it's loving luffy hours

nami meets luffy and i believe that she believes in him from day 1, believes in his conviction and believes that he'll do everything it takes to become the king of the pirates. but it's one thing to believe and it's another thing to see and live it.

when nami asks luffy to save her, she is at the lowest point in her life: she's spent years trying desperately to survive and save everyone, and then her one saving grace gets stolen from her just when she's close enough to imagine her freedom. so now she's desperate and grieving, she's had all of her hopes crushed after years of building them up secretly and her situation feels hopeless in a way that only a miracle can help.

to nami, luffy saving her and her village from arlong is that miracle.

you see it in the way she interacts with people from that point onwards: the most notable example is probably vivi, whose own situation parallels nami's in many ways. vivi's desperation, grief, urgency and hopelessness are all very similar to what nami feels during arlong park, and when nami goes to comfort her, she tells her that luffy will save her and will save alabasta. and she says it with such conviction, not because he's strong and powerful and stubborn and will fight until he wins (i mean, she believes that), but she says it like it's a fact of nature, like it's a given, because she knows. because luffy saved her first and if he could save her from her hopeless situation, then he can save vivi and alabasta.

you see it in wholecake island. i think that's part of why she's the one to witness the luffy-sanji fight. she knows how desperate sanji feels, she's been there! but luffy saved her then and he'll save sanji too.

it's why she can't and won't lie to ulti in wano about him becoming king of the pirates

i’ve already elaborated most of my thoughts on the early nami-zoro dynamic in an old post, but i do want to talk about this scene a bit more in depth because, well, it’s the infamous debt scene that has pretty much formed the basis for their relationship’s portrayal in fanon ever since. and since i have my… criticisms of said fanon portrayal, i think it’s worth rereading the source and working out what this scene actually says about them beyond just the surface level reading.

this scene takes place fairly early on in the story. obviously they care about each other, they’re nakama, they would die for each other if it came down to it — but they don’t fully get each other yet. the two of them operate very differently, and in this case their differing outlooks produces a moment of friction.

zoro doesn’t really have experience with people like nami. he’s a very straightforward guy, so her money-making deals and the way she leverages her charm to receive favors puts him off. in this very scene, he goes “uhhh wtf” when nami tries to extort igaram.

i also think it’s pretty crucial that he mentions sanji when he’s arguing with nami. he finds nami and sanji’s relationship bizarre from the beginning, before sanji even joins the crew, because he can’t fathom why sanji would so willingly make himself nami’s servant.

nami knows that zoro is freakishly strong, and that because she herself isn’t, she has had to get by in the brutal world of pirates by using whatever means she had available — smarts, charm, trickery, money, deals. so it’s probably quite annoying to her that zoro has this ridiculous strength at his disposal, that he can use it whenever he wants, but that now he’s refusing to do a little rescue job just because. while she claims that the money would be “all hers”, we know from nami’s past and future track record with money that she never really means that. she cares about money because it means security for her and her loved ones.

because nami knows about how important strength is to zoro, she attempts to goad him into action by challenging his claims to it. unfortunately, zoro doesn’t exactly take the bait, despite getting annoyed.

so this is when she pivots to talking about the money he owes her. but i think the most important thing that nami says to zoro in this exchange, the moment that truly gets to him, is when she brings up the prospect that he would be breaking a promise:

in the stephen paul translation, she’s even more direct — she literally challenges the idea that he can keep a promise at all:

we all know how important promises are to zoro. literally one of the first things he ever says is that he “never breaks promises”. so what really bothers him about the whole debt situation is that he might be breaking a promise to nami. that is what fully spurs him into action. not that the money thing isn’t annoying to him, but when nami initially brings it up, he argues with her. he doesn’t just accept the concept of having debt as like, a fact of the universe.

the thing is, this moment is the biggest conflict zoro and nami ever have. this is, to my memory, the only time nami has needed some form of leverage over zoro. and to reiterate the point i made at the start — this is early on in their relationship. fanon takes small moments of early friction that never reoccur in the story and stretches them out to encompass their entire relationship. which… like, fanon is fanon. i get it. and i know that people like to use the witch thing/the debt thing as a point of banter between them. ultimately everyone can write what they want. but i just can’t help but get a twitch in my eyebrow whenever i see it anyways, because it’s just… not true to the progression of their relationship in canon.

Very nice detail for Oda to not show Ace's eyes while leading Sabo's letter until he's shown to be bawling, especially since he's spent this whole flashback chastising Luffy for being a crybaby

Brook and jinbei join the cuddle pile !! <33