track of their weapons, Nami's Climatact just seems to appear and disappear whenever it's convenient for her. There is no time this is more prominent than in Thriller Bark. So Absalom kidnaps Nami in attempt to force her to marry him, right? So he has a zombie tailor undress her while she's unconscious and fit her into a wedding gown. Yeah, creepy, I know. Then when she comes to just in time to prevent herself from being wed to Absalom, she pulls out her Climatact and knocks Absalom out. Okay...so... if Nami keeps her Climatact on her person, wouldn't the tailor have removed it along with her old clothes? Why would the zombie tailor take a deadly weather weapon out of her old clothes and put it into her wedding dress? That makes no sense!

2. Nami an Expert Navigator

Only have yourself to blame, sweetheart.

Okay, at this point, I'm sorry if it seems like I'm picking on Nami too much in this article, but why the heck does she have to make it so darn easy?

When Luffy first meets Nami, she claims flat out that she is the greatest navigator there is. Luffy seems to believe this right away, and for the most part, the general plot of the show implies that she is as well. Except aren't we forgetting one slight-yeteversocrucial-little-tiny-detail?

NAMI DID NOT KNOW THE FIRST THING ABOUT NAVIGATING IN THE GRAND LINE!!!
Yeah, go back and check. When they first entered the Grand Line, Nami had no idea that you couldn't use a regular compass in the Grand Line and you had to get a Log Pose. Without Crocus' generosity and Luffy's dumb luck, the voyage of the entire Straw Hat Crew would have been screwed the second they crossed the Red Line. For someone who claims to be the greatest navigator ever, that's a pretty big oversight, especially coming from someone who was technically a part of a pirate crew from the Grand Line for the past EIGHT YEARS!

Ten-Year-Old Nami: Hey Hachi, what's this thing?
Hachi: Oh, that's a Log Pose, Nami. In the Grand Line, normal composes don't work, so we use a Log Pose to lock onto the magnetic current of each island.
Arlong: HACHI! What do you think your doing?
Hachi: OH! Nothing...Captain Arlong...Sir. Nothing at all.
Arlong: Well, quit messing around. Nami's got work to do.

Don't act like you couldn't see that scenario happening at some point in Nami's history.

But this doesn't end there, oh no. Nami makes this same oversight AGAIN! Just when they're getting ready to leave Fishman Island, the Minister of the Left gives Nami the newer version of the Log Pose that is used in the New World, which, again, she knew nothing about. This is exceedingly baffling, given that Nami just spent two solid years at Weatheria doing nothing but studying hard on how to navigate in the New World. Shouldn't the New Log Pose been something she learned her very first day? This is someone who has the life of the entire crew in her hands, so it's quite troubling that a character the plot works so hard in making appear intelligent and on top of things lack simple knowledge about the most vital information.

And the Number One Plot hole of One Piece is... and I swear it's not about Nami...

1.Teach Giving Shanks His Scar

Really?

Okay, this one really bugs me. Following the Ennies Lobby Arc, we get a short scene in which Shanks regales to Whitebeard his concerns about sending Ace to hunt down Teach, AKA Blackbeard.

It is then that he informs us that it was Teach who gave him his three-cut scar across his left eye. Why this is confusing is because Shanks has had that scar since we first met him in Luffy's origin story, which took place (by the series current time line) twelve years ago. At that point of the timeline, Teach was still an unranked member of Whitebeard's crew. He did not yet have a following of his own, and he did not yet consume the Yami Yami No Mi that gave him his darkness powers which made him the powerhouse he is now. They give the impression that Blackbeard wasn't much before his powers, and that he may have simply killed Thatch in his sleep, took the Devil Fruit and left. I have a hard time believing that Teach [back then at least] would have stood much of a chance against one of the four Pirate Emperors, let alone be strong enough to give him such a permanent scar.

Also, that claw has four spikes, and Shanks scar only has three cuts.

Now since we don't know any details about what exactly happened when Teach and Shanks met once upon a time, it's not impossible that this could be explained in the foreseeable future, but for now, it just feels really odd.

And there you have it. Five things about One Piece that just don't make any sense to me. Again, if you think you can rationalize any of them, feel free to contribute in the comments below. Also comment if there are any other One Piece plot holes you feel I missed. Just remember at the end of the day, One Piece is still a very well thought out story, and at least what little plot holes it may have aren't big and intrusive enough you can fly Shenron through them. (5 minutes my ass, Frieza!)

Until next time, I'm Roger, and they just made the list.