Personality Bleed: One Piece

I’ve been on a bit of a kick recently, updating old content. As I mentioned in the last article I updated, it’s not typically recommended (from a business strategy standpoint) for content creators to waste time going back over old content, but inaccuracies nag my brain as soon as I’m made aware of them. This old article from 2021 on the Personality Bleed in One Piece is one that’s been gnawing away at the back of my mind for some time now.

If you’re new to the concept of “Personality Bleed”, I wrote an article on it back during the blog’s infancy, called Personality Bleed: Typing Fictional Characters. The term is unique to Practical Typing, the basic premise being that every work of art is imprinted upon by the personality of it’s creator. As a result, only really well written characters will be truly good representations of their personality type, but even those will rarely be 100% accurate. Unless, of course, the personality type of that character is the same as that of the author. Basically, if an INFP writes story, chances are that each character will have hints of INFP imprinted on it, to varying degrees depending on how good of a writer the INFP is. Of course, the story itself may have an INFP theme to it.

But, not all stories have single authors. A story with multiple authors may be more balanced in some ways, but it still could demonstrate personality bleed, like how a comedy series might crutch on a specific style of humor. (For the record, personality bleed isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless it results in shallow or uninteresting characters.)

So, Why Am I Rewriting Personality Bleed In One Piece?

Over the years, Ryan and I’s knowledge of the cognitive functions has grown. In this article in particular, I analyzed the cognitive function influences on One Piece and determined that the author was an ENTP. (I did this without researching the author in the slightest, because that’s kind of the point: to see hints of the author’s type through their work.) I’ve done other such articles on Naruto, HunterXHunter, and Attack of Titan. For this one in particular, I had fallen prey to the idea that having Extraverted Feeling means the user is prone to extravert their feelings, and that’s not true. Being emotionally expressive is not indicative of Fe. With that as kind of a core data point in my mind, I did a lot of rationalizing to fit the show to ENTP. I cringe looking back over it. So, let’s try this again. (I’ll only be rewriting the invalid parts, so when I say something like “I just finished watching…” know that that was 5 years ago, ha ha. The last time I watched the show, we were in the Whole Cake Island Arc, and we never finished it.)

The Cognitive Functions in One Piece

Dominant Ne:

This is by far the strongest displayed function for the entirety of One Piece. The show is fantastical, random, and quirky. The crew pretty much just travels around with no specific goal in mind other than to have fun and get stronger. (Obviously, there’s the King of the Pirates and the One Piece thing, but these aren’t really goals with a clear and set path to follow.) In order do so, they generally aim for the next big location (Grand Line, the New World.. or whatever), yet allow themselves to be diverted here and there by random events. There are islands in the sky, cities under water, random abilities gifted to people by eating wacky-looking fruit, loss of the ability to swim upon eating said devil fruit, mermaids, sea monsters, giants, fairy-like people, sea trains, submarines, man-made islands, magical power called “Haki”, and etc. You name it, and the author of One Piece has probably included it somehow. The bad guys (and most characters really) have odd personality quirks that define them.

For instance, a majority of the villains have an odd (and usually very annoying) laugh. I just got through the Punk Hazard Arc recently, and the villain Vergo was always getting large pieces of food stuck to his face…and never seemed to notice. Really?! Zoro is always getting hopelessly and pathetically lost, to the point where he seems to not even know the difference between left and right, and can’t follow someone who’s right in front of him! I could go on, but it would take up way too much space to run through all the weird, One Piece stuff. I do wonder though, if this is why the big confusion about Luffy’s type exists. (And this is not me trying to argue my opinion either.) But, he’s in a role that is stereotypically Se, yet being strongly influenced by an Ne author. So, does that make him an ENFP or an ESFP? I can respect either opinion.

Freedom and exploration is also a big theme in One Piece, which show cases it’s extraverted perceiving (Ne or Se) emphasis. It’s a world with endless possibilities, as mentioned earlier, and basically no limitations. There’s no lack of places to explore, or new worlds to travel to. As the crew “conquers” one area, the show reveals a brand new horizon for them to head to next. No going back. Press forward and discover all there is to discover.

Auxiliary Fi:

There are certain themes that stand out as particularly Fi in nature, like dreaming big and following your heart. Fi is idealistic in nature, especially when coupled with Ne. So, Luffy has his grand dream that few people will ever achieve, and in the process, he asserts his identity onto the world. Of course, Luffy isn’t the only character, but all of the other characters are subsequently encouraged to do the same, find and pursue their personal dreams. The One Piece universe pushes the narrative to follow your dreams no matter what the cost.

The original theme song “We Are” is a good example of the show’s cognitive emphasis. It starts off with “Come on board and bring along, All your hopes and dreams.” And then in the next verse (or perhaps technically the first verse?), it says, “Compass left behind. It’ll only slow us down. Your heart will be your guide.” In other words, throw away your compass and just follow your heart. That’s an Fi theme with a bit of dominant extraverted perceiving (Ne or Se) mixed in.

The last time I wrote this article I said some nonsense about how the show attempts to explain everything it does logically, but that’s not true. Obviously, the storyline has to make some semblance of sense to be engaging, which it does, but a lot of One Piece stuff doesn’t actually make a lot of sense. It’s very entertaining; don’t get me wrong. The fantastical nature of the show is part of it’s appeal. But it’s certainly not logical, and in my opinion, it makes very little effort in that regard. Instead, what the show really likes doing, is giving all of the different characters really odd quirks to make make them unique and distinct. For instance, that one villain I mentioned earlier who always gets food stuck to his face and doesn’t notice. And Zoro always getting lost. Etc. Etc. There’s no sense in me repeating the Ne section. The point here is the randomness of it all strikes like Ne, but the way the show gives the majority of the characters their own personal and unique silly quirk strikes like Fi.

Lastly, One Piece is a very emotional show. I mean that in a good way. It can be very moving. But, not only that, many of the characters in One Piece, especially amongst the crew, are very emotionally expressive. For instance, Frankie, who most people type as an EXTP type comes across as very emotional. Sanji, who we type as an ESTJ, is typed as an ENFJ by many, and I do kinda understand why. He’s typically brash and logical, but the moment a pretty girl walks into the room, he loses all focus and self-control, and turns into a star struck blob of flattery. The only members of that crew who aren’t emotionally expressive are Robin and Zoro. I used to, in my ignorance, attribute this emotional expression to an Fe influence on the show, but it’s actually a general feeling influence, perhaps in support of a dominant extraverted function as vehicle to facilitate the expression.

Tertiary Te:

Tertiary functions can be challenging enough to identify in specific characters, much less a show in general. I considering just nixing the lower functions from this article altogether, but I’ll go ahead and say this. Lower Te tends to surface in a “fight the power” kind of way, which you see in One Piece. The “heroes” of the show are pirates, which initially, I just found interesting. Like, “oh, they’re basically good guy pirates. That’s different.” But then the show takes it one step farther by demonizing the military and basically everyone in the military, which basically turns the typically roles upside down. Of course, the military itself (in the real world or otherwise) is TJ in nature with it’s emphasis structure, discipline, order, and standardization. So, this approach strikes me as potentially anti-Te, which makes sense if it’s a lower function in the author’s cognitive function stack. There’s also a ton of TJ villains, but that’s not too unusual. People like villainizing the TJs.

Inferior Si:

And my last few thoughts on this subject are related to Si. One Piece has a lot of “surface” Si users. I’ll be watching the show, lock on to one of the characters, and go “Oh, that’s an Si user.” But then, I’ll try to come up with a solid, non-stereotypical argument as to why, and I’ll have a hard time producing one. On the surface, however, the character looks very Si. I’ll get online and read people’s opinions, and many will agree that the character is an Si user. Yet, I’ll struggle to produce a good argument. You might argue that I’ve simply typed the characters wrong, but that would imply that there are no Si characters in One Piece, because it’s that way for all of them. For Si, I look for detail orientation, however, you don’t see a lot of that in One Piece. You see reliance on past lessons which they bring up on occasion, which is usually what I have to lean on for evidence. However, you don’t see that meticulous, detailed nature of the Si dominant or auxiliary being displayed in One Piece. Although, I will say, that Trafalgar Law is probably the best example of an Si user that I’ve seen the show produce yet. Perhaps the author is improving. (I’m not trying to knock the author though -One Piece is an excellent anime, with a lot of great, well-rounded characters.)

In Conclusion…

I could have written a few thoughts on Ni, but I’d mostly just be saying that the Ni displayed in One Piece is fairly stereotypical. It leans heavily on terminology like fate and destiny. Admittedly, that does make the Ni users easy to peg. Regardless, based on everything written above, I’d suggest that we have an ENFP written anime here. Obviously, don’t take this conclusion too seriously. I’m just following this logic train for fun, and wouldn’t bank anything on it. I haven’t researched the author. I just enjoy attempting to reverse engineer the personality type that has been imprinted onto some of these shows. Let me know if you have any thoughts, questions or an alternate viewpoint