@irish-hugz submitted:

i hate to be the “one piece isn’t THAT bad” killjoy, i’m a huge fan of it myself, but i was just linked to this piece of merchandise, and hoooo boy

for anyone who doesn’t know, Trafalgar Law is a character who allies with the main characters in order to achieve mutual goals. this is his “genderflip”.

to me, the boobs are startlingly similar to actual water balloons just glued on to an otherwise flat chest, which caused me to take a solid five minutes to realize that the black bit above the boobs isn’t some kind of weird ornamental piece, but actually the character’s tattoo

i forgot about the tattoo because, as you may be able to guess

the same outfit, when worn by his regular self, looks entirely different

(other more subtle differences: she’s wearing skinny jeans vs his boot cut and the hat is less doofy. i guess women aren’t allowed to wear silly hats unless they’re slimming? shrug)

also a sidenote re: the ridiculous woman armor in the one piece video game – unfortunately, there is a basis for why the female armor looks the way it does. her name is Rebecca

the SIXTEEN YEAR OLD gladiator who doesn’t need proper armor because she’s good at dodging. or something. (figma used as an example because i couldn’t quickly find a screencap that wasn’t her underboob or in a defeated pose)

It’s kind of funny, I didn’t even connect the green bikini giantess to Rebecca simply because even Rebecca’s super generic bikini armor is more interesting and imaginative.  More viable, but less imaginative.

When it does fan service, One Piece cranks it 14/10, but used to at least keep it whacky (even if we received waaaay too many messages that Rebecca’s outfit was totally practical).

What’s interesting, from a wardrobe perspective, about this figure is that it’s inspired by the idea of a body transforming drug that gets used maliciously in the story.  In the story the victim’s clothes don’t change to match their new body and their transformation can be extremely dramatic (and traumatizing).  It’s kind of a mess but it at least makes a big deal of having body and identity changed.

In the sketches and merchandise inspired by it – it seems that people changing get free tailoring and have a great time, kind of like it’s an excuse to push more sexy lady merchandise (since it seems, the transformation never goes the other way, and all the men always get transformed into generic sex ladies rather than distaff versions of themselves or any sort of interesting variety).

I’m really beginning to think Lindsay Ellis (formerly known as Nostalgia Chick) was onto something when she proposed that companies assume (cishet) dudes really want to a vagina’d version of themselves.

– wincenworks