Who Is Yamato?

Who is Yamato?

Okay so maybe you have heard of One Piece trending, or mentions of "Yamato's Trans!" or "Yamato confirmed on Pride month!" and blah blah, and maybe are confused. Or maybe you have heard nothing. so anyways, who is Yamato?

Bear in mind that, being the series as big as it is, I am going to skip A LOT of background information and will mention spoilers and all that stuff. some of it will be things already covered by the anime, and some stuff from the manga, alright?

Here is Yamato.

He is the son of the main villain of the Wano arc "Kaido King of the Beasts." (and an important ally to the heroes.)

You will notice I said He. that is because Yamato is a man. And that is based on the fact that he was first described as Kaido's son. First introduced himself as "kaido's Son". has specifically dreamed of modelling his life after an important male character called "kozuki Oden" and, whenever characters who know of him talk of him, they use male pronouns.

As a result, as you can (sadly) predict, this has created a lot of inflamatory discussions in the One Piece fandom (to put it in charitable terms). With some people reffering to Yamato as trans, while the other half claims this is the west imposing a reading and that it is either a translation issue (some even claiming the translator is changing it when the original japanese does not reffer to him as male, though from what I heard of the original this claim is dubious at best.) or that he is supposed to "grow" out of "wanting to be Oden".

I am not going to discuss the topic of trans issues in general and wont even attempt to pretend I know anything about queer and/or trans issues in japan (tho I can tell you that any claims that "LGBT+ issues is a western only issue" is bull) and I am not even here to tell you wether Yamato is a good example of a transmale character. I am here to tell you that the main source material (the manga) has so far consistently reffered to Yamato as male, with the only exception being very specific situation. Meanwhile, the biggest evidence against Yamato being Trans so far has come from minor side material that, in the great hierarchy of things, probably had no input from the author Eiichiro Oda.

That is great and good, but then why are people saying "Yamato trans confirmed"? because of this scene in Chapter #1052 (yes, you read the number correctly. And Yamato was only introduced relatively recently)

When offered a bath, Yamato very clearly rejected Nami's offer on the basis that "there are no mixed baths" (IE, "well, as a man I cant bath in the women bathroom but thanks for the offer") while Okiku accepts (Kiku is a whole other post, but she is also trans, tho the discussion there was wether she was a crossdresser or trans and I will leave it at that)

And that is followed by (CW Nudity)

Yamato bathes with the men while Okiku bathes with the women.

Why does this confirm it? Because a lot of the ammunition against Yamato being Trans was "it's a bad translation" or that "Yamato will stop being a man when the arc finishes". And now we have something that MOST DEFINITELY CANNOT POSSIBLY BE A MISTRANSLATION because we have HALF A GODDAMN PAGE with Yamato VERY CLEARLY BATHING WITH THE MEN and VERY CLEARLY FEELING MOST COMFORTABLE IN THE MEN BATH.

Do with this info what you will.