Luffy believes in saving dreams and changing lives, because of this, murder isn’t an option.

SUMMARY

 Luffy’s refusal to kill stems from shonen’s theme of stopping evil, not taking lives.
 Luffy spares enemies because he sympathizes with their dreams, even if their morality differs greatly.
 Any villain can be stopped by killing them, but it’s a special, worthwhile victory to defeat them without killing them.

Author Eiichiro Oda’s smash-hit series One Piece has become a shonen juggernaut that follows the shonen demographic’s core rules closely, from 1997 to today. On one hand, One Piece is a colorful celebration of Eiichiro Oda’s vivid, powerful imagination, and the series puts all kinds of fun twists on some shonen conventions. That said, One Piece still follows the shonen rules when it counts the most, including the hero’s code of ethics and honor. For all his roguish ways, Luffy has the same sense of right and wrong as heroes like Naruto Uzumaki, Ichigo Kurosaki, and Izuku Midoriya.

One of those personal rules is to not kill people. Seinen protagonists like Ken Kaneki and Thorfinn Karlsefni have no qualms about taking lives in battle, but Luffy and his peers are too idealistic and merciful for that. Some One Piece fans may have wondered if, in the span of 1,000+ anime episodes and manga chapters, has Luffy ever taken a life. In the canon story, the answer is no, and there are few clear reasons for this. Oda even confirmed one such reason, and the rest can be inferred by fans.

Luffy’s life has been filled with challenges, but he’s met them all on his path to becoming King of the Pirates.

Eiichiro Oda Doesn’t Want Luffy to Kill Dreams

Like many other shonen manga/anime series, One Piece has a profound, inspirational theme of people reaching for their dreams. A proper dream will give a character some meaning in their life and motivate them to achieve something grand with their own two hands, and protagonist Monkey D. Luffy is the single best example of that. He grew up as an ordinary boy in the Goa Kingdom, and he wasn’t a child of destiny. Luffy must think up his own dream to make One Piece‘s story happen, and he has the perfect idea. He aspires to become king of the pirates, and that’s been keeping the series going for 27 years and counting. That dream has a few branches, too, such as Luffy’s quest to find the fabled One Piece treasure and savor his freedom in the world.

Luffy is a practical, down-to-earth person who may be bluntly harsh at times with his ESTP personality, but he’s not bitter or unsympathetic. Luffy is actually highly sympathetic toward other people who also have grand dreams to pursue, so he tends to support those people if they are friends, and shows them mercy in battle if they are enemies. Luffy has never been seen praising or supporting a villain’s dream, but he does indirectly enable those villains’ dreams by sparing their lives after a battle. As Mr. Oda once stated, Luffy knows that his enemies have dreams of their own, and Luffy would feel terrible if he denied someone a chance to fulfill that dream. So, Luffy refuses to kill his enemies to grant them a second chance to fulfil their dream someday. In the short term, Luffy quashes those villainous dreams to save innocent people, but in the long run, Luffy won’t let anyone’s dream die.

Given how practical Luffy is, it makes sense that he has such a pragmatic way to express sympathy toward other people. Luffy isn’t sentimental enough to deliver a tearful talk jutsu to redeem a villain like Naruto Uzumaki does, nor does Luffy weep for his enemies like Tanjiro Kamado sometimes does. Luffy isn’t prone to flowery speeches or sympathetic tears, so instead, he spares his enemies’ lives as a relatively friendly gesture toward a fellow dreamer. By sparing his enemies’ lives, Luffy is all but telling them “I want you to achieve your dream someday because I’m like that too,” even if Luffy isn’t sentimental enough to say so aloud. It’s a fairly subtle message that might not be obvious to One Piece readers and viewers the first time, but in light of Eiichiro Oda’s statement about this topic, it becomes much clearer.

One Piece Presents a Neutral World Where All Dreams Are Valid

In One Piece‘s narrative, Monkey D. Luffy has a clear sense of right and wrong, but even so, he implicitly understands that everyone has their own desires, so Luffy sympathizes with everyone on a deep and fundamental level. No matter everyone’s different backgrounds, powers, goals, or morality, everyone has conscious dreams and hopes, and Luffy can’t bring himself to destroy that. In a weird, paradoxical way, Luffy enforces his own vigilante sense of right and wrong while also having the neutral attitude that everyone has dreams, and everyone has a chance to pursue them, villain or not. If someone is killed, their dream will die with them. Luffy would be devastated if that happened to a fellow Straw Hat crewmate, so he wouldn’t wish that on his enemies, either.

That means Luffy has the same attitude as the overall One Piece world does – that the entire world is a neutral, open-ended place where anyone can freely pursue their own goals and dreams, and everyone has a right to try at least once to make their dreams a reality. Certain bodies such as the World Government and its Navy aim to capture or destroy other people and deprive them of their dreams in the process, certainly, but in the long run, One Piece is a shonen world where dreams come first.

Practically everyone who has ever appeared in the canon story gets at least one chance, sometimes two, to pursue their dreams, and Luffy won’t dare interfere by killing them. He will gladly defeat his enemies to disrupt their plans for the time being and save the day, but his fundamental attitude about human dreams stops him from going all the way. Even Captain Blackbeard himself shares the spirit of dreams, stating that a pirate’s dream is an incredible thing, giving him and Luffy some unexpected overlap, despite their intense animosity for one another. The difference is that Blackbeard is willing to attack innocent people or plunder their islands in the process, which is what sets Luffy and Blackbeard apart as good vs evil.

Thus, One Piece can be described as a place of second chances, at least where Luffy is concerned. One example is Sir Crocodile, who dreamed of obtaining the superweapon Pluton, and his method of achieving that dream was throwing Alabasta into a dreadful civil war in the midst of a deadly drought. Luffy actively opposed Sir Crocodile and defeated him, leading to Crocodile’s capture and imprisonment in Impel Down, the underwater prison. Crocodile’s dream seemed dead at the time, but later, Crocodile escaped, and now he runs the Cross Guild Organization with Dracule Mihawk. The Cross Guild may not be pursuing the Pluton, but Crocodile still got a second chance at life, and he’s making the most of it. Also, while Crocodile never got Luffy’s personal approval as a scheming pirate, yet Luffy’s mercy still proved that Luffy is saying “I understand you as a dreamer.”

Luffy has done many things during his adventures to shorten his life expectancy. Rubber pirate or not, if he keeps pushing himself, he’ll soon die.

Shonen Anime Like One Piece Is About Stopping Evil, Not Taking Lives

Luffy’s sympathy toward fellow dreamers is a canon and substantial reason why he does not kill people in One Piece‘s story, but that may not be the only reason. Fans can infer a few more reasons, including the simple fact that shonen anime isn’t about taking lives – it’s about stopping evil. In seinen anime, killing people is a method for stopping evil and saving innocent people, but murder is generally a method for seinen heroes, not the goal. Thus, shonen and seinen heroes share a goal of saving lives, but with differing methods. Shonen protagonists like Monkey D. Luffy save lives according to their moral code, which involves sparing the enemy death, with or without dreams involved. For characters like Luffy, killing people simply isn’t right, even if the villain, such as Donquixote Doflamingo or Kaido the Emperor, caused endless misery, destruction, and death.

That is what makes heroes like Luffy, Naruto, Ichigo, and Deku so inspirational – they don’t just win, they win on their own terms. They can save innocent people, enforce justice, and end a villain’s schemes without resorting to killing, a total victory that can make any shonen fan feel good. It may give viewers hope that problems can be solved without compromising principles or paying steep costs, such as taking some lives to protect other lives. That maintains the optimistic, inspirational tone of shonen anime, where the hero can save the day while maintaining their own code of ethics and not deny anyone the fundamental right to exist.

Anime fans know that the real world doesn’t always work that way, tragically, but inspirational fiction like shonen anime will still provide hope that at least sometimes, the day can be saved at a merciful cost, and that such victories are worth pursuing. Protagonists like Luffy inspire fans to be more like him, and keep the spirit of mercy and compassion alive, all while taking down the bad guys and saving the day. It’s always clear to fans that killing a villain is a surefire way to end the villain’s rampage of evil, but Luffy reminds fans that there may be another, more merciful way, and that’s something fans must never forget.