Yamato is one of the few One Piece characters, that have gained immense popularity amongst fans even before their anime debut. According to One Piece global popularity poll, Yamato was ranked 11th which is quite surprising considering the fact that Yamato wasn’t introduced in the anime (meaning only manga readers voted for Yamato) at the time the of the poll, and they also outranked Straw Hats like Chopper, and Usopp.
Yamato was initially introduced as Kaido’s son, and the Beast Pirates also referred to Yamato as “he/him” pronouns. The majority of the fans believed Yamato to be transgender at this point. In fact, Yamato’s interaction with Luffy also solidified this view after Luffy called Yamato as “Yama bro” or “Yama guy”, the same nickname that Luffy uses for Trafagar Law as “Tra guy”. Yamato also calls himself as Kozuki Oden who is a man, and that is why Yamato refers to themselves as a man too.
You can see a strong evidence which supports that Yamato is a transgender character, however, this all changed when Eiichiro Oda released Yamato’s Vivre card (character profile information) where Yamato gender was stated to be canonically female. This new information caused a lot of stir amongst fans, but Yamato was widely accepted as a cisgender, but the recent chapter of One Piece manga is again causing confusion about Yamato.
Some context about the recent One Piece chapter, and I promise not to spoil you too much about the manga. After a big event, Straw Hat decided to take a bath. Nami invited Yamato to take a bath, but instead of going with the women, Yamato decided to take a bath with the boys. This decision is confusing fans as Eiichiro Oda has already confirmed her as female, but then why is she taking a bath with the male crew?
Another One Piece character in this scene is Kiku, who is canonically transgender (a man who is a woman at heart), and she can be seen bathing with the ladies. This bathing scene is a strong evidence supporting the fact that Yamato sees himself as a man. It will be interesting to see how Eiichiro Oda handles Yamato’s gender identity, and if Sanji and Brook are shown having a crush on Yamato, will that make them canonically bisexual?
Yamato key word is currently trending on Twitter because of this situation. What are your thoughts on this recent One Piece development? Let us know your opinion in the comments section.
