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〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Batty
AGE: 24
JOURNAL: batty_chan
IM / EMAIL: battypichugirl@gmail.com
PLURK: goodluckmodes
RETURNING: y
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Roronoa Zoro
CHARACTER AGE: 19
SERIES: One Piece
CHRONOLOGY: End of episode 119, after defeating Mr. 1
CLASS: Neutral
HOUSING: randomize for housemates + house with Monkey D. Luffy, please! Preference for Nonah
BACKGROUND: One Piece takes place in a universe largely dominated by ocean, with one major continent (the Red Line) bisecting it. An infamous sea known as the Grand Line running perpendicular to the Red Line further bisects the world into four major seas: East Blue, West Blue, North Blue, and South Blue. Twenty-two years ago, a man by the name of Gol D. Roger had amassed “everything the world had to offer” and hidden it somewhere in the Grand Line. Upon the moment of his execution, he put out the challenge for someone to claim his treasure, the One Piece, for themselves, and become the new King of Pirates--thus launching the Great Pirate Era.
However, piracy is illegal, and the mere act of creating a Jolly Roger (aka a pirate flag) is punishable in the eyes of the World Government and its primary military force, the Marines (also called the Navy). Due to the extensive amount of piracy in this era, though, the Marines focus most of their resources on the Grand Line, often ignoring the plight of small towns in favor of bigger fish to fry. To bridge the gap to some extent, bounties are placed on the heads of all known pirates, and powerful fighters often make their living as bounty hunters.
Zoro begins the series as one of these hunters. Little is known about his very early life, but we do know that as a child, he attempted to take over a dojo in a neighboring village, but was defeated by the dojo head’s daughter, Kuina. He then remains in the dojo for training so that he can improve and eventually defeat her. Based on the fact that he seems to have arrived in the village alone, and appears to have moved in permanently, it can be inferred that he was either orphaned, ran away from home, or was abandoned. Unless shown otherwise, I’m tentatively going with the headcanon that he was orphaned.
After a year of training, Zoro is still unable to defeat Kuina, though he has improved significantly, being stronger than all of the other children in the dojo, as well as the adults. He challenges her one night to a fight with real swords, and Kuina fights him with her family’s sword, the Wado Ichimonji. She wins again, but she’s frustrated at how much he’s caught up, and the fact that as Zoro matures, he will become physically stronger than her, simply because he was born male. However, Zoro disagrees, claiming that she’s always been his goal, and that he’s been training to improve so if he defeated her, it would be because of his skill. He tells her to make a promise with him, that night, that one of them would become the greatest swordsman in the world.
But the next day, Kuina is tragically killed in an accident when she falls down the store-room steps trying to get a sharpening stone for her sword. Kuina’s father tells Zoro about how she had begun to get complacent at the dojo because she had never faced a real threat of defeat, until Zoro had come along, and then she began to work even harder, so she wouldn’t lose to a boy. Ultimately, after hearing this, Zoro asks her father if he can have the Wado Ichimonji in pursuit of fulfilling their shared dream of becoming the greatest swordsman in the world, and he agrees.
Zoro remains in the dojo for eight more years, honing his skills so he can go out to sea in search of Dracule Mihawk, the current world’s strongest, and challenge him. However, once he sets out on his journey, he ends up getting lost due to his terrible sense of direction, and has to start collecting bounties as means of supporting himself. In doing so, he begins to build a name for himself in the East Blue, and at one point the bounty hunter organization Baroque Works attempts to recruit him, but he refuses to join.
Ultimately, circumstances cause him to give up being a bounty hunter. He gets captured by the Navy after taking the punishment for a small child who had angered a captain’s son, and when it becomes apparent that their agreement is not going to be honored and the man intends to have him executed, he agrees to join Luffy’s pirate crew to avoid certain death. He becomes the first member of what comes to be called the Straw Hat Pirates and follows Luffy in his quest to obtain the One Piece.
Their first unofficial recruit is Nami, a thief who steals only from pirates, who Luffy decides he wants as their ship’s navigator almost immediately upon meeting her. Together, they manage to escape the Buggy Pirates together, who Nami had managed to steal a map of the Grand Line from, and they come upon a small sleepy village where they meet Usopp, son of a pirate and professional tall-tale spinner. One day, though, his tales turn out to not be so tall, but nobody will believe him, a la boy who cried wolf, and he decides he’ll somehow protect the village by himself. The Straw Hats are impressed, and decide to help him drive back the pirates that are to invade the following morning. Once all is said and done, Usopp ends up joining the crew to become a brave warrior of the sea like his father, and the girl they rescued, Kaya, provides them with a proper ship, the Going Merry.
En route to the Grand Line, the crew assists a pair of name by the name of Johnny and Yosaku, who Zoro recognizes from his time as a bounty hunter. When they hear that the crew is looking for a cook, they lead them to the floating restaurant, Baratie. Unfortunately, a Navy ship docks at the Baratie at around the same time, and the Lieutenant onboard decides to sink the Going Merry. Luffy manages to redirect the cannonball, but instead of firing back at the Navy ship, the errant ball flies into the roof of the Baratie, damaging it and minorly injuring the owner, Zeff. Luffy is told he can pay off the damage via a year of chores, which he argues vehemently to get reduced. In the meantime, he witnesses the sous chef, Sanji, offering food to a starving pirate who is kicked out of the restaurant for not having money, and decides that he wants the man to be his ship’s cook. Sanji refuses, but before Luffy can make him change his mind, trouble arrives in the form of Don Krieg, the pirate considered to be the Ruler of the East Blue. He insists he comes in peace, just wanting to be fed, and while the other cooks refuse, Sanji feeds him anyway, and rejuvenated, Krieg proceeds to lay claim to the ship.
In the midst of all this, Johnny and Yosaku return, bearing terrible news: Nami has run off with the Going Merry and all of their accumulated treasure. Luffy tells Usopp and Zoro to go fetch her while he fights off the Krieg pirates as a means of paying his debt to Zeff. However, the chase is interrupted by the arrival of Mihawk, who had apparently chased the Krieg pirates all the way from the Grand Line. Zoro challenges him immediately to a fight, seeing a chance to fulfill the dream he’s held since he was a child, and although he loses, he earns Mihawk’s respect in the process, the latter telling him to get stronger and come back to challenge him again someday. Zoro swears that until his rematch with Mihawk, he will never lose a fight again, and with that, he, Johnny, and Usopp go off in search of Nami.
They follow the Going Merry to Arlong Park, and Zoro intends to simply storm the place and retrieve Nami as per Luffy’s orders, but Johnny is terrified by the idea, as Arlong is affiliated with one of the Shichibukai, the seven powerful pirates who, in exchange for compensating the government with a portion of their plunder, are allowed to exist undisturbed as a force for intimidating other pirates and deterring people from becoming pirates. They (along with Usopp) decide to tie Zoro up so he can’t do something reckless that will get them all killed. Right about then, however, one of the Fishmen from Arlong Park notices their boat, and the duo jump ship in order to avoid them, accidentally leaving Zoro tied up on board. Zoro’s taken back to Arlong Park by the Fishmen, where he’s greeted by Nami of all people, claiming she worked for Arlong all along and she was only ever using them for their treasure. Zoro doesn’t buy it, though, and he throws himself into the pool of Arlong Park while still tied up as a test. Sure enough, Nami dives into the pool to rescue him, and later visits him in Arlong’s dungeon to cut him free and tell him to leave the island.
While Arlong is off on some business in the nearby Cocoyashi Village, Zoro defeats most of the Fishmen at Arlong Park and waits for Usopp to come meet up with him, but eventually gets bored waiting and hitches a ride to Cocoyashi Village on the Fishman Hatchan. However, just as he arrives, he hears that Usopp got caught by Fishmen and rushes back to Arlong Park to save him. Before he can find him, though, Luffy and Yosaku return with Sanji in tow, and Johnny comes to warn Zoro and the others that Nami killed Usopp. However, Usopp himself returns to tell everyone that Nami only pretended to kill him so that he could escape, and soon afterward, the Straw Hats go together to take down Arlong. During this fight, Luffy gets trapped underwater, forcing Zoro and Sanji to fight off the remaining Fishmen before Luffy can drown. They successfully rescue him before being thoroughly trounced by Arlong himself, but Luffy regains consciousness and ultimately defeats Arlong, destroying the park in the process. The villagers celebrate as the Straw Hats recover, and then they set sail once more for the Grand Line, the entrance to which is at Loguetown.
Docking at Loguetown, the Straw Hats split up for their own purposes, Zoro looking to purchase swords to replace the ones broken in his fight with Mihawk. In the process, he meets Tashigi, a female swordsman who looks and acts eerily reminiscent of Kuina. Later, she turns out to be a Sergeant in the Marines who hates both pirates and bounty hunters, and upon finding out Zoro’s identity, immediately challenges him to a fight, which he promptly wins before running off to save Luffy from Buggy, a pirate they’d previously defeated and who had chased them to Loguetown, seeking revenge. They manage to escape both the other pirates and the Marines, and finally enter the Grand Line via its treacherous Reverse Mountain entrance past Loguetown.
However, they soon learn that the Grand Line cannot be navigated like a normal sea, and that a Log Pose is required for travel. They receive one from a man they meet on the way, and set their first location toward Whiskey Peak, the hometown of Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday, a pair of individuals who lost their Log Pose in a scuffle with them. Whiskey Peak appears to be a town that welcomes pirates, and throws them a grand welcoming party, but in reality they are an entire town of bounty hunters working for the crime syndicate, Baroque Works. Zoro realizes this trap and after everyone has fallen asleep, goes outside to fight the 100 bounty hunters of Whiskey Peak planning to capture the Straw Hats and hand them over to the Navy.
However, the fighting is interrupted by the arrival of Officer Agents Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine, sent to eliminate Miss Wednesday, secretly Nefertari Vivi, the princess of Alabasta, for the crime of discovering the identity of Baroque Works’ boss. In the ensuing struggle, the supposed town mayor reveals himself to be the captain of Alabasta’s royal guard, and asks Nami to protect the princess. She ropes Zoro into doing this despite his initial objections by reminding him of a previous debt. Later, Vivi explains the state of her country and her reasons for joining Baroque Works, and the crew agrees to take her to Alabasta to defeat Crocodile, the leader of Baroque Works who has been inciting a civil war for the purpose of seizing the country himself. However, in so doing, she accidentally puts targets on Luffy, Nami, and Zoro’s backs as well, due to revealing the Baroque Works boss’ identity to them. They escape to the next island on the Grand Line, Little Garden, as Igaram’s decoy ship is sunk.
However, various kinds of trouble lurk in Little Garden. Baroque Works Officer Agents Mr. 3 and Miss Golden Week are assigned to eliminate the Straw Hats on Little Garden, assisted by Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine, and Zoro is captured after getting lost during a hunting competition on the island with Sanji. Mr. 3 intends to turn him (as well as Nami and Vivi) into wax figurines, and although Zoro struggles valiantly to escape (including hacking into his own legs to free himself), he is unable to cut either the hard wax nor through his legs from his position, and chooses to pose dramatically in the event of his solidification before Luffy can save them, because he is an utterly ridiculous person, okay.
Usopp manages to save the day with his quick wits, and the freed Straw Hats easily defeat Mr. 3 and Miss Golden Week. Meanwhile, Sanji returns to the main group with an Eternal Pose pointing to Alabasta stolen from Baroque Works, conveniently solving the problem of being trapped on the island for a year waiting for their Log Pose to store enough magnetism.
On the way there, however, Nami takes ill, and Zoro temporarily takes over as navigator (why did anyone allow him to do this, we just don’t know) while the crew searches for an island with a doctor. They arrive at the winter Drum Island, but aside from getting lost in a freezing river and beating up some minions of the arc’s antagonist, Wapol, he doesn’t do anything important. At the end of it, though, the reindeer-human Chopper joins the crew as its doctor.
They finally reach Alabasta, but due to an intercepted communication between Sanji (pretending to be Mr. 3) and Crocodile, the Marines are already there, and due to Luffy being Luffy, they spend a lot of time in Alabasta running from said Marines, before they’re assisted by Fire Fist Ace of the Whitebeard Pirates, who turns out to be Luffy’s brother. After stocking up on supplies in the port town Nanohana, though, they head out for the oasis of Yuba, where the rebel army is supposed to be stationed. They briefly meet a weird ballerina with clone powers, who they find out is actually Mr. 2, and Zoro comes up with a surprisingly brilliant plan for the Straw Hats to be able to identify themselves to each other if the need arises.
Various desert shenanigans and poignant conversations happen, before they discover that the rebel army has actually moved to Katorea, back near where they began in Nanohana, whoops. But Luffy does his Luffy thing and convinces them to go after Crocodile instead of wasting more time, and after getting chased by the Marines (again) they manage to storm Crocodile’s casino in Rainbase. However, Crocodile was prepared with a trap for them, and they all landed in a seastone cage, including Captain Smoker, a Marine who’s been chasing them since Loguetown. Villain speeches ensue, etc, Crocodile kidnaps Vivi and gives her a Sophie’s choice about whether to save her friends vs. save her country because he’s an asshole, but Sanji and Chopper (who’d been previously separated from the rest) manage to break them free. Luffy orders Zoro to save Smoker when the casino floods in the process, as Devil Fruit users cannot swim, and when Smoker learns of this fact, he decides to let the Straw Hats go for now rather than resume chasing them.
Having escaped from the casino, the crew heads for Alubarna Palace, where the rebel and royal armies will clash, and when intercepted by Crocodile, Luffy stays behind to fight while the others escape. The remaining Straw Hats create a diversion to distract the Baroque Works members ordered to eliminate them upon arrival, and Zoro is matched against Mr. 1, a “blade man” made of steel--something Zoro cannot yet cut. At the end of a fierce battle, during which Zoro is pushed to nearly the brink of death from his injuries, he suddenly becomes aware of “the rhythm of all things” and gains the ability to more precisely manage his swordsmanship (e.g. slashes through a fern without cutting it), which allows him to finally cut steel and defeat Mr. 1, after which he collapses to the ground from blood loss.
PERSONALITY: Our first introduction to Roronoa Zoro (through Coby, an unwilling pirate chore boy with dreams of becoming a Marine) is as the notorious pirate hunter--a cold-blooded, ruthless murderer. A demon in human form.
And then immediately after, that image of him is shattered as a little girl sneaks into the enclosure where Zoro is being held captive by the Navy to bring him food, and we learn that the entire reason for Zoro’s imprisonment is because she angered a Navy captain’s son, and he is taking the punishment in her and her mother’s place.
The real Zoro is both like and entirely unlike the rumors about him circulating all around the East Blue. He is incredibly skilled and powerful, and woe betide those who might threaten his life. What the rumors don’t talk about, though, is how he’s hopelessly lacking in any sense of direction, how he considers food, alcohol, and sleep a viable substitute for medical care, how he’s competitive enough that he’ll agree to play tag, something he considers childish, at the mere suggestion that he’s afraid of losing.
A far cry from the inhuman monster that many in the East Blue imagine him to be, Roronoa Zoro is just a swordsman with a simple dream: to become the best in the entire world, for his name to become so famous that it reaches the heavens themselves, in fulfillment of a promise he made to his late childhood friend Kuina. We learn that the entire reason Zoro became a bounty hunter in the first place was as a means of survival, to support himself after he got lost at sea trying to find and challenge Dracule Mihawk to fulfill his and Kuina’s dream, and couldn’t find his way back home, rather than any particular greed or desire to commit violence with impunity. He might be aggressive, ill-tempered, and quick to threaten violence (or murder) when angered, but he’s actually not as bloodthirsty as he’s made out to be, even fighting with the blunt side of his blade against weaker enemies and innocents, so as to avoid seriously injuring them.
Beyond that, Zoro, like the rest of the Straw Hats, seems to operate on his own personal code of honor. He prefers not to attack people from behind, considering scars on the back a swordsman’s greatest shame, and he doesn’t use his skills to plunder or ravage towns, nor to force people to give him things or do his bidding, like many of the other pirate crews in the series.
He also holds an incredible loyalty toward his crew and particularly his captain, Luffy. Early in the show, he’s seen lifting a steel cage Luffy was trapped in so as to escape from the Buggy Pirates together, despite the effort of it widening his stab wound further and further, and later gets slashed in the chest by the Meowban brothers after taking Usopp’s “Lead Star” attack so the brothers wouldn’t slaughter Usopp and Nami in retaliation for getting hit. He defers to Luffy’s authority on most matters, and obeys his orders without question, ready to storm the Fishman stronghold to retrieve Nami even while suffering a fever from the severe wounds he sustained in his earlier fight with Mihawk.
Reckless to the point of absurdity, Zoro seems to show absolutely no fear of death, and functions almost entirely by the sheer force of his willpower and ambition, powering through injuries others say would leave an average person bedridden for months and making insane gambles like throwing himself in the pool of Arlong Park while tied up on the assumption that Nami wouldn’t let him drown or tossing the Kitetsu III sword into the air and sticking his arm out on its way down to see if his luck was stronger than the sword’s supposed curse.
It’s this sense of ambition that seems to drive the bulk of his actions, initially joining Luffy’s crew when he’d originally refused in order to avoid death and see his promise to Kuina through and spending much of his time aboard the Going Merry training or sleeping rather than socializing with his crewmates. However, even as he’d once claimed that as a pirate for Luffy, he’d still only strive to fulfill his own ambition, his loyalty to the crew is shown to supercede that time and time again, and in a much later arc, he’s even willing to throw it away and trade his own life for Luffy’s, saying that his ambition means nothing if he can’t protect his own captain.
POWER:
Zoro has no canon powers at his current point. His exceptional strength and stamina is essentially considered peak human condition in-universe and becoming aware of the “rhythm of all things” is implied to be simply a level of skill as a swordsman (analogous to an attainment of sort of zen-like enlightenment) rather than anything supernatural, the result of many years of intense physical training and practice.
In MoM, he will have the following powers:
Sword Affinity
Zoro will be able to summon his prized sword, the Wado Ichimonji at will. For instance, if it’s knocked out of his hand in a fight, he can bring it back to him by focusing on it. If it is damaged or lost (i.e. out of his range of immediate vision), he can summon it instead by calling its name. Even if the sword is shattered, the pieces will return themselves to him.
He can also bring other bladed weapons to him by concentrating on them, but only within his line of sight, and once they are broken, he loses power over them. He also cannot summon other people’s weapons out of their grasp or do anything beyond bring the weapons within his reach; for instance, he can’t send multiple swords in multiple directions telekinetically or anything more complex than effectively being a magnet that only attracts bladed weapons.
Targeted Danger Sense
The ability to know when Monkey D. Luffy is in trouble of some kind. Zoro will feel a certain sense of unease when his captain has found himself entangled in something or other unfortunate, with the magnitude of the discomfort approximately proportional to the amount of danger Luffy is in. Being chased by an angry shopkeeper for eating all their wares? Barely a prickle. Meanwhile, any risk of say, Luffy submerging in water and drowning due to his Devil Fruit user status would be experienced as like a sharp, intense pain.
As a side effect of this power, Zoro will be able to instinctively make his way to Luffy no matter where he is when it activates, regardless of his terrible sense of direction.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[The feed begins with the sight of...part of a face? There’s clearly some kind of green hair, tan skin, an eye, and...blood?]
--Like this?
[Yeah, uh, definitely blood. In fact, as whoever the owner of the voice was speaking to adjusts the camera angle for him, there’s...quite a lot more of it that becomes visible. His entire shirt front is soaked in it, but the poor waiter/bartender next to him seems a lot more distraught by this than he is. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that more was still clearly dripping through the tears in it, one could almost be forgiven for not immediately assuming the blood was his.]
So I just--talk into it and people hear me? [A tiny, wordless nod comes from the other man.]
Huh. Kinda like a Den Den Mushi, but with a picture….guess I will hang onto it then. Thanks for the info.
[And while he’s at it...he takes a moment to address the weird mirror box before he heads on out, since he’s got nothing else to trade for food (or drink).]
Oi! I’m missing a couple things:
[Things, people, the entire kingdom he was just in. Same diff.]
A rubber idiot wearing a straw hat, a shitty cook with a curly eyebrow, a long-nosed sniper--[He counts off on his fingers, as if reciting a list of groceries, rather than, you know, his crew, but much as he might be acting tough, there’s a definite undercurrent of concern there]
A reindeer-person, a blue-haired girl and her pet duck, comes up about this high [he raises a hand to about waist height], and a red-haired girl, our navigator. If you’ve acquired any sudden debts lately, it’s probably her.
If someone’s seen them or can tell me how to get back to Alabasta Kingdom from here, I’ll owe you one.
[He huffs, then, rests one hand on the hilt of one of his swords.]
--And if any of you morons is actually listening to this, you better tell me you’re alive, or I’ll kick your ass when I find you!
[That draws a small yelp from the bartender, and Zoro turns back to him, suddenly reminded of his presence]
Oi, how do I stop talking at the weird box…?
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
test drives
FINAL NOTES: Zoro will arrive with all three of his swords, including the Yubashiri and Kitetsu III.
NAME: Batty
AGE: 24
JOURNAL: batty_chan
IM / EMAIL: battypichugirl@gmail.com
PLURK: goodluckmodes
RETURNING: y
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Roronoa Zoro
CHARACTER AGE: 19
SERIES: One Piece
CHRONOLOGY: End of episode 119, after defeating Mr. 1
CLASS: Neutral
HOUSING: randomize for housemates + house with Monkey D. Luffy, please! Preference for Nonah
BACKGROUND: One Piece takes place in a universe largely dominated by ocean, with one major continent (the Red Line) bisecting it. An infamous sea known as the Grand Line running perpendicular to the Red Line further bisects the world into four major seas: East Blue, West Blue, North Blue, and South Blue. Twenty-two years ago, a man by the name of Gol D. Roger had amassed “everything the world had to offer” and hidden it somewhere in the Grand Line. Upon the moment of his execution, he put out the challenge for someone to claim his treasure, the One Piece, for themselves, and become the new King of Pirates--thus launching the Great Pirate Era.
However, piracy is illegal, and the mere act of creating a Jolly Roger (aka a pirate flag) is punishable in the eyes of the World Government and its primary military force, the Marines (also called the Navy). Due to the extensive amount of piracy in this era, though, the Marines focus most of their resources on the Grand Line, often ignoring the plight of small towns in favor of bigger fish to fry. To bridge the gap to some extent, bounties are placed on the heads of all known pirates, and powerful fighters often make their living as bounty hunters.
Zoro begins the series as one of these hunters. Little is known about his very early life, but we do know that as a child, he attempted to take over a dojo in a neighboring village, but was defeated by the dojo head’s daughter, Kuina. He then remains in the dojo for training so that he can improve and eventually defeat her. Based on the fact that he seems to have arrived in the village alone, and appears to have moved in permanently, it can be inferred that he was either orphaned, ran away from home, or was abandoned. Unless shown otherwise, I’m tentatively going with the headcanon that he was orphaned.
After a year of training, Zoro is still unable to defeat Kuina, though he has improved significantly, being stronger than all of the other children in the dojo, as well as the adults. He challenges her one night to a fight with real swords, and Kuina fights him with her family’s sword, the Wado Ichimonji. She wins again, but she’s frustrated at how much he’s caught up, and the fact that as Zoro matures, he will become physically stronger than her, simply because he was born male. However, Zoro disagrees, claiming that she’s always been his goal, and that he’s been training to improve so if he defeated her, it would be because of his skill. He tells her to make a promise with him, that night, that one of them would become the greatest swordsman in the world.
But the next day, Kuina is tragically killed in an accident when she falls down the store-room steps trying to get a sharpening stone for her sword. Kuina’s father tells Zoro about how she had begun to get complacent at the dojo because she had never faced a real threat of defeat, until Zoro had come along, and then she began to work even harder, so she wouldn’t lose to a boy. Ultimately, after hearing this, Zoro asks her father if he can have the Wado Ichimonji in pursuit of fulfilling their shared dream of becoming the greatest swordsman in the world, and he agrees.
Zoro remains in the dojo for eight more years, honing his skills so he can go out to sea in search of Dracule Mihawk, the current world’s strongest, and challenge him. However, once he sets out on his journey, he ends up getting lost due to his terrible sense of direction, and has to start collecting bounties as means of supporting himself. In doing so, he begins to build a name for himself in the East Blue, and at one point the bounty hunter organization Baroque Works attempts to recruit him, but he refuses to join.
Ultimately, circumstances cause him to give up being a bounty hunter. He gets captured by the Navy after taking the punishment for a small child who had angered a captain’s son, and when it becomes apparent that their agreement is not going to be honored and the man intends to have him executed, he agrees to join Luffy’s pirate crew to avoid certain death. He becomes the first member of what comes to be called the Straw Hat Pirates and follows Luffy in his quest to obtain the One Piece.
Their first unofficial recruit is Nami, a thief who steals only from pirates, who Luffy decides he wants as their ship’s navigator almost immediately upon meeting her. Together, they manage to escape the Buggy Pirates together, who Nami had managed to steal a map of the Grand Line from, and they come upon a small sleepy village where they meet Usopp, son of a pirate and professional tall-tale spinner. One day, though, his tales turn out to not be so tall, but nobody will believe him, a la boy who cried wolf, and he decides he’ll somehow protect the village by himself. The Straw Hats are impressed, and decide to help him drive back the pirates that are to invade the following morning. Once all is said and done, Usopp ends up joining the crew to become a brave warrior of the sea like his father, and the girl they rescued, Kaya, provides them with a proper ship, the Going Merry.
En route to the Grand Line, the crew assists a pair of name by the name of Johnny and Yosaku, who Zoro recognizes from his time as a bounty hunter. When they hear that the crew is looking for a cook, they lead them to the floating restaurant, Baratie. Unfortunately, a Navy ship docks at the Baratie at around the same time, and the Lieutenant onboard decides to sink the Going Merry. Luffy manages to redirect the cannonball, but instead of firing back at the Navy ship, the errant ball flies into the roof of the Baratie, damaging it and minorly injuring the owner, Zeff. Luffy is told he can pay off the damage via a year of chores, which he argues vehemently to get reduced. In the meantime, he witnesses the sous chef, Sanji, offering food to a starving pirate who is kicked out of the restaurant for not having money, and decides that he wants the man to be his ship’s cook. Sanji refuses, but before Luffy can make him change his mind, trouble arrives in the form of Don Krieg, the pirate considered to be the Ruler of the East Blue. He insists he comes in peace, just wanting to be fed, and while the other cooks refuse, Sanji feeds him anyway, and rejuvenated, Krieg proceeds to lay claim to the ship.
In the midst of all this, Johnny and Yosaku return, bearing terrible news: Nami has run off with the Going Merry and all of their accumulated treasure. Luffy tells Usopp and Zoro to go fetch her while he fights off the Krieg pirates as a means of paying his debt to Zeff. However, the chase is interrupted by the arrival of Mihawk, who had apparently chased the Krieg pirates all the way from the Grand Line. Zoro challenges him immediately to a fight, seeing a chance to fulfill the dream he’s held since he was a child, and although he loses, he earns Mihawk’s respect in the process, the latter telling him to get stronger and come back to challenge him again someday. Zoro swears that until his rematch with Mihawk, he will never lose a fight again, and with that, he, Johnny, and Usopp go off in search of Nami.
They follow the Going Merry to Arlong Park, and Zoro intends to simply storm the place and retrieve Nami as per Luffy’s orders, but Johnny is terrified by the idea, as Arlong is affiliated with one of the Shichibukai, the seven powerful pirates who, in exchange for compensating the government with a portion of their plunder, are allowed to exist undisturbed as a force for intimidating other pirates and deterring people from becoming pirates. They (along with Usopp) decide to tie Zoro up so he can’t do something reckless that will get them all killed. Right about then, however, one of the Fishmen from Arlong Park notices their boat, and the duo jump ship in order to avoid them, accidentally leaving Zoro tied up on board. Zoro’s taken back to Arlong Park by the Fishmen, where he’s greeted by Nami of all people, claiming she worked for Arlong all along and she was only ever using them for their treasure. Zoro doesn’t buy it, though, and he throws himself into the pool of Arlong Park while still tied up as a test. Sure enough, Nami dives into the pool to rescue him, and later visits him in Arlong’s dungeon to cut him free and tell him to leave the island.
While Arlong is off on some business in the nearby Cocoyashi Village, Zoro defeats most of the Fishmen at Arlong Park and waits for Usopp to come meet up with him, but eventually gets bored waiting and hitches a ride to Cocoyashi Village on the Fishman Hatchan. However, just as he arrives, he hears that Usopp got caught by Fishmen and rushes back to Arlong Park to save him. Before he can find him, though, Luffy and Yosaku return with Sanji in tow, and Johnny comes to warn Zoro and the others that Nami killed Usopp. However, Usopp himself returns to tell everyone that Nami only pretended to kill him so that he could escape, and soon afterward, the Straw Hats go together to take down Arlong. During this fight, Luffy gets trapped underwater, forcing Zoro and Sanji to fight off the remaining Fishmen before Luffy can drown. They successfully rescue him before being thoroughly trounced by Arlong himself, but Luffy regains consciousness and ultimately defeats Arlong, destroying the park in the process. The villagers celebrate as the Straw Hats recover, and then they set sail once more for the Grand Line, the entrance to which is at Loguetown.
Docking at Loguetown, the Straw Hats split up for their own purposes, Zoro looking to purchase swords to replace the ones broken in his fight with Mihawk. In the process, he meets Tashigi, a female swordsman who looks and acts eerily reminiscent of Kuina. Later, she turns out to be a Sergeant in the Marines who hates both pirates and bounty hunters, and upon finding out Zoro’s identity, immediately challenges him to a fight, which he promptly wins before running off to save Luffy from Buggy, a pirate they’d previously defeated and who had chased them to Loguetown, seeking revenge. They manage to escape both the other pirates and the Marines, and finally enter the Grand Line via its treacherous Reverse Mountain entrance past Loguetown.
However, they soon learn that the Grand Line cannot be navigated like a normal sea, and that a Log Pose is required for travel. They receive one from a man they meet on the way, and set their first location toward Whiskey Peak, the hometown of Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday, a pair of individuals who lost their Log Pose in a scuffle with them. Whiskey Peak appears to be a town that welcomes pirates, and throws them a grand welcoming party, but in reality they are an entire town of bounty hunters working for the crime syndicate, Baroque Works. Zoro realizes this trap and after everyone has fallen asleep, goes outside to fight the 100 bounty hunters of Whiskey Peak planning to capture the Straw Hats and hand them over to the Navy.
However, the fighting is interrupted by the arrival of Officer Agents Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine, sent to eliminate Miss Wednesday, secretly Nefertari Vivi, the princess of Alabasta, for the crime of discovering the identity of Baroque Works’ boss. In the ensuing struggle, the supposed town mayor reveals himself to be the captain of Alabasta’s royal guard, and asks Nami to protect the princess. She ropes Zoro into doing this despite his initial objections by reminding him of a previous debt. Later, Vivi explains the state of her country and her reasons for joining Baroque Works, and the crew agrees to take her to Alabasta to defeat Crocodile, the leader of Baroque Works who has been inciting a civil war for the purpose of seizing the country himself. However, in so doing, she accidentally puts targets on Luffy, Nami, and Zoro’s backs as well, due to revealing the Baroque Works boss’ identity to them. They escape to the next island on the Grand Line, Little Garden, as Igaram’s decoy ship is sunk.
However, various kinds of trouble lurk in Little Garden. Baroque Works Officer Agents Mr. 3 and Miss Golden Week are assigned to eliminate the Straw Hats on Little Garden, assisted by Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine, and Zoro is captured after getting lost during a hunting competition on the island with Sanji. Mr. 3 intends to turn him (as well as Nami and Vivi) into wax figurines, and although Zoro struggles valiantly to escape (including hacking into his own legs to free himself), he is unable to cut either the hard wax nor through his legs from his position, and chooses to pose dramatically in the event of his solidification before Luffy can save them, because he is an utterly ridiculous person, okay.
Usopp manages to save the day with his quick wits, and the freed Straw Hats easily defeat Mr. 3 and Miss Golden Week. Meanwhile, Sanji returns to the main group with an Eternal Pose pointing to Alabasta stolen from Baroque Works, conveniently solving the problem of being trapped on the island for a year waiting for their Log Pose to store enough magnetism.
On the way there, however, Nami takes ill, and Zoro temporarily takes over as navigator (why did anyone allow him to do this, we just don’t know) while the crew searches for an island with a doctor. They arrive at the winter Drum Island, but aside from getting lost in a freezing river and beating up some minions of the arc’s antagonist, Wapol, he doesn’t do anything important. At the end of it, though, the reindeer-human Chopper joins the crew as its doctor.
They finally reach Alabasta, but due to an intercepted communication between Sanji (pretending to be Mr. 3) and Crocodile, the Marines are already there, and due to Luffy being Luffy, they spend a lot of time in Alabasta running from said Marines, before they’re assisted by Fire Fist Ace of the Whitebeard Pirates, who turns out to be Luffy’s brother. After stocking up on supplies in the port town Nanohana, though, they head out for the oasis of Yuba, where the rebel army is supposed to be stationed. They briefly meet a weird ballerina with clone powers, who they find out is actually Mr. 2, and Zoro comes up with a surprisingly brilliant plan for the Straw Hats to be able to identify themselves to each other if the need arises.
Various desert shenanigans and poignant conversations happen, before they discover that the rebel army has actually moved to Katorea, back near where they began in Nanohana, whoops. But Luffy does his Luffy thing and convinces them to go after Crocodile instead of wasting more time, and after getting chased by the Marines (again) they manage to storm Crocodile’s casino in Rainbase. However, Crocodile was prepared with a trap for them, and they all landed in a seastone cage, including Captain Smoker, a Marine who’s been chasing them since Loguetown. Villain speeches ensue, etc, Crocodile kidnaps Vivi and gives her a Sophie’s choice about whether to save her friends vs. save her country because he’s an asshole, but Sanji and Chopper (who’d been previously separated from the rest) manage to break them free. Luffy orders Zoro to save Smoker when the casino floods in the process, as Devil Fruit users cannot swim, and when Smoker learns of this fact, he decides to let the Straw Hats go for now rather than resume chasing them.
Having escaped from the casino, the crew heads for Alubarna Palace, where the rebel and royal armies will clash, and when intercepted by Crocodile, Luffy stays behind to fight while the others escape. The remaining Straw Hats create a diversion to distract the Baroque Works members ordered to eliminate them upon arrival, and Zoro is matched against Mr. 1, a “blade man” made of steel--something Zoro cannot yet cut. At the end of a fierce battle, during which Zoro is pushed to nearly the brink of death from his injuries, he suddenly becomes aware of “the rhythm of all things” and gains the ability to more precisely manage his swordsmanship (e.g. slashes through a fern without cutting it), which allows him to finally cut steel and defeat Mr. 1, after which he collapses to the ground from blood loss.
PERSONALITY: Our first introduction to Roronoa Zoro (through Coby, an unwilling pirate chore boy with dreams of becoming a Marine) is as the notorious pirate hunter--a cold-blooded, ruthless murderer. A demon in human form.
And then immediately after, that image of him is shattered as a little girl sneaks into the enclosure where Zoro is being held captive by the Navy to bring him food, and we learn that the entire reason for Zoro’s imprisonment is because she angered a Navy captain’s son, and he is taking the punishment in her and her mother’s place.
The real Zoro is both like and entirely unlike the rumors about him circulating all around the East Blue. He is incredibly skilled and powerful, and woe betide those who might threaten his life. What the rumors don’t talk about, though, is how he’s hopelessly lacking in any sense of direction, how he considers food, alcohol, and sleep a viable substitute for medical care, how he’s competitive enough that he’ll agree to play tag, something he considers childish, at the mere suggestion that he’s afraid of losing.
A far cry from the inhuman monster that many in the East Blue imagine him to be, Roronoa Zoro is just a swordsman with a simple dream: to become the best in the entire world, for his name to become so famous that it reaches the heavens themselves, in fulfillment of a promise he made to his late childhood friend Kuina. We learn that the entire reason Zoro became a bounty hunter in the first place was as a means of survival, to support himself after he got lost at sea trying to find and challenge Dracule Mihawk to fulfill his and Kuina’s dream, and couldn’t find his way back home, rather than any particular greed or desire to commit violence with impunity. He might be aggressive, ill-tempered, and quick to threaten violence (or murder) when angered, but he’s actually not as bloodthirsty as he’s made out to be, even fighting with the blunt side of his blade against weaker enemies and innocents, so as to avoid seriously injuring them.
Beyond that, Zoro, like the rest of the Straw Hats, seems to operate on his own personal code of honor. He prefers not to attack people from behind, considering scars on the back a swordsman’s greatest shame, and he doesn’t use his skills to plunder or ravage towns, nor to force people to give him things or do his bidding, like many of the other pirate crews in the series.
He also holds an incredible loyalty toward his crew and particularly his captain, Luffy. Early in the show, he’s seen lifting a steel cage Luffy was trapped in so as to escape from the Buggy Pirates together, despite the effort of it widening his stab wound further and further, and later gets slashed in the chest by the Meowban brothers after taking Usopp’s “Lead Star” attack so the brothers wouldn’t slaughter Usopp and Nami in retaliation for getting hit. He defers to Luffy’s authority on most matters, and obeys his orders without question, ready to storm the Fishman stronghold to retrieve Nami even while suffering a fever from the severe wounds he sustained in his earlier fight with Mihawk.
Reckless to the point of absurdity, Zoro seems to show absolutely no fear of death, and functions almost entirely by the sheer force of his willpower and ambition, powering through injuries others say would leave an average person bedridden for months and making insane gambles like throwing himself in the pool of Arlong Park while tied up on the assumption that Nami wouldn’t let him drown or tossing the Kitetsu III sword into the air and sticking his arm out on its way down to see if his luck was stronger than the sword’s supposed curse.
It’s this sense of ambition that seems to drive the bulk of his actions, initially joining Luffy’s crew when he’d originally refused in order to avoid death and see his promise to Kuina through and spending much of his time aboard the Going Merry training or sleeping rather than socializing with his crewmates. However, even as he’d once claimed that as a pirate for Luffy, he’d still only strive to fulfill his own ambition, his loyalty to the crew is shown to supercede that time and time again, and in a much later arc, he’s even willing to throw it away and trade his own life for Luffy’s, saying that his ambition means nothing if he can’t protect his own captain.
POWER:
Zoro has no canon powers at his current point. His exceptional strength and stamina is essentially considered peak human condition in-universe and becoming aware of the “rhythm of all things” is implied to be simply a level of skill as a swordsman (analogous to an attainment of sort of zen-like enlightenment) rather than anything supernatural, the result of many years of intense physical training and practice.
In MoM, he will have the following powers:
Sword Affinity
Zoro will be able to summon his prized sword, the Wado Ichimonji at will. For instance, if it’s knocked out of his hand in a fight, he can bring it back to him by focusing on it. If it is damaged or lost (i.e. out of his range of immediate vision), he can summon it instead by calling its name. Even if the sword is shattered, the pieces will return themselves to him.
He can also bring other bladed weapons to him by concentrating on them, but only within his line of sight, and once they are broken, he loses power over them. He also cannot summon other people’s weapons out of their grasp or do anything beyond bring the weapons within his reach; for instance, he can’t send multiple swords in multiple directions telekinetically or anything more complex than effectively being a magnet that only attracts bladed weapons.
Targeted Danger Sense
The ability to know when Monkey D. Luffy is in trouble of some kind. Zoro will feel a certain sense of unease when his captain has found himself entangled in something or other unfortunate, with the magnitude of the discomfort approximately proportional to the amount of danger Luffy is in. Being chased by an angry shopkeeper for eating all their wares? Barely a prickle. Meanwhile, any risk of say, Luffy submerging in water and drowning due to his Devil Fruit user status would be experienced as like a sharp, intense pain.
As a side effect of this power, Zoro will be able to instinctively make his way to Luffy no matter where he is when it activates, regardless of his terrible sense of direction.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[The feed begins with the sight of...part of a face? There’s clearly some kind of green hair, tan skin, an eye, and...blood?]
--Like this?
[Yeah, uh, definitely blood. In fact, as whoever the owner of the voice was speaking to adjusts the camera angle for him, there’s...quite a lot more of it that becomes visible. His entire shirt front is soaked in it, but the poor waiter/bartender next to him seems a lot more distraught by this than he is. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that more was still clearly dripping through the tears in it, one could almost be forgiven for not immediately assuming the blood was his.]
So I just--talk into it and people hear me? [A tiny, wordless nod comes from the other man.]
Huh. Kinda like a Den Den Mushi, but with a picture….guess I will hang onto it then. Thanks for the info.
[And while he’s at it...he takes a moment to address the weird mirror box before he heads on out, since he’s got nothing else to trade for food (or drink).]
Oi! I’m missing a couple things:
[Things, people, the entire kingdom he was just in. Same diff.]
A rubber idiot wearing a straw hat, a shitty cook with a curly eyebrow, a long-nosed sniper--[He counts off on his fingers, as if reciting a list of groceries, rather than, you know, his crew, but much as he might be acting tough, there’s a definite undercurrent of concern there]
A reindeer-person, a blue-haired girl and her pet duck, comes up about this high [he raises a hand to about waist height], and a red-haired girl, our navigator. If you’ve acquired any sudden debts lately, it’s probably her.
If someone’s seen them or can tell me how to get back to Alabasta Kingdom from here, I’ll owe you one.
[He huffs, then, rests one hand on the hilt of one of his swords.]
--And if any of you morons is actually listening to this, you better tell me you’re alive, or I’ll kick your ass when I find you!
[That draws a small yelp from the bartender, and Zoro turns back to him, suddenly reminded of his presence]
Oi, how do I stop talking at the weird box…?
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
test drives
FINAL NOTES: Zoro will arrive with all three of his swords, including the Yubashiri and Kitetsu III.
