The trailer for season 2 of Netflix’s adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece dropped on the 9th of August, and TikTok was brimming with excitement as fans finally got a first look at the long-awaited continuation. But amid the joy, the comment sections also filled with blatantly racist remarks. In a fantasy world full of talking animals and magical Devil Fruits, some viewers were strangely fixated on skin colour — insisting, “That’s not my Vivi.”
The backlash against the casting.
Season 2 of One Piece brings new cast members, including Charithra Chandran, best known for her role as ‘Edwina Sharma’ in Bridgerton Season 2. She plays Princess Vivi, also known as Miss Wednesday — a role carefully handpicked by Eiichiro Oda himself, who selects all his live-action cast with great care. Although Chandran’s casting was confirmed earlier in 2024, viewers only saw her in the new trailer released in August.
Almost immediately, TikTok exploded with backlash — many fans complained that Vivi is portrayed as fair-skinned in the anime, and casting a darker-skinned actress of Indian descent was labelled “incorrect.” Some comments ranged from passive-aggressive digs to outright hatred targeting Chandran’s appearance.
However, fans of Chandran, myself included, have pushed back strongly against the hate and have flooded social media with videos praising her talent and kind nature. Co-stars Emily Rudd (Nami) and Rob Colletti (Wapol) also publicly defended her on Instagram. Emily Rudd emphasized, “Perceived ‘canon’ does not excuse blatant racism or hate of any kind.”
The accuracy argument.
When fans call out “inaccuracy” in casting, they usually mean the actor’s physical traits don’t match the character’s appearance in the original material. On the surface, it might seem like dedication to preserving the source’s canon. But this argument is highly selective. Live adaptations will inevitably differ, after all, you’re translating a stylised Japanese anime art style into real life.
Fans rarely complain about small details like Sanji’s eyebrow curl or slight colour differences in clothing, because these don’t affect the story. But when it comes to race or skin tone, suddenly it’s “not canon.” Rob Colletti addressed this double standard in a powerful post:
“It’s astonishing to me in all the wrong ways how a certain small (but far too vocal) corner of the One-Piece fandom can watch a rubber pirate, a reindeer doctor, and giant walking, talking fish and be totally fine… but draw the line at the simple IDEA of Nefertari Vivi being played by a woman who isn’t white.”
This selectiveness reveals that the backlash isn’t really about accuracy — it’s about discomfort.
Long-time fans often develop deep emotional attachments to characters, so a live-action adaptation can feel intimidating. Changes to characters or plots can feel like a betrayal, especially if fans have held onto an idealised image for years. Even before Season 1’s casting for One Piece was announced, fans posted “dream casts” for the series — visions heavily shaped by personal biases and, at times, harmful stereotypes.
For example, on TikTok, many users suggested that Avantika Vandanapu – known for her role as ‘Karen’ in the Mean Girls remake – should play ‘Rapunzel’ in a live-action Tangled. A casting choice met with racist backlash and “not my Rapunzel” comments. This illustrates how fan attachment can become a gatekeeping tool used to exclude actors who don’t fit the traditional, often whitewashed, vision of characters.
This pattern shows that “accuracy” is often less about honouring the source and more about protecting a narrow, idealised image of a character. When that image is rooted in racial bias, it stops being about the story altogether — and starts revealing more about the audience than the work itself.
Why it’s ironic for One Piece fans.
One Piece is a richly diverse world, both in its story and its characters. Eiichiro Oda himself assigned real-world nationalities to the ‘Straw Hat crew’ — the main group of characters — reflecting a global tapestry of cultures, languages, skin tones, and species. Princess Vivi’s home, Alabasta, is inspired by Egypt, underscoring the series’ multicultural roots.
One Piece also has many political themes, and at its core, One Piece is about freedom, embracing differences, and finding family across boundaries. The anime also features its main character, Luffy, constantly challenging norms and fighting for what is right. It makes you question whether some of these so-called “fans” are even getting the message. That makes the backlash against Charithra Chandran’s casting glaringly hypocritical. The “accuracy” argument doesn’t hold up; it’s really about which differences fans are comfortable accepting, and resistance to racial diversity exposes deep biases.
The importance of creative decisions and intent.
There’s a lot more that goes into casting than simply picking someone who “looks the part.” It’s the result of countless creative decisions made by writers, directors, producers, and yes, the creator himself. Creative work is never just what appears on screen; it’s a symbolic product of the ideas, values, and meaning woven into the story.
Charithra Chandran being handpicked by Eiichiro Oda shouldn’t just be used as a trivia fact to deflect hate or placate bias. It should be understood as a reminder that every choice in One Piece is intentional, and that the show’s casting is an extension of its very heart: a celebration of diversity, acceptance, and the richness of different cultures.
The bigger picture.
This isn’t the first time casting has faced backlash. In 2023, Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid cast Halle Bailey as Ariel, which received immense waves of hate from around the world, with tweets like #NotMyAriel trending for weeks. People took to social media to outwardly ridicule Bailey or to critique the film in ways that doubled as personal attacks.
Netizens denied that they were being racist, framing their argument as simply wanting an actress who “looked the part.” They claimed that by not casting a white actress with red hair, the film was doing the story an injustice. The argument went deeper, with some claiming the industry was becoming “woke”, a term rooted in Black consciousness that has since been twisted into an insult against inclusive and diverse practices.
This pattern reveals a persistent issue: when people of colour are cast in roles traditionally seen as “white,” they are welcomed in spaces of belonging, but rejected in mainstream cultural spaces. It’s a stark reminder of how deeply whiteness still shapes power in the entertainment industry — and in us.
The role of social media.
We also can’t overlook social media’s role in this. Platforms have given hateful comments the space to breed and grow. While algorithms, trends, hashtags, and subreddits can be helpful in fostering discourse around our interests, they also enable hate to find more hate.
Some users post inflammatory content purely to “ragebait”, purposefully provoking anger to drive interaction. Others may hop on hate trains simply because that’s what dominates their feed, or because they’ve been swayed by false and harmful posts.
In this way, social media has created fertile ground for prejudice to fester, and in doing so, it transforms harmless opinions into collective campaigns that uphold harmful beauty and racial standards.
in the end.
Charithra Chandran’s resilience in facing backlash — and carrying the weight of deeply ingrained white beauty standards — speaks volumes about her strength as a person. It’s a powerful parallel to Vivi’s own burden of bearing the hopes and struggles of her kingdom.
These mirrored challenges remind us that stories like One Piece are not just entertainment; they are reflections of the values we choose to carry into our own world. If the heart of the series is about freedom, acceptance, and finding family across differences, then standing behind diverse casting is not just “accurate” — it’s true to the spirit of the story itself.