Character · One Piece
Jinbe
A whale shark fishman who built a career on negotiating, and who hits harder than most people who never bothered.
In Otakana the clue reads: Fish-man helmsman and master of Fish-Man Karate
- Type
- Character
- Series
- One Piece
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Jinbe practises Fish-Man Karate, which strikes through water. He can hit a man by hitting the water inside him, and he throws seawater the way other people throw stones. He held a seat among the Seven Warlords of the Sea, the arrangement where the government pardons pirates in exchange for the use of them, and he gave the seat up rather than fight someone he owed.
He is the crew's helmsman and its only adult. Where Luffy decides instantly, Jinbe counts ships, weather and consequences, and he is the one crewmate who will tell the captain to his face that a plan is stupid. He also carries the politics of Fish-Man Island with him: a species treated as property within living memory, and a queen who asked her people for peace anyway.
His recruitment took an unusually long time. Oda introduced him during the prison arc and did not seat him at the crew's table for hundreds of chapters, which readers complained about loudly and at length. When he finally arrives he does it by announcing that he has come to take the wheel, which is about the most Jinbe sentence the language allows.
Spelling JINBE
JINBE is the trap of this series. English editions have printed Jimbei, Jinbei and Jinbe over the years, so most readers are holding a spelling that is one letter off. The tiles want JINBE, five letters, no I on the end and an N rather than an M. The name comes from jinbeizame, the Japanese word for whale shark.