- [Announcer] Boa Hancock is a seemingly quirky
and emotionally complex character
who does look down on people
out of a sense of sheer entitlement,
or at least to that is what you would think.
Because in reality, she is looking down on them
for not subscribing to the Grand Line Review
and thus not receiving regular One Piece content
uploaded straight into their YouTube feed.
What simps!
Hello, and welcome to One Piece 101,
the series that breaks down everyone and everything
in the One Piece world.
And today we are going to be taking a look
at the infamous Pirate Empress
and leader of the Kuja clan, Boa Hancock.
Boa Hancock is a tall and regal presence
whose aesthetic qualities proceed her
as she is often referred to
as the most beautiful woman in the world
even by those who have never seen her, which is interesting.
So she has that bit of Cleopatra flare going on here.
But in regards to her personality,
Hancock is well aware of this and will not hesitate
to use said beauty as a weapon or asset
in any given situation.
However the much greater effect
that this worldly recognition has brought on Hancock
is a sense of arrogance, to put it quiet lightly,
and a sense of extreme pompous selfishness
that comes close to rivaling the World Nobles at worst.
And the comparison here is that Hancock truly believes
that she can get away with anything and everything,
and the world will simply forgive her
because of how smitten everyone and everything
seems to be with her,
which is important to point out I guess.
Hancock's presence does not discriminate through any factor,
and if you are a human being,
in fact, you probably don't even need to be human.
If you are a living creature of any persuasion
or denomination, chances are, you are going to be charmed
by Boa Hancock, if not straight up
just fall in love with her on the spot.
I say chances are though because it wouldn't be
until a certain Monkey D. Luffy came along,
that Boa Hancock's view on this matter would change,
but we'll get to that in a bit
because as spoiled as I've made her sound,
Hancock actually spawns
from pretty rough beginnings in life.
She and her sisters Boa Marigold and Sandersonia
became pirates at the age of 12 or possibly even earlier.
And that's not even the rough part.
It was actually considered quite an honor
to be sailing with the Kuja Pirates, an all female crew.
However, on one fateful voyage, the Kuja Pirates
encountered a band of slavers
who managed to overwhelm the crew and capture Hancock
as well as her two sisters.
They then proceeded to sell them as slaves
to the World Nobles, and what happened next,
are horrors so unimaginable
that I doubt Oda will ever speak of them,
much less put them to page,
but despite me comparing Hancock's future attitude
to that of the World Nobles,
we must remember that this is
the most despicable group of beings
ever featured in One Piece
and quite possibly literature in general,
who have no regard for any form of life
other than for their fellow Nobles.
And even then it's debatable.
And so Hancock was tortured and humiliated
for approximately four years, and to be perfectly honest,
it is kind of astonishing that she and her sisters
remained alive after four years
because the World Nobles have very high turnaround
in regards to their slaves.
So the Boa sisters must have held some minor value to them.
And during this time, each of the sisters
were also force fed a Devil Fruit
for the purposes of entertaining the Nobles,
which in Hancock's case ended up being the Mero Mero no Mi,
an ability that would go on to work extraordinarily well
with her own natural gifts,
because essentially the Mero Mero no Mi
is a paramecium type fruit that gives its user access
to a variety of attacks and manipulative abilities,
which work in direct correlation
to feelings of loss towards its user,
and so given that Hancock would go on
to become such a revered global presence,
it makes her Devil Fruit one of the more powerful
within the series, but only under her specific control.
And one of the most simple actions of this we see
is the Mero Mero beam,
which has Hancock form a heart with her hands, fire a beam,
and then anybody who gets hit by it,
who you know feels any kind of sense of lust towards Hancock
is instantly turned into stone,
a pretty incredibly overpowered ability
that very, very few people are safe from in this world.
And in fact, Hancock has been shown capable
of even bringing vice admirals to their knees,
which we saw with Momonga who avoided the attack
by stabbing himself in the hand,
and thus taking his mind away from his mini Momonga.
Even then though to show that this is the length
that even a Vice admiral needs to go to
in order to simply avoid being turned into stone,
goes to show how much of a force Hancock can be.
And the Mero Mero no Mi also granted Hancock
a range of other abilities
that play with firing tangible things like kisses
and a variety of different methods
of turning parts of people into stone,
and exactly how the World Nobles use this
to entertain themselves is unknown.
But we won't have to think about it for much longer
because after four long and painful years of enslavement,
Hancock and her sisters would eventually be freed
by the actions of Fisher Tiger,
a fishman and former a slave who climbed the red line
and launched an attack on the The Holy Land Mary Geoise,
freeing as many fellow slaves as he could in the process,
allowing Hancock, Sandersonia and Marigold to flee
and eventually find sanctuary with Elder Nyon,
and then with some added help
from Silvers Rayleigh and Shakky,
they were brought back to the Island of Amazon Lily at last.
However, there was a slight problem here
in that there was no way the sisters
could tell the rest of the tribe that they had been slaves.
So Hancock made the decision to hide their markings
as well as tell the Kuja inhabitants
that the Devil Fruit powers they received
came as a result of slaying a Gorgan.
And so the three of them from then on
would be referred to as the Gorgan sisters.
For Mia Hancock would go on
to become not only the captain of the Kuja Pirates,
but also the Empress of the entire tribe
by the mere age of 18.
Although the years had developed her
into a deeply misanthropic person
as a result of her experiences as a slave.
So for example, Hancock found herself
completely unable to trust men in general,
but she even showed a sense of disdain and apathy
for the members of her own tribe.
However, deep deep, and I mean, deep down,
she did still care for her people, and after her
potential was recognized by the World Government,
Hancock also took up a position
as one of the seven Warlords of the Sea
in order to secure protection
for the people of Amazon Lilly.
And so Hancock would achieve a state of normality,
or I suppose what passes for normality
for quite some time
until everything would be turned upside down
by a man on her Island, gasp,
that man being the afore mentioned Monkey D. Luffy
who had been sent to Amazon Lily against his will
by the powers of Bartholomew Kuma.
And as part of a series of comical Shonen interactions,
Luffy ended up walking in on Hancock in the bath,
as well as noticing the mark of slavery on her back.
Not that Luffy realized what it was though.
However, this infuriated Hancock to no end
who ordered that Luffy be captured
and taken into their combat arena,
where assumedly, she was looking forward to the pleasure
of watching him die, ideally brutally.
Now given that this is One Piece,
that clearly did not happen, and in fact,
in a bizarre turn of events,
Luffy even used his own body as a covering
to prevent the crowd from seeing Sandersonia's slave mark
which Luffy had realized
that the sisters would rather die than reveal.
And in addition to some other selfless actions
committed by Luffy, Hancock was left in an unusual position.
Having encountered a man unlike any she had ever met before
and went on to reveal her true persona,
which was a deeply pained human being.
And as part of this onslaught of emotion
brought forth by the destruction of the dam of her facade,
which is probably one of my favorite metaphors
I've ever written, Hancock came down
with a case of literal love sickness,
and she fell head over heels for Luffy.
However, because he as stated before,
was unlike any other man she had ever met,
Luffy did not and is highly unlikely
to ever return those feelings.
But of course that did not stop Hancock's admiration of him.
And upon learning that his brother Portgas D. Ace
was scheduled to be executed,
Hancock volunteered to use her status as Warlord of the Sea
to allow Luffy to sneak into Impel Down
in order to rescue him.
But as a consequence of sneaking Luffy into the facility,
Hancock now had to respond to a summoning
by the World Government to assemble at Marineford
in order to fight the Whitebeard Pirates
in an event that would become known as the Paramount War.
And during this conflict Hancock's utter domination
was clearly demonstrated on the battlefield,
capable of dispatching mass quantities
of pirates and Marines alike, you know,
whatever she felt like at the time,
and her most volatile nature
would be shown when Luffy arrived on the battlefield
after being unsuccessful in Impel Down,
after which point Hancock swiftly switched allegiances
purely to that of Luffy, and in doing so,
she even engaged in combat with Smoker,
as well as went on to destroy a series
of World Government-controlled cyborg weapons
known as the Pacifista.
And when asked why Hancock a Warlord of the Sea
was doing such a thing, her only response was
that love always comes in like a hurricane.
Which you know is very cryptic and confusing
to anybody who wasn't Hancock herself,
but even with Warlord, in fact several Warlords on his side,
to say that this event went well for Luffy
would be an outright lie as his brother Ace
was killed on the battlefield,
and Luffy himself incurred severe injuries.
And as such, he was brought back to Amazon Lily
by Trafalgar Law, with Hancock lamenting
that there was not more she could do
for her self-professed love.
And during this time, Hancock actually went through
her own form of grief, as during the two weeks, it took
for Luffy to recover.
She allegedly barely ate anything
and spent most of her time thinking about
what to do for Luffy when he had recovered,
which did manifest itself in organizing
and overseeing a grand feast for him
because if Hancock had learned anything by now,
it was that food was the key to Luffy.
Now, interestingly enough, an old acquaintance
would then show up on the Island in the
form of Silvers Rayleigh
who had helped Hancock return to Amazon Lily
after escaping Mary Geoise,
and while Hancock certainly did not show him
anywhere near Luffy levels of respect,
there was clear affection and gratitude
towards yet another man in this world,
which made Hancock let's say tolerant of his presence,
as well as his plan to train Luffy
on the nearby Island of Rusukaina for the next two years.
Although after being told
that Luffy would need to spend two years without seeing her,
well, that was not something
that Hancock was initially pleased with,
but after realizing that all of this was for his sake,
she facilitated this training.
And after waiting those two long years,
Hancock arrived on the Island to escort Luffy
back to Sabaody Archipelago
in order to reunite with his crew.
In doing so Hancock of course, provided him
with an exceptional amount of food,
as well as a surprisingly successful disguise.
So as to avoid not being recognized, and when parting ways
this time around Hancock wistfully asked Luffy
not to say goodbye to which he replied that he never does,
and that he hopes to see her again,
which after some mental gymnastics
Hancock took as a marriage proposal,
although by this time she had mistaken
a lot of Luffy's words for proposals.
So, yeah, this was nothing new.
However, after this event,
we have sadly not seen a whole lot from Boa Hancock.
She mostly appears on cover stories,
reacting to Luffy's new bounty developments and such.
However, I do need to put up
a very brief spoiler warning for events
in between acts two and three of Wano.
If you have not read up to or watched up to
and beyond this point, then please do skip to this time.
I promise I won't be long,
but this spoiler is not insignificant.
So I look forward to seeing you on the other side,
but for everyone else, here we go.
During the events of the reverie,
assumedly as a result of the combined efforts
of Marina Admiral Fujitora,
as well as a coalition of Kings,
including Cobra of Alabaster and Rico of Just Rosa,
both of whom had been impacted
by the Warlord system in the past.
It was officially announced that the World Government
would be dissolving the Warlord program,
thus immediately revoking Hancock's status
and dispatching a large force of Marines
to capture her as a now wanted fugitive.
After hearing the news though, Hancock rather smugly mused
that the entire reason why she had been offered the position
in the first place is because of how strong she was
and assumedly made preparations to engage in combat
with the Marines.
Some more fun facts about Boa Hancock:
I didn't get the time to mention this in the main section,
but very importantly, Boa Hancock
is one of the extremely rare characters
in the series who has access
to all three brands of Haki
being observation, armament,
and the all important Conqueror's Haki,
making her that much more of a formidable opponent.
Ever since her introduction,
Hancock has skyrocketed to becoming
one of the most popular characters in the series,
or at least with the Japanese audience,
as she ranked in 10th place
for both the fifth and six officially conducted
popularity polls, which is rock solid consistency
worthy of a Gorgan sister.
Interestingly enough, a prototype outfit
for Hancock's design can be seen
all the way back in chapter 97
when Nami has a brief montage of clothing changes,
which is pretty crazy because Hancock herself
would not make her first appearance in the series
until almost nine years of realtime later in chapter 516.
And finally, a truly useless fact,
according to Eiichiro Oda,
the most difficult human character to draw in the series
is Boa Hancock, primarily because
he always has to keep in mind that he has labeled her
as the most beautiful woman in the world.
And as such, he needs to make sure that
that remains true in each and every single panel
that she features in.
And that pretty much does it for Boa Hancock.
But what do you guys think?
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