第206回：Garp, According to the World

Power scalers! Love ‘em or leave ‘em they’re here to stay in the ONE PIECE fandom. While Zoro, Shanks, and Mihawk seem to occupy the majority of their tireless efforts, there’s one significantly older character with a dedicated following. The man with the epithet ‘the Hero of Marine’ is Monkey D. Garp, despite being stepped back from the front lines.

It’s a simple question. Just how strong is or was Garp?

Fans have hotly debated this topic for years and will continue to do so long after ONE PIECE ends. Oda’s ability to conceal many of his higher-tiered hard-hitters in ambiguous clouds of ‘potential’ is devilishly clever, giving any side plenty of ammo to make arguments in their favor. But the reason I bring this up now (on the cusp of finding out how Garp obtained his epithet)
is because of this panel from Chapter 1161, with this line in particular:

L.M.A.O!!!!

Excuse me??

Nineteen years ago on October 30th, 2006 I was seated at my work desk on a sunny and brisk Monday morning (just one desk away from the school’s vice-principal) trying to sneakily read Chapter 432. That chapter was the first time readers were introduced to the term ‘Four Emperors’. We already knew who Whitebeard and Shanks were but back then we were wildly trying to figure out which of the two bottom figures were Kaidou or Big Mom. That’s how little we knew.

How funny fate is. Nearly 20 years ago (and almost on the anniversary of the chapter itself!) we see this same man, Monkey D. Garp, setting not one. Not two. But THREE of those same exact pirates running for their li-…well, maybe not for their ‘lives’, but certainly running away from this beast of a man in order to maintain their freedom.

In classic Oda fashion, Linlin’s statement about avoiding fighting Garp could be taken many ways. ‘Yametokina’ is as ambiguous as they come. If we drop all flavor and just look at what it means, it’s simply a familiar way of saying, “You should not do that [for a reason],” whereas the specific reason is not stated, only implied that it exists.

What did Linlin mean?

Don’t fight him because…it will take too much time?
Don’t fight him because…it will only end in a stalemate?
Don’t fight him because…we’re not familiar with all of his capabilities?
Don’t fight him because…you’d lose to him at your level and we need you to get away?
Don’t fight him because…
………..
……………..we’d *all* lose?

I cannot (nor would I ever desire to) answer that loaded question! But the point is, these three capable, cutthroat, and desperate pirates who would come to possess one of the collective greatest strengths in the world, are running from Monkey D. Garp, because (for one reason or another) it would be disadvantageous to do so.

What an absolute beast.

By the time this is published, we’ll likely know the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of God Valley’s effect on Garp’s reputation. But…with or without God Valley and its outcome, is Garp really the ‘hero’ that the world considers him to be?

One thing I’m certainly NOT suggesting is that Garp doesn’t have the best of intentions behind his actions at any given time. Garp performs what a normal human would consider ‘heroic’ acts on a nearly daily basis. But Garp is clearly anything other than a ‘normal’ human with his bestial strength and roughly 9’5” height. Shouldn’t we hold him to a different standard? Maybe not, maybe so. But for simplicity’s sake, let’s set the bar for heroism at the actions of his own grandson.

If we look at Garp’s childhood, while we know almost nothing about Dragon’s formative years, we can easily compare his childhood to Luffy with this single image.

A: The Scar
Note the scar on the left side of his face. All three generations of Monkey males who we’ve seen bear some kind of permanent mark on the left side of their face and while Dragon obtained his at a much older age, we can clearly tell from this alone that Garp suffered extraordinary pain at a young age. And while that might be traumatic for some…

B: The Wounds
We see that despite his wounds, bruises, and cuts, Garp pays them no mind and is only elated over his victory. When considering his facial scar, this suggests to us that, like Luffy, he learned to deal with extraordinary pain at a young age and pay it no mind when in pursuit of a goal.

C: The Smile
Garp’s smile and eyes are extremely close to Luffy’s with only his brow really betraying any kind of significant difference between their facial design. What’s more important, is WHAT he’s happy about. This simple picture shows us that he’s happy about the Weekly Shonen JUMP’s triad of principals: “Friendship, Effort, & Victory”. He ‘befriended’ the tiger (more on that later). He fought for treasure. He obtained a reward. While we can’t say that Oda intentionally included all three themes here on purpose, it would almost be *more* impressive if they were unintentionally made part of the depiction. From this we can surmise that even if they didn’t look similar or perform parallel actions, what drives Garp -as a person- is the same thing that drives Luffy.

D: The Weapon
The pipe is a ‘manga-safe’ weapon for children to wield that indicates they live a life where they take what they can to help them fight. Wherever Garp obtained the pipe, it doesn’t seem to be with the permission or blessing of a caretaker. Forget the treasure chest, the very act of procuring this pipe for the intent of pillaging is already characteristically ‘piratey’. Without a doubt, this was intended to stir up our memories of ‘the three brothers’ and their days of causing trouble.

E: The Clothes
We see that even the clothes he decides to wear are in line with Luffy’s loose-fitting clothing which telegraph his carefree and open attitude carrying an air of freedom. More on that below.

F: The Tiger
Once again we see Garp doing the same thing Luffy did in Goa, Thriller Bark, and Rusukaina among others. Garp ‘tamed the tiger and ‘befriended’ it. Identical to Luffy’s style of dealing with dangerous wild animals, we can see that once Garp established superiority, he made…‘friends’…with the tiger by riding it. There’s part of that which serves as a joke. No, beating up someone or something and then humiliating them absolutely is not a ‘friendly’ thing to do in real life. But, in Luffy’s mind, whenever he beats the hell out of wild animals, he always considers them his friends after their scrap and considers riding them…‘playing’. That’s ‘the joke’: Luffy’s simplicity in the matter of an otherwise dangerous relationship. That is –of course- if he doesn’t consider them a source of food.

G: The Treasure
The treasure chest is a blatant sign that Garp had (perhaps has???) a yearning for the freedom of a pirate lifestyle. An event in his life caused him to choose between ‘taking’ and ‘protecting’. For all we know, maybe it was even this very act of pillaging the treasure that caused him to realize that ‘taking’ is wrong. We can’t say for sure, especially since the tiger conjures an image of a long-abandoned treasure with no one left alive to claim it. Regardless, the point stands, at one point Garp believed in taking, then something changed inside him to place importance on ‘protecting’.

I would argue that this is the biggest difference (and maybe even ONLY) difference between Luffy and Garp. Luffy wishes to live the pirate life because pirates have the most fun and can party. Therefore *living the pirate life* aka ‘freedom’ is at the core of the machine driving him forward. And if freedom is the core, then his ‘friends’ are the moving parts of the machine which Luffy fully realizes he *must* protect in order to move forward *together*. It’s a nuanced difference but it’s there nonetheless:

Garp pursues the protection of others so that they may enjoy life (even if they are not free).

Luffy pursues personal freedom so that he can enjoy life with others (whom he feels obligated to protect) because without them, ‘fun’ wouldn’t exist.

Garp WAS Luffy. For all we know Luffy might be strikingly similar to his parents as well…albeit without Dragon’s cool, collected, and possibly jaded attitude. But some event in Garp’s life led him down a path of ‘preservation’ rather than ‘freedom’. By preservation, I mean, allowing the world to remain as it stood and still stands today. Even though we’re still in the middle of the God Valley Incident as I write this, it’s possible that we’ll see why Garp came to see ‘preservation’ as his best choice. Was it a sense of helplessness in front of the World Government? Did he hope that if he fell in line long enough, one day he’d be able to try and take down the system? Was he just trying to keep the world together as long as he possibly could, so that his family could survive? Or was it some combination of these motivations?


Hero Garp?

Considering the above. And considering that we now have confirmation that Garp learned something ‘weird’ was going on in the World Government. Was Garp’s pursuit of preservation…heroic?

If we’re to go with a hardline view of heroism, it is certainly possible to argue (depending on which combination of motivations you choose) that Garp was being ‘selfish’ in choosing preservation. If he simply wanted to save his family while turning a blind eye to what he knew was wrong, is that not ‘selfish’? If so, how is that different from how Luffy will go to extraordinary ends, even putting third-parties in grave danger, in the pursuit of trying to save his own crew members? Does that tip Luffy towards being more heroic or more selfish? If that’s selfish (and one could argue that it is) then how can we blame Garp for doing the same?

Those are all questions we have to answer for ourselves but in my eyes, the first unquestionably heroic action I witnessed Garp take in the series, was closing his eyes during Marineford.

In that instant, a decade before Imu even *appeared* in the story but Garp was well aware of ‘something’, Garp showed himself to be a hero by essentially throwing away his life when he disobeyed orders and ‘blinked’. This act could have -and in any real life situation WOULD have- ended with Garp facing the harshest scrutiny possible with prison time at best -if not an outright execution- for colluding with the enemy. Regardless of the outcome, in that instant…

…Garp threw his life away.

We are extremely lucky that he’s still alive.

But it’s not only that.

With that action he passed his role to Luffy. In that moment he abandoned his path. More than half a life spent fighting for preservation. He admitted *to himself* that Luffy actually had a *chance* to do what he couldn’t: end the corrupt grip of the World Government.

Is Garp a hero? I would argue that no matter what happens at God Valley, and no matter what choices he was forced to make since then, Garp is a hero. The world might think Garp is a hero who fought evil while waving the flag of the Marines in the name of the World Government.

But we know Garp is a hero, because he blinked and dared to believe his grandson could accomplish the impossible.