Luffy's 'Madara reference' starts another One Piece vs. Naruto fanwar

Despite being part of what’s considered the Big 3 series of Shonen anime and manga, the One Piece and Naruto fandoms are seemingly at war with each other constantly. What’s worse, these social media spats are typically over relatively inconsequential topics, such as but not limited to powerscaling, which series/character/move is more “iconic,” and more.

One of the largest ironies of this constant bickering between the two fandoms is that the creators of each series are quite close and reference each other’s work. This is due to One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda and Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto simultaneously debuting their respective works in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump. The pair also bonded over their shared mentor-student relationship with the late great Akira Toriyama.

Likewise, as mentioned earlier, the two were known to constantly reference each other’s work and offer public congratulations to the others’ series and their respective accolades. However, One Piece’s latest apparent “reference” to the Naruto series has started another war instead of uniting the two fan bases together.

Luffy’s “Madara reference” in One Piece episode 1101 has Naruto fans fuming over one fan’s comparison

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X (formerly Twitter) user @TheWillOfMarco first pointed out the reference in their post to the site, which compared the Luffy eye-movement scene to one Madara Uchiha has in Naruto. While the context is fairly different, it’s fairly safe to say that a reference was being made here considering the framing of the One Piece scene.

Likewise, this should’ve brought the two fandoms together, with each bonding over yet another show of mutual respect between the two series. However, only chaos has come from this comparison thus far, which is typical considering the two fandoms’ histories with each other over the course of the last several years.

While certain sects of both can coexist, this latest debacle proves that these fans are the silent majority in their respective communities. Although there are some positive comments in response to @TheWillOfMarco’s original post, a majority of responses from both One Piece and Naruto fans are extremely and unflinchingly negative.

It’s notable how a majority of fans of the two communities had a mixed reaction and chose to engage with each other, considering the aforementioned and well-documented relationship Oda and Kishimoto have. Nevertheless, it seems that these two fandoms will always be at each other’s throats, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Fan reaction

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As mentioned above, there are both One Piece and Naruto fans who are civil in the discussion and recognize the ridiculousness of everything devolving into a fight online. The above post from one X user does a good job of showing this. Thankfully, a scant few others are taking a similar stance on the matter:

“I would really like to understand what the problem is with these people who get angry with just one person talking about eye movement, what a boring bunch of people,” said one netizen.

Unfortunately, however, the overwhelming majority of comments are extremely negative:

“ODA is just a thief he steals everything,” said one fan.

“And Luffy’s doing it without special eyes,” argued another.

There exists still a third group who argue that it’s not a reference at all:

“Looking around is now officially copying Naruto [crying emoji],” shared one user.

“Madara eyes only went left-right… that’s not the same thing man ???” questioned another.

What’s clear is that there are many in each fanbase who have strong, conflicting opinions about the matter. Unfortunately, this lack of homogeneity is what contributes to the constant bickering between the two fandoms, which will likely continue until the end of time itself.