Why is Luffy’s Voice Actress Avoiding the One Piece Manga?

 

One Piece, one of the longest-running manga series by Eiichiro Oda, turns 25 this year. As more and more chapters are published in Weekly Shonen Jump, the pool of readers has gotten more shallow, and newcomers are understandably hesitant to wade in. If you’re an anime fan who hasn’t yet discovered how fantastic One Piece is, this is merely an excuse, but the voice actress who voices Luffy has good reasons for avoiding the manga.

It’s not uncommon for voice actors to be die-hard fans of the shows they cast, but some want to keep their fandom confined to the anime industry. Mayumi Tanaka, who voices Monkey D. Luffy, admitted in a recent interview with the Japanese publication 7 Rules that she had never read the One Piece manga despite the importance of her role. The interviewer probed into the motivations for her beliefs-based performances in the anime. The actress said she avoided reading the series to make her portrayal of Luffy more realistic.

Tanaka stated, “I don’t read manga.” “It may be better if I did, but my approach is to do my performances while still hanging onto that new sense of surprise and thinking ‘Whoa, so this is what happens!’ that comes from reading about it in the screenplay for the first time and seeing the artwork for the first time.”