One Piece Creator on Why Luffy Doesn't Kill Anyone

One of the more impressive elements of One Piece is how Eiichiro Oda does not kill off many of the series' antagonists. This leaves them in play for the series to use later, and Oda often shows off how closely he's paying attention to his series' past as many antagonists re-appear to interact with Luffy and the others in different ways than they did before. It's almost as if they are even completely different characters when they return.

Luffy makes a point to not kill any of his opponents despite them trying their best to kill him, and when a fan asked Oda about it, he had a pretty fitting response. As fans suspected, Luffy's not fighting to kill, he's fighting for pride in his role as the future Pirate King.

In a recently resurfaced questionnaire from early in the series, a fan asked why Luffy didn't kill his enemies. Oda responded, "The reason Luffy doesn't kill is this: In his era, men live by their beliefs and risk their lives to defend them. Luffy shatters the beliefs of his enemies by defeating them. For them to suffer defeat and to have their beiefs destroyed is as bad as death. Killing their bodies is beside the point. I feel that, as a pirate, Luffy and his enemies care more about victory and defeat than they care about their lives."

Though Oda gave this response early on in the series, it has not changed after all of these years. Luffy's fights are often about pride, and the best recent example of this is between Luffy and Charlotte Katakuri. Katakuri began their fight trying to simply eliminate the threat, but as the two fought one another and realized how alike they were, it became more about who's spirit was stronger.

Many of the series' best fights can be broken down that way too such as Luffy's fight with Lucci, Luffy vs. Usopp, and many more than can be highlighted throughout the series. That's why fans are so drawn to his story. They want to see Luffy become the Pirate King not through bloodshed, but through sheer will and perseverance.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 80 volumes, and has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best-selling manga series worldwide with over 430 million copies sold. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.