Why East Blue Is The Weakest Sea, Explained

The world of One Piece is absolutely massive, and fans know that there are many massive seas all across the planet. In fact, the biggest part of the One Piece world is seas and there’s barely any land if one doesn’t take the Red Line into account, the reason for which was revealed to the fans recently in the Egghead Island arc.

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It goes without saying that most One Piece fans are aware of the structure of the world. The blue planet has a huge landmass that runs around it, called the Red Line. Two strips of Calm Belt, where winds don’t blow for sailing and Sea Kings rest, run perpendicular to it, and between the two strips lies a stretch of the ocean called the Grand Line. The Grand Line itself is divided into two parts, separated by the Red Line: the Paradise, and the New World. Together, the Red Line and the Grand Line split the world into four parts, and each of these seas is home to millions. The four seas of the world, as Oda has clarified, are the East Blue, the South Blue, the West Blue, and the North Blue. Out of the four blues, it is said that the East Blue is the weakest of all, which is a statement that often surprises the fans. But, there needs to be a deeper understanding of why this is the case.

East Blue Being Called The Weakest Sea

• The East Blue Is The Weakest Of The Four Seas
• The Other Seas Are Considered More Dangerous

The world of One Piece changed drastically when the Pirate King, Gol D. Roger, started the Great Pirate Era. Roger, who was executed in Loguetown, told the people to go look for his treasure and set out to the sea before he died, ushering in a new age. During this time, the seas of the One Piece world got filled with pirates as tonnes of people set out to sail across the oceans and claim the treasure that once belonged to the late Pirate King, Gol D. Roger. Of course, Roger’s decision was calm and calculated. He knew what he was doing when he started the Great Pirste Era, and he most certainly intended for the seas of the One Piece world to be filled with immensely powerful pirates. All this was likely to raise the chances of someone fulfilling the Will of D that he couldn’t fulfill himself due to circumstances out of his control.

Clearly, pirates from all four quarters of the world stepped out, and eventually, everyone headed to the same stretch of the ocean, the Grand Line. That’s not to say that the Grand Line itself didn’t have pirates of its own. This stretch hosts countless islands, which collectively have the most dangerous pirates of all. The New World, in particular, is the most dangerous sea of all. Ruled by the Yonko, the New World of the One Piece world is incredibly dangerous, and quite easily the strongest sea. Yet, when it comes to the weakest sea, the one that Oda often calls the weakest is the East Blue itself. This has happened on multiple occasions in the story, and is a solidified fact. The East Blue was called the weakest of the four seas by Dracule Mihawk in One Piece chapter 51, right before his battle against Zoro began. Mihawk clearly described that the Red Line splits the world into four parts with the Grand Line, and of the four seas, the East Blue is by far the most tame.

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This isn’t even the only instance that Oda refers to the East Blue as the weakest. In One Piece’s Strong World chapter, Shiki is seen attacking the Marine HQ after Roger’s execution is announced, and he seems thoroughly angry about the fact that Roger was being executed in the East Blue of all oceans, which he called the weakest, and took as a disrespect to the Pirate King.

However, Garp corrected him and stated that it was not the most weak, but had the most peace instead.

Why East Blue Is The Weakest Sea

The East Blue Pirates Aren’t All That Threatening

Out of all the seas of the One Piece world, the East Blue is, by far, considered to be the weakest, and there’s a good reason for that. This statement might be confusing to the fans on the surface. After all, the East Blue seems to have produced mighty pirates. The Pirate King, Gol D. Roger himself was from the East Blue, and Yonko Straw Hat Luffy stems from the East Blue as well. There are also other powerful individuals from the East Blue. The head of the Revolutionary Army, Dragon, comes from the East Blue, as does Sabo, the Chief of Staff of the Revolutionary Army. Roronoa Zoro, the Combatant of the Straw Hats, comes from the East Blue too. Of course, fans are rightly wondering as to how this sea is the weakest of all.

The answer to the question is quite simple. Fans are simply misunderstanding what Oda is trying to say when he calls the East Blue the weakest sea. To say that the East Blue is the weakest of the four blues is absolutely true and it isn’t a surprise at all. The statement is also perfectly correct. The reason why the East Blue is the weakest of the Four Blues is simply that pirates that are considered dangerous here are low-level pirates elsewhere in the world. The average bounty is way lower than any other sea, and it is far more peaceful than the others. This doesn’t mean that the East Blue can’t produce strong people. In fact, that has absolutely nothing to do with it. The strong people in the East Blue are an exception, and secondly, they don’t stay in the East Blue. They’re all headed for the Grand Line and stay there.

When Oda calls East Blue the weakest, he talks of the sea itself, not the people coming from the East Blue. For instance, Arlong is a pirate who would have formerly represented the East Blue since he was active in the seas. Roger cannot be considered an East Blue pirate since he wasn’t active there. He’s a Grand Line pirate, despite being born in the East Blue. The same goes for Luffy right now. Luffy was an East Blue pirate during the East Blue Saga, when he was active in those seas.

Similarly, the pirates who are actually active in the East Blue and stay there are far weaker than the pirates who stay actively in the other three blues and stay there. In other words, the quality and danger level of the East Blue is far lower than that of the other three Blues. The average bounty in the East Blue is only 3 million berries, which is way lower than the other three, and when Luffy had a 30 million bounty, his reward was the highest in the whole sea, which paints a picture of how weak the sea is, in general. Before Luffy, Arlong was widely known as the strongest in the East Blue, while Zoro was known as the best swordsman despite being quite weak. This is precisely why the East Blue is the weakest and why strong people having come from this sea doesn’t make a difference. It is the average quality of the sea in itself that’s low.

One Piece is available to read via Viz Media. The series can be read by the fans officially and for free on the Shonen Jump and the Manga Plus apps. The release date for the next chapter of One Piece, One Piece 1143, is set to be March 23, 2025.

One Piece

Release Date

October 20, 1999

Network

Fuji TV

Directors

Hiroaki Miyamoto, Konosuke Uda, Junji Shimizu, Satoshi Itō, Munehisa Sakai, Katsumi Tokoro, Yutaka Nakajima, Yoshihiro Ueda, Kenichi Takeshita, Yoko Ikeda, Ryota Nakamura, Hiroyuki Kakudou, Takahiro Imamura, Toshihiro Maeya, Yûji Endô, Nozomu Shishido, Hidehiko Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou

• 

  Mayumi Tanaka

  Monkey D. Luffy (voice)

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  Kazuya Nakai

  Roronoa Zoro (voice)