SBS Volume 24
Jaya-arc opening SBS — heavy on Marine-uniform rank rules (the official Marine dress-code by rank canonized for the first time: Private below = mandatory cap+uniform; Corporal+ = choice; Warrant Officer = earns “Justice” coat; Major+ = Justice coat is the standard), Luffy’s birthday-doctrine (“every year is his 17th birthday”), Alabasta population canonized at ~10 million (with 2M-strong rebellion in context), and “Flaming Atta-chan” introduced as the Marine’s photo-bounty-poster cameraman.
Q&A
Q: Casual title call
D: STArt the s… b… s…!! (casually but kindly).
O: SO YOU ARE GONNA SAY IT?! …Ah well, take care.
Q: How many liters Oda is (kappa joke)
D: JUST HOW MANY LITERS IS ODA-SENSEI?
O: Yeahhh. I think it was about… 4th grade or so. When I saw a kappa.
Q: Marine uniform rules by rank
D: In the Marines, there are some people who wear uniforms and some people who wear normal clothes. Is wearing regular clothes determined by rank, or is it all up to personal preference?
O: Well… A little from column A, a little from column B…
- When you first join the Marines, you are given a basic Marine uniform and cap. This is a pretty proud moment that you’d want to call home and tell your parents about. Private First Class (Ittouhei) and everyone below must wear these. So Jango and Fullbody are actually breaking the rules.
- For ranks Corporal (Gochou) and above, you can choose other types of uniforms or wear your own personal clothes. However, discretion is advised so that you still look the part of a Marine.
- When you attain the rank of Warrant Officer (Junii), you earn the privilege of wearing “Justice” on your clothes.
- For ranks Major (Shousa) and above, the Justice coat and suit is the most common attire.
(For more info regarding Marine ranks, consult Volume 8.)
Q: Luffy’s birthday — perpetual 17
D: It takes a while for time to pass in manga, doesn’t it? Since it’s a weekly story. So, should we wait like 2 more years for Luffy’s birthday?
O: No, no, no. He has a birthday every year, just like everyone else. It’s just that, in Luffy’s case, every year is his 17th birthday. Doesn’t that make you jealous?
Q: Mr. 3 walking around in Alabasta (75-char limit gag)
D: On the 2nd panel of page 215, chapter 216 “Vivi’s Adventure” in Volume 23, I see 3 among the bystanders, THREE. He’s just walkin’ around! What in the WORLD is the meaning of this?! Didn’t he die?! Give me an answer in a 75-character reply, right now!!
O: Ohh, he is there. Yup, that’s him all right… BECAUSE… ah!! Crap, I’ve passed the character limit.
Q: Marine bounty-poster photographer
D: Who is it that takes those pictures for the wanted posters distributed by the Marines?
O: That’d be this dude here.
- Name: Attach. Nickname: Atta-chan.
- He’s extremely quick and can sneak into any place he wants.
- He is called “Flaming Atta-chan” because he yells “Fire!!” whenever he hits the shutter.
- Head of the Marine Photography Department “Flaming Atta-chan”.
Chapter 219, Page 66
No questions, just a little game made by a reader.
Q: Most self-similar character (Shanks gag)
D: Among all your characters, which one do you think of as “most similar to yourself”?
O: Hmm… Let’s see. Clever mind. Cool and calm personality. Stand-out attire… Guess there’s really only one character who fits that bill… RED-HAIR SHANKS… Huh? I can suddenly hear everyone shouting for some reason… AH! OWW!!!
Q: Alabasta population — 10M citizens, 2M rebels
D: About the Alabastian Civil War. I know there were 300 thousand royalist soldiers and 700 thousand rebels, but then in Volume 20, Chaka mentions “2 million angry warriors”. Where did those extra 1.3 million guys come from?
O: That’s correct. Alabasta is a country with roughly 10 million citizens. To make things simpler to understand, I left out a bunch of things, but there are lots of other towns and villages besides the ones that appeared in the story. Hearing “10 million” might make 2 million seem smaller, but that’s still an armed uprising of 2 million people. It’s a very serious situation. A major rebellion.
Q: English brown toilet paper (Earl Grey gag)
D: I went on a homestay trip to England. THE TOILET PAPER WAS BROWN!!! (and slighty orange-ish)
O: FOR REALS?! Damn. Then you can’t see the poop on it!! Is that because England is the country of Earl Grey tea?!
Chapter 222, Page 126
Another game made by a reader.
Q: Why Luffy doesn’t eat Nami’s tangerines
D: In One Piece Volume 18, chapter 157, Luffy complains about lack of food with spirally eyes… but right behind him are Nami and her orange trees. Can’t he just eat them?
O: Oranges… To pick and take one bite is to taste instant death. Yes, instant death. Going a whole week without food is usually not enough to kill a human. So whether you bear through it for some greater purpose still remaining in your life, or pick an orange (death) and try your luck with the navigator’s fury… That’s a pretty big gamble… That being said, if her friends really were starving to death, I don’t think she’d be cold enough to just let them die.
Q: Phone ringing
D: YOUR PHONE IS RINGING.
O: Nah, don’t worry. It’s just my editor.
Q: Oda’s mailing address
D: I want to give you a letter directly, but I don’t know where to send it. Please tell me your address.
O: There are two addresses you can use. You can use the address for the editors’ offices as written in Jump Magazine, or the special mailbox for the SBS questions only. Either way, it all comes right to me so don’t worry.
Q: Toge Toge Fruit clothing mechanic
D: How is it that the spikes from Miss Doublefinger’s “Toge Toge Fruit” can also grow from outside her body (her clothes, that is)?
O: Huh? Are you referring to the fact that the spikes would rip the clothes? If I did that, wouldn’t this become an extraordinarily EROTIC MANGA?!
Q: Lazy flowers
D: I have a very big complaint! In Volume 23, the part with the quote that says, “We picked flowers for you” with the sfx that say Flowerrr…!! Yes, that part. Now doesn’t Jango’s flowers seem extremely LAZILY DRAWN?
O: DON’T BE PRESUMPTUOUS!! I CUT CORNERS ON BOTH OF THEM (DON!) Okay, now here’s my “Simple Rose-Drawing Lecture”. Triangles, triangles, triangles, more triangles, and even more triangles… Voila! A beautiful rose!
Q: Prank-ended SBS
D: “The SBS is over”. Something like that.
O: Oh, it’s over…? Well, see you next time.
Notable canon-leaks
- Marine uniform rules by rank — full canonization: Private+below = mandatory uniform/cap; Corporal+ = personal-choice; Warrant Officer = “Justice” privilege; Major+ = Justice coat is the standard. This is the definitive SBS Marine-uniform doctrine — every later Marine officer (Smoker, Hina, Aokiji, Akainu, Kizaru) is reading-coded by this rule. Jango and Fullbody are “breaking the rules” by not wearing standard uniform despite low-ish ranks.
- Luffy’s birthday doctrine — “every year is his 17th birthday” — the in-universe age-clock is frozen at 17. This is Oda’s canon-handling of weekly serialization time-dilation: Luffy ages only between time-skips, not chapter-by-chapter. (Eventually broken by the post-Marineford time-skip → 19.)
- Alabasta population = 10 million citizens; 2M rebels = ~20% of total population — first hard demographic numbers for an arc-country. Frames the scale of the Crocodile coup as a one-fifth-of-the-country uprising.
- “Flaming Atta-chan” — Marine bounty-poster photographer — minor official named-character canonization (Head of Marine Photography Dept). Explains the universal recurring quality of bounty-poster art (single photographer = single style).
- Mr. 3 survived Alabasta (alive in crowd post-arc) — quietly confirmed before later Impel Down arc.
- Toge Toge Fruit clothes-piercing handwaved — Oda admits the in-universe physics would tear Miss Doublefinger’s clothes; refuses to draw it for genre-reasons. Establishes the clothes-survive-DF-transformation unwritten rule across the series.