what is the deal with the monkey in the Monkey D Luffy why has already used that name for several protagonists of several failed manga series before one piece and why is everyone who is named Monkey or who literally is a monkey in this series given a special power that no other character possesses what is the monkey to this monk mystery well to begin a while ago I stumbled upon a fantastic question on the internet which went as follows how come everybody in one piece is referred to by their last name so if you're not familiar
with Japanese culture Luffy's name is probably quite a bombardment of bizarre but in Japanese culture the family name comes before the given name which is why he's Monkey D Luffy instead of Luffy D monkey however I do recognize that this G is a little bit confusing because certain animeo manga not to name any names but do use the English order like say Uzumaki Naruto for example instead of Naruto Uzumaki again we're not naming names of any particular series but that's how the English translation gets a bit inconsistent not that having monkey is your family name
somehow makes it make more sense but this is a long-standing tradition of author iter Oda that well predates one piece od's monkey Obsession dates at least all the way back to 1994 3 years before the series that would become known as one piece was published this was one of od's many attempts to start a serialized manga in weekly shown and jump and it was called forward and it featured a protagonist named Monkey DP a wood cutter with two Powers which were to stretch and to fall asleep some other notable features about monkey deow include the
patent on his bandana which would go on to be used as the patent of the Gumi as well as Pal's Mentor 58-year-old rubber tree Spirit named Mary as well as a thief named lisel one of approximately 20 something prototype namis that Oda Chon through before landing on NAMI herself that's not a joke by the way if you go through all of oda's serialization attempts and there are 20 plus of them the vast majority of them contain a character who looks exactly like Nami Nami has quite a rich Heritage and wildly expansive family tree of characteristics
that led to her creation as do all of you which is why this video is sponsored by my Heritage the number one family history service used by 90 million people to research and construct their family trees with over 20 billion easily searchable results I'm going to be completely honest here I was skeptical of my Heritage because my family keep pretty meticulous historical records and I just didn't think that my Heritage could show me something that I didn't already know and I was very wrong primarily due to the smart match option which matches your relatives to
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1800s who then went on to give birth to my great great-grandfather and he also found a ton of other cool stuff like newspaper articles whenever my ancestors did noteworthy things for society and mostly obituary so those noteworthy things were all dying and also my great great great-grandfather was once arrested for stealing a horse in fact that's genuinely how he ended up in Australia he got shipped off cuz Scotland got sick of his crap so I highly recommend giving my Heritage go and you can sign up for a 14-day free trial by clicking the link in
the description or by scanning the QR code on screen and I hope that you have all of the fun discovering your own personal void centuries worth of family history definitely definitely give it a go cannot recommend it enough but for now it's back to you me but even in 1994 Oda had a vision for a character named monkey and insisted on carrying this name over many many failed series until it finally stuck with one piece and to even begin to explain the obsession with monkeys we need to note that etra Odo was heavily inspired by
aurator Dragon Ball which I personally find very funny because the infamous editor of drag ball kazuhiko torishima has never liked one piece and considered it quote trash from day one adding another quote manga that doesn't sell well is just trash for the editors to deal with and to this day he still takes shots at one piece every now and then in public interviews he's a very bitter man but the greater point of this is to say That Monkey De Luffy was of course partially inspired by sokku and Son Goku is the Japanese translation of the
Chinese Nam son Wukong The Monkey King and central figure of Journey to the West an adventure designed to be both both a humorous satire of Chinese bureaucracy as well as a source of spiritual insight and in fact korama was originally going to make Goku an actual monkey and Go full son Wukong and this is where it starts to become clear that the name monkey isn't just something Oda thought would be you know bit of wacky fun monkeys because the tale of a monkey wanting to become a king is a very familiar one in fact Sun
wuk Kong became Monkey King through some very interesting means he and the other monkeys in the in the place that they were in stated that whoever went through the waterfall and found the source of the stream as well as return to tell the tale would be crowned as the glor some Monkey King which Sun wuk Kong did and that is more or less the entire premise of One Piece as well as the mechanism by which one gets crowned pirate king just on a much larger scale you need to be the first pirate to find the
hidden island as well as return and then bam congrats on your new pirate king title my Lord in addition to that premise Luffy strongly paralleled Sun wuk Kong himself both Sun wuk Kong and Luffy directly rebel against the heavens in Luffy's case he has been both literally and consistently thematically identified as the enemy of the Gods of the one piece World many if not all of whom are false gods such as the world Nobles who themselves are an over-the-top satirical take of real world bureaucracy just like the gods of Journey to the West but a
bit more modernized and a bit more the chunks Luffy and sunuk Kong are also both referred to as demons in their respective texts in fact in one piece anyone with the will of D is considered to be a demon by the world Nobles and an enemy of the Gods although I should note that there is some extremely important Nuance That Gets Lost in Translation the brand of demon that sunuk Kong represents is known as a yuai which isn't a demon as we would understand them in the West in English especially the term demon is conflated
with the concept of evil it's very difficult to divorce evil from the idea of demons but that's exactly what aagay is you could more accurately describe them as monsters with special powers sort of like what devil fruit users are in the one piece world yes yes not necessarily inherently good or evil however they are usually portrayed in an antagonistic light and to be fair it's usually well deserv those ALU made their a menace and most devil fruit uses in one piece do mirror this and fall on the M villainous side of the spectrum again just
like the ALU and an example of this is this moment depicting the seduction of tansan Zang an image that I love just because of how threateningly this hand looms over his crotch waiting to strike those unassuming balls and just in case this isn't apparent yet the name Sun Wukong contains the word sun and instead of being The Monkey King in one piece Luffy has inherited the powers of the sun god the inspiration it's pretty what's less clear is what Oda has been doing with the concept of monkeys in one piece in general because this goes
over a lot of people's heads but whenever a monkey appears you should be paying very close attention surprisingly they don't appear all that often and when they do Luffy he has an innate affinity for monkeys and again there's a good reason for this this is something that gets a bit lost in the viz translation but for example when Luffy first meets masir the the apank human during the gyro the very first thing that Luffy says is hey a monkey to which marer replies huh you think think I'm hunky as if he misheard a compliment and
yeah it's funny it's funny english word stuff but what actually happened Gets Lost in Translation what mura is actually saying can be translated more accurately is huh you think I'm monkey full he says monkey full which is a bit of a tricky concept to explain but basically masir is happy that someone is equating him so closely to a monkey like telling someone that they're beautiful the implication is that you think that their looks are like real good and in this case Masa thinks that his monkey likeness is real good and don't worry if you don't
quite get this conversation because neither do Zoro or Sanji and later on they state that Luffy only really understood what was happening because and I quote they're both monkeys and the same thing happens with another member of the saruyama alliance saruyama literally meaning monkey mountain by the way which is another possible reference to some Wukong as after rebelling against the heavens Wukong spent 500 years imprisoned under a mountain a monkey mountain but as soon as mash and shjo the rangang like man meet Luffy and the r one location all three of them instantly click and
stop getting along and again the reason for this is cited as being because all three of them are monkeys and the very touching thing about masura and shjo in particular is that as wacky as they are Mont Blan cricet credits them as being the fools who saved him from the loneliness of diving in the cold dark Seas essentially they gave Mont Bank Cricket his own personal dawn of the world that is the power of even the most average of monkey in the one piece world and most of them are far from average monkeys carry very
high status in one piece and that's not just evident in Luffy and more often than not they all share the notion of being extremely close to the gods of the world Luffy's grandfather monkey deap is a prime example of this the legendary hero of the Marines who despite serving the world government consistently finds ways of avoiding serving the world Nobles directly sort of like how son mukong was invited into heaven but then didn't obey anyone it was a bit of a prick then you've got pricky on a new level with Luffy's father monkeyy Dragon who
in a much more Wukong inspired story is directly Conjuring a revolution to overthrow the gods and outside of Luffy's family you even have commander-in Chief Kong the highest ranking human official within the world government who is allowed to live on marijua but with the knowledge that he is the lowest ranking being to do sir again much like how Wukong was invited to live in heaven but under the condition that he took care of all of the Heavenly steeds effectively making him a glorified stable boy and if you look at the more literal monkeys elsewhere in
the one piece world you find the humandrills the insanely powerful natives of mihawk island or even monster who is one of the senior officers of the redhair Pirates monkeys in one piece are funny but they're no joke Oda doesn't just sprinkle them in as randomly as every other animal there's a certain reverence to monkeys and even the lowest ones still carry a hint of Wukong Flair as an example during the initial sabak there's even a team of kidnappers called the coffee monkeys and their leader design is based on son Wukong which you can tell by
the gold headband and the staff all of the crew seem to have functioning Tails potentially implying the existence of a monkey man race within the one piece World potentially related to minks because minks have a fair few monkeys but these guys the coffee monkeys are distinctly unly but the thing about Sun wuk Kong is that while you can see some clear inspiration in parts of his story for Luffy in terms of his character they do vary quite radically Sun wuk Kong is quite arrogant and even barbaric with little to no sense of humility even once
going so far as to urinate on Buddha's hand to be fair I don't think he knew it was Buddha at the time rather like a pillar at the end of the universe it turned out to be Buddhist hand you know in that classic situation still it's not particular Luffy like and there are two explanations for this the first is that during sunuk Kong's Journey he encounters a singing wood cutter which I believe is the inspiration for the aforementioned monkey Deep Pal who himself was a wood cutter with odor potentially lifting aspects from both characters and
combining them into one the determination and power of sun wuk Kong with the joyous Simplicity of the wood cutter but the second and more mind-blowing explanation comes from chapter 1049 this is the climactic end of the fight battle between Luffy and kaido where Luffy uses a new attack called bajang gun which is a direct reference to bajang Bali also known as hanaman a monkey deity of the Hindu Pantheon and hanaman has a lot more in common with Luffy than son mukong does for a start hanan's Celestial father was Vu god of the wind something that
is pretty profoundly reflected in Luffy's father Dragon who has been strongly hinted at having a wind ability or wind Affinity ever since the early days of lockdown furthermore hanan's Guru was suria the Sun God and then there's this hanaman was was a very mischievous little child thing and one morning he woke up feeling extremely hungry and seeing a big juicy fruit presented in front of him hanaman decided to grab it and eat it however what hanaman was trying to grab and eat was in fact the son which she had mistaken for basic nourishment now this
is shockingly similar to how Luffy ate his devil fruit he was also a very mischievous little child thing always hungry and would eat anything that even remotely resembled food including a devil fruit an object that traditionally neither looks and especially does not taste appealing but Luffy's hunger blinded him to both of these and so he accidentally ate an entire sun god fruit they both tried to eat fruit that turned out to be a son and if Oda had this sun god idea from the beginning then there is no way that he was unaware of hanaman
and it should be said that hanaman was obviously unsuccessful in consuming the sun because just look outside it's very nice and bright unless it's night but I can't help but wonder if Luffy is odor's haniman fanfic enacting the situation of yeah but what if he did eat the Sun but what else does Luffy have in common with hanaman well according to scripts hanaman was also given the ability to grow bigger or Shrink smaller in size both of which Luffy has now displayed for himself considering that he can become a giant at war with gear Fifth
and he used to be able to shrink as a result of the after effects of gear third what's more interesting is that after playing a prank on an old man praying a curse was cast on hanaman which made him forget all of his powers effectively meaning that he lost all of the abilities granted to him by the gods and while Luffy didn't forget he was definitely unaware of his true capabilities until very recently worship of hanaman is also often sought by those attempting to overcome challenges of illness and poverty illness in particular being something that
Luffy fights against a lot because a lot of the Nations he finds himself fighting on behalf of are said to be sick this is a trend that started on drum island with Dr hot claiming that drum was ill and he was on a quest to cure the hearts of the people which Luffy ultimately assisted in and that cycle of country sickness tends to rinse and repeat a lot in one piece then there's poverty Lu does that a lot as well and as for an example of poverty that is what wano was all about yes Luffy
was fighting because he promised MOS that he would help him but Luffy's primary driving force was the very first person he met on the island tarm he saw her situation of poverty and starvation and made a vow that he would defeat kaido so that she would be able to eat as much as she wants whenever she wants but perhaps more importantly hanaman is described as quite pure naive and innocent selfless and devoted and so Luffy is kind of like a combination of hanaman and sunwukong a greatest hits of the monkey deities because he has this
intriguing mixture of both selflessness and personal desire which is quite hard to describe but the name monkey it's not just a random choice biota because this name encapsulates the legacy of two cultures taking aspects of both and creating a brand new monkey based mythological figure for the global Pantheon in the form of the sun god NAA the name NAA being taken from the Japanese aatopia for grinning or smiling so that's the monkey part covered but now we should ask a much more Curious question what does Luffy mean a LOF without the Y is actually a
nautical term referring to the edge of a foreign off sale next to the Mast or stay and look I'm not going to pretend to know what any of those words mean and neither is that CH Oda it was assumed for a very long time that this was an intentional Choice given the series Focus on sailing as well as other names matching that theme like Nami which is Japanese for wave however in one piece 10 Treasures OD revealed that this was purely a coincidence but one that he was delighted by Oda has simply claimed that he
named Luffy Luffy because it felt right for the main character but with all due respect fictional pirate oam man I do not believe you given how thoroughly he has thought about the monkey and even the D M OD loves the D I would bet that OD put a lot of thought into the name Luffy as well however if he was to tell us right now then it would likely be a spoiler for events to come and thanks so much again to my Heritage for sponsoring this video and you can get your free 14-day trial by
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