HUH?
One thing you’ve got to love about Oda is how he’s not afraid to make all the pretty boys and girls naturally ugly, as the situation fits. It’s so everyday. After all, they’re going about their business, trying to break gears, and become pirate kings, and read poneglyphs, and wreak havoc and revenge, and bring down yonkou.
Apart from Nami, Cavendish, or Duval, they’re probably not thinking of their looks 100% of the time. And even the truly physically beautiful pull faces like these from time to time (likely, more often than not if they were actually human).
From three stealth Strawhats, shocked by their captain and first mate’s endeavours (first picture), to three captains with way too much ego and far too little common sense (second picture)...
to three furtive Strawhats again (third picture), Oda’s not afraid to take their designs down a peg or two, and to thereby challenge reader perception and acceptance.
(Regarding the third pic: Robin. I love her. And I don’t think the Flower Capital officials could see Brook, or didn’t trust what they could see, so he got past with just looking spooky.)
And here’s a bonus from SBS 93.
From full-on ugly-bawling (except Sanji? He kinda held his composure, didn’t he? In WCI. In terms of still looking handsome while crying), to idiocy, to disguise, I like that Oda lets these folks shine either extreme of a (hypothetical) scale of attractiveness. I know others have written about his depiction of physical grief, so I won’t cover that much here.
However, sorrow, sneakiness, surprise, and stupidity are writ large and without restraint over the faces of our favourite characters every few chapters or so. Of course it’s for laughs (except when they’re bawling), but so much media plays this stuff for laughs without making the actual leads believably ugly (or distraught. Like, hardly anyone looks their best when upset).
Of course a drawing or animation has more room for stylisation, but these characters are so well-rounded and known that Oda loses nothing by mussing them up on occasion. In fact, it helps to make them more relatable. And also reminds us to not take things so seriously (followed up by like, y’know, a genocide, or fratricide, or unfair execution).
