What One Piece Film: Red Can Teach You About Empathy Fatigue
Monkey D. Luffy’s tragic foil might provide a valuable lesson about absorbing trauma
Here’s a take for you:
Despite its mixed reception from fans, I really like One Piece Film: Red, and I really really like its antagonist, the world’s greatest popstar (who is so famous we’d heard nothing about her thus far) and Luffy’s childhood friend, Uta.
Uta is charming, her relationship with Luffy is adorable, her powers and quirks are endlessly entertaining, and, very importantly, her songs are BANGERS. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. You can believe that she’s a star, and it’s incredibly effective to establish a musical supervillain as a threat if every song she sings is hypnotizingly great.
Another thing I like about Uta is that while being incredibly sympathetic, her actions are very much her own and she is held accountable for them. I can’t stand when villains (especially female villains) are denied the agency of their actions by being victims of manipulation by a sinister male character or a power they simply can’t control.
It’s important to the story that Uta’s plan is entirely her own, her motivations are her own, and the story never does her the disservice of tying her motivation entirely to the machinations of men. While Shanks’ decision to leave her behind is a part of her trauma, the men in Uta’s life are otherwise nothing but supportive and loving of her as both a person and a talent. Maybe a bit too supportive in fact…
For me, Uta as a villain is up there with Zephyr, Gold, Baron Omatsuri, and Shik- wait now that I think about it, One Piece is pretty stacked in terms of movie villains.
On reflection, she probably shares the most similarities with One Piece Film: Z’s villain, Zephyr, a man who, when directly confronted with the evils of the One Piece world, becomes disillusioned with the established order that he has thus far dedicated himself to upholding, and unilaterally decides that it is his duty to eradicate the world’s greatest threat and the ones who took everything from him: pirates.
THE PIRATES ARE LEAVING
While sharing similarities, Uta is a very different prospect from Zephyr. Uta has a largely charmed and free upbringing, being raised on Shanks’ ship as their musician, being coddled, looked after, and loved unconditionally by her adoptive father and her crew.
Her life suddenly changes after delivering a performance on the musical island of Elegia, when she unwittingly uses her power to awaken an ancient evil that lays waste to the island, killing damn near everyone on it. To protect his daughter, Shanks agrees to leave her behind with musical instructor Gordon, to help her master her power, and the blame for the destruction is put on the Red-Haired Pirates.
Now, here is the most important part of Uta’s backstory, after being abandoned by Shanks, Uta’s life becomes dedicated to honing her musical gifts, she grows up in almost total isolation, with only her doting and supportive music instructor for company. While she puts on a brave face for Gordon, her loneliness begins to consume her until she finds a video den-den Mushi (a snail phone, snails are phones in One Piece, don’t ask) washed up on the beach, this allows her to not only contact the outside world but to also share her music with her fans as well as interact with them. And thus, UTA is born.
What Is Empathy Fatigue?
What’s vital to understanding Uta’s motivations, is that Shanks’ abandonment of her is not the sole reason for her eventual downfall, yes, it is a big part of the reason she hates piracy and becomes desperate to end the pirate era, but it is merely something that feeds her real motivation.
Uta is a victim of a fictionally extreme & genocidal case of empathy fatigue.
Quick info dump: Psychologist Susan Albers describes empathy fatigue as “the emotional and physical exhaustion that happens from caring for people day, after day, after day,”
Empathy fatigue can be something that many of us struggle with, I certainly have. It’s incredibly human to take on the problems of others whether out of love, out of a sense of responsibility, or even a misplaced god complex that makes us believe (sometimes out of ego) that we alone must shoulder all burdens. These can be the problems of the world, the problems of your family, the problems of your friends, or, in Uta’s case, the problems of your adoring fans.
Uta’s constant contact with her stans is a double-edged sword, while they finally give her the validation and adoration that she soon becomes addicted to, she is also constantly exposed to their expectations and worst of all, their problems.
The Dark Side of The Great Pirate Era
One of the things that makes One Piece, in my view, one of the greatest stories out there (yes I’m one of those fans), is how rich and layered the world is, its politics and culture are so fleshed-out that the ripples of even small actions are truly felt throughout it. And no action has shaken the world up more than the execution of the pirate king. I don’t think you’ll find a more thematically rich inciting incident in a story than the final words of Gol D. Roger, idk maybe I’ll cover that in another essay.
Roger’s decision to kick-start the great age of piracy is largely portrayed as a romantic and noble act, one that seals his immortality while also igniting the flame that will burn down the authoritarian power structures that are oppressing the One Piece world, a flame that burns brightly in pirates like Luffy. But there’s another side of that gold coin, while Roger’s words inspired “good” pirates like Luffy, they also inspired bad pirates who would go on to terrorize innocent people (the ones that Luffy, a “good” pirate, released back into the world when he broke into the world’s most notorious prison to free one dude), and many in the navy would go on to use these pirates as an excuse to become even more authoritarian.
Film Red knows exactly what it’s doing by harking back to the advent of the age of piracy, but instead of showing it from the POV of the pirates, the film shows us the POV of the innocent people who fall victim to said pirates, and like many people do with real celebrities, they cry out to their idol, Uta, to somehow make it all better.
To understand Uta’s descent into madness, it’s important to understand this simple fact. Uta does not have friends. She grows up almost entirely in isolation, her only interactions are with Gordon and her fans, both of whom idolize her, and treat her singing talent in an almost messianic reverence. She does not have any outlet to detach herself from the opinions and expectations of her fans, nor (from her POV) does she have a reason to find one. Uta grows up in a bubble surrounded by people who adore her, and she can create a fantasy land with her devil fruit (the sing-sing fruit that hypnotizes all who hear it and forces them into a dream world where Uta controls all), because of the mixture of isolation, adulation, unfiltered empathy and power, she doesn’t realize just how unhealthy it is to constantly be deified while being unable to create boundaries between herself and other people’s problems.
To put it simply: when I’m exposed to too much of the world through the news or social media, I can put down my phone and maybe go and get drunk with friends. Uta can’t do this.
Uta’s childish and twisted logic is that the world is bad for her fans, the only thing that seems to make them happy is her musical dreamworld, therefore the way to save everyone is to live in her dreamworld forever.
Even if this means death.
This is the logic of someone who has been broken by years of taking on the problems of everybody else, the logic of someone who is now incapable of self-care and rendered numb to the reality around her.
Why Luffy Is Not a Hero
This is where I really want to look at the differences between Luffy and Uta, as well as what this says about Luffy’s character and his decision to be a pirate.
Many have long since held the idea that Luffy is not a hero (something he’s repeatedly said), he is in fact, mostly an anti-hero. Luffy is a pretty selfish person who acts largely in the interests of himself and his friends, his actions are almost always subject to his own desires and impulses as opposed to the greater good. Where this falls on the scale of morality is of no consequence to him. As Luffy says, if being a hero means giving up his right to be selfish and have what he wants, he will not do so unless it’s for someone who means something to him.
(I go into this in a bit more depth in my piece about Bartholomew Kuma.)
Luffy is not concerned with altruism, he is simply concerned with freedom and reciprocity. Much of the time, he fights people who he believes are restricting the freedom of people he has come across. This brings him into conflict with other pirates, the government, monarchs, and even sometimes allies like Jinbei who desperately tries to convince Luffy to be the savior of his island as opposed to freeing his friends and making everything worse. Luffy does not seek out injustice like a revolutionary would, nor does he see it as his responsibility to defeat injustice like a marine would, he is a remover of obstacles to freedom, a protector of the ability to live your life freely, Luffy is a pirate.
People Die.
Another big difference between Uta and Luffy can, funnily enough, be traced aaaaall the way back to Alabasta where we see his attitude towards another character: the princess of the Alabasta Kingdom and temporary Straw Hat Pirate, Vivi.
Luffy believes that Vivi’s determination to save every single member of her kingdom from both Crocodile and themselves, as well as her determination to take all of their burdens on by herself, is self-destructive, unsustainable, and naive. He understands that the world is a cruel and unfair place, and while he is a dreamer and an idiot, he is incredibly mature in this way.
Luffy has always been aware of oppression and pain, but there are three main things that stop Luffy from becoming like Uta. 1) His unwavering belief in freedom, 2) His understanding and acceptance of the reality of the world and the limitations of his influence on it, and 3) His support system.
Luffy is a liberator, not a hero or a king. While he is definitely capable of sacrifice, he does not believe in sacrificing himself simply for the greater good, he will only sacrifice himself for his friends and the people who earn his loyalty as well as their loved ones, he requires someone to trigger his protective nature. It often goes unnoticed just how many corrupt or lawless places the Straw Hats visit like Mocktown or Whiskey Peak, where Luffy shows no desire to change these places, nor does he even seem to be bothered by the lawlessness because no one who matters asks him to care, everyone is simply doing what they want, therefore it is none of his business, this is just how the world is.
Unlike Uta, Luffy has always been made brutally aware of his limitations. He grows up in the jungle (abandoned there by his abusive grandfather) where his survival depends on understanding the natural food chain; then he meets Shanks, a strong pirate who loses his arm because of Luffy’s weakness; then he meets Ace and Sabo, two older brothers who he is powerless to protect from the cruel brutality and injustice of the world, and this is what leads him to rely on his friends just as they rely on him. Luffy understands that he can’t fix everyone’s problems, that there are certain things he can do nothing about, and that sometimes it’s best to rely on others or simply accept the way things are.
Above all things, Luffy knows that he can’t save everyone and he absolutely cannot afford to take the trauma of every single person onto himself. This is a critical difference in how he operates versus Uta, he understands how big the world is and how many problems there are, therefore accepts that there are some things he simply can’t devote his energy and his effort to. Contrast this with Uta and initially Vivi who cause themselves immense suffering by pressuring themselves into saving every single person. Vivi is just lucky that she has a friend like Luffy to remind her that bad things will inevitably happen and that she must share her emotional burden with her crew.
The Power of Friendship
Uta and Luffy are similar in that they are willing to tear themselves apart to save the people they care about, the difference is, however, that Luffy doesn’t care about the vast majority of people, while Uta cares about everyone. Luffy has had healthy friendships and relationships, he’s met people he likes and people he doesn’t like, and Luffy has had the freedom to pick and choose who to care deeply about. When Uta becomes a star and establishes a way to connect with the outside world, she mistakingly sees her adoring fans as her friends, meaning that she is willing to spend her energy on fixing the problems of everyone, which is where the god Complex comes in.
Uta is isolated for years, with her only happy memories coming from making people happy through singing, but she’s unaware of the unfairness of the world until her fans tell her the problems that her singing helps to numb. So based on this, her only logical conclusion is that only her singing can save everyone, and if she can make herself more powerful, she can solve all problems once and for all. In some ways she’s a cautionary tale for us, someone who has become addicted to social media, has absorbed every single sob story on it, and has no one to tell her to disconnect, no one to remind her that she must prioritize her own mental health.
This is why Luffy’s friends are so important.
When it looks like Luffy is overextending himself to protect someone, or when his desire to protect the ones he loves becomes unhealthy, he has friends like Ussopp to worry about him and friends like Zoro to keep him in check, to remind him to focus on his own path and allow others the agency to solve their own problems.
This is also where the issue of freedom comes into play. Because Uta has only interacted with fans who constantly ask her to save them through her singing, Uta believes that it is her duty to save every single fan, whether they want it or not and I cannot stress enough how emotionally exhausting this must have been for her. Luffy is similar in that he is perfectly willing to save someone against their will, however, he has friends who remind him to ultimately respect the choices of others and believes that everyone must have the freedom to choose whether or not they even want to be saved.
Another factor, and a key difference between the two is one of Luffy’s defining traits: his emotional intelligence. Luffy will not save a friend unless they ask for his help, however, if he believes that this friend is not free to decide for themselves whether or not they want his help, he will step in to liberate them. Look at the nuanced way in which Luffy deals with Robin, Luffy’s apparent hesitancy and weakness in Water 7 stem from the fact that he doesn’t understand why Robin wants to leave his crew, he doesn’t want to save her, he simply wants to understand what secret she’s keeping from him and hear her desires for himself. It’s only when he learns that she is acting entirely against her will that he regains his strength and becomes hell-bent on saving her and forcing her to value her own wants and desires.
Luffy does not assume that he knows what others want better than they do, he simply knows when they are lying to themselves. He is also not plagued by a narcissistic belief that he must do something to solve everyone’s problems, he is saved by his friends as much as he saves them. You could even argue that in Thriller Bark, which is arguably the most “we must wait for Luffy” arc in the manga, the Straw Hats work together but Luffy is still forced to accept the burden of everyone on the island (and 100 shadows) solely onto himself. Luffy and his crew are then indirectly punished for allowing too much of the burden to rest on their captain, as Bartholomew Kuma reveals all of the pain and fatigue that Luffy took upon himself and the physical manifestation of this almost kills Zoro.
Uta Burns Herself Out
In the end, Uta’s (presumed) death is a tragic one. Her mind is broken from years of taking the problems of millions onto herself, so she devises a plan to solve this, forces herself to stay awake for days (insomnia is a very common result of empathy fatigue), and ultimately burns herself out in her attempts to save everyone and anyone (except pirates). It’s very apparent by the end of the film that she is not simply an evil villain to be defeated, she is a well-meaning but misguided person who must be stopped for the sake of others, but also herself.
It’s important to reiterate that Uta devises her plan to essentially kill everyone *before* she is possessed by a demonic entity, her will is her own and her motivations come from her own worn-down mind. Her physical and mental fatigue makes her numb to the desires of others, but it also robs her of the ability to care for herself, she chooses to rob herself of sleep and takes a drug that shortens her lifespan because she has lost all semblance of self-love in her determination to care for everyone.
Her death hits hard because she is ultimately a young woman who is killed (?) by the injustice of the One Piece world, by her guardians’ failure to teach her to create boundaries between herself and the trauma of everyone, and by her own naivety and narcissism in believing that she alone must fix everything — all factors exacerbated by her isolation.
Uta could have lived if she’d had just one person to tell her to put the (snail) phone down and touch grass with them)
The ultimate tragedy of Uta is that while Shanks believed he was saving her by abandoning her, he was really dooming her to a much worse fate, a level of isolation that would break even Luffy. It’s honestly a real shame that we don’t get to see this difference between herself and Luffy explored in the film, I think more people would like Uta if it were made more obvious.
All-in-all, what makes Uta a great antagonist for me, is that I truly believe that if we were raised completely alone, unable to resist a constant stream of people’s problems, unable to occasionally switch off our empathy and allow ourselves to rest, unable to focus on being a bit selfish and indulging in leisure with our friends, and if given the power, many of us would be driven to do what Uta did and die the way Uta died.
Thank God a lot of you can’t sing.
