Please, One Piece, Let Robin Win Another Fight

Nico Robin, one of the Straw Hat pirates who’ve been with the series since Alabasta, is one of the best characters in the One Piece franchise. She is effortlessly cool and mysterious, and readers have only ever wanted to know more about her. She ranked sixth in the One Piece global fan poll, remaining popular after all these years, yet she rarely shows off her strength despite having a scarily lethal devil fruit ability. This has been a problem in the One Piece manga since the time skip, with most Straw Hats not getting proper one-on-one fights. Characters like Luffy and Zoro almost always get a major fight, but nearly everyone else has to fight for the scraps. Besides Chopper, Robin probably has had the worst fight-to-appearance ratio. She only had one main fight pre-timeskip in Skypiea, showcasing her skills and adding her mystique as she brutalizes Yama.

Her one fight was visceral, highlighting how deadly her Devil Fruit powers can be. She never had any other major battle until over a decade later in Wano. What’s frustrating is that she has had multiple opportunities to fight, particularly in Dressrosa. Nonetheless, it always felt like manga author Eiichiro Oda went out of his way for her not to be part of the conflict. Sins of Dressrosa feel like they are reemerging in the ongoing Elbaf, where another potential fight between Robin and an enemy is taken away so that a different character could have a moment to shine.

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Robin’s Dressrosa Problem

One of the main reasons why many Straw Hats never get a proper battle is that Oda never makes enough antagonists for them to fight. The Straw Hat pirates have become too big, there are not enough primary enemies for them to fight in every given arc unless Oda comes up with filler villains, something the author refuses to do. When the author tries to fill out the villains with more forgettable fodder, One Piece gets stuck with the lame New Fish-Man Pirates from Fish-Man Island. Surprisingly, Robin didn’t even get to battle any of the New Fishman Pirates, except for quickly disposing of a minor lackey.

However, whereas previous arcs have the excuse of a lack of antagonists, Dressrosa was the most insulting arc where Robin didn’t get to fight. Dressrosa has the Straw Hats split up, with half of them staying on the island of Dressrosa. Every Straw Hat on Dressrosa had a major fight, except for Robin. Even Usopp had a confrontation with Sugar, a literal woman in a little girl’s body. Robin was stuck protecting Rebecca, a teen girl who was part of Dressrosa’s royalty before being usurped by the Donquixote Pirates. Even though the arc established Rebecca being a fairly competent sword fighter, she was essentially dead weight throughout the story, forcing Robin to protect her in creative ways. It all comes to a head when the two confront Diamante, an Elite Officer of the Donquixote Pirates, and the murder of Rebecca’s mother.

The obvious story direction would be for the women to team up to defeat Dimante and for Rebecca to gain her deserved revenge. Yet, because Rebecca was suddenly shown to be incompetent, Robin spent most of the confrontation on the defensive. It’s a testament to Oda’s writing that he’s able to come up with inventive ways to use Robin’s powers to protect Rebecca, including making a tree of arms to shield themselves from spiked balls. Nonetheless, the confrontation doesn’t show Robin’s true strength, and the person who ultimately defeats Dimante is Kyros, Rebecca’s father. What is deeply offensive about the Dimante fight, other than the optics of the two women’s battle being overtaken by a man, is that Kyros is such a forgettable character. He doesn’t even reach the top 100 in the latest character rankings despite being one of the main characters of the Dressrosa arc.

Who Can Robin Fight in Elbaf?

The Dressrosa situation seems to be repeating itself in Elbaf. The Holy Knights have come to Elbaf to annex the island, steal the children, and burn the remaining books that survived Ohara, Robin’s home island. Robin and Scopper Gaban, the former left-hand to the king of the pirates, is all that stands between the knights and the library. It was a perfect set-up for Robin to have another major fight; she directly confronted Saint Sommers of the Holy Knights to protect what remains of her homeland. But, as the conflict was going on, Scopper Gaban swoops in to slice off Sommers’ hand, setting up a new fight between the two men.

Even though the battle is still early enough that things could still turn around, we hope Oda doesn’t pull another Dressrosa and have Robin not fight. Elbaf has been a great arc for Robin, she deserves to have one fight in this arc. She can still battle, even if she doesn’t fight Sommers, as two other Holy Knights are on the island. We hope Oda gives her the respect she deserves because we don’t want to wait many more years for her to have another one-on-one again.