Please don’t comment on this post if you haven’t read or watch one piece
Luffy breaks the number one rule of writing a main character.
When writing any compelling main character in a story,
there’s one thing you need to focus on,
and that is character development.
Character development is basically a character’s reaction
to the world around them and the growth they experience from that.
This is basically what makes your character realistic
and a character that’s interesting
as we see growth along their journey.
In One Piece, Luffy doesn’t go through character development
as a reaction to the world around him.
The world around him goes through a development as a reaction to Luffy.
Luffy’s mentality and morality throughout One Piece
is very set in stone and stays the same throughout the entire series.
There’s very few times that we see him falter from this viewpoint,
and when we do, it’s for very little bits of time,
and he just shoots right back to where he was.
I think what’s so interesting is
it’s actually our main side cast of characters
that go through character development,
not really Luffy. Characters like Nami, Sanji,
Robin, Law, Kid and vivi
all these main side cast of characters
grow as a reaction to Luffy and his actions.
In a way,
it’s kind of like everyone else is the main characters of the story,
and Luffy is the plot device that’s helping them develop.
I think that’s why Luffy is such a lovable main character
is because throughout the entire series,
there is never one strong period of time
where he doesn’t believe in what he believes.
And he’s so strong on that belief point
that everyone around him develops and starts to believe in it.