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Student graduates college with thesis on popular manga ‘One Piece’
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Meet Luffy: A statue of the character Monkey D. Luffy, also known as Straw Hat, is displayed at the 'One Piece' anime souvenir shop in Tokyo on Nov. 19, 2021. (AFP/Philip Fong)
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em>A theology student at Toraja Christian University Indonesia (UKI) wrote about the popular anime One Piece for his undergraduate thesis.
Faldy Ekal Tappe, a 2018 undergraduate student at Toraja Christian University Indonesia (UKI), graduated from the theology program with a thesis that dissected the widely adored anime One Piece.
The thesis, which the title translates from Bahasa Indonesia into English as, The Trinitarian Ecclesiology of One Piece: A Study of the Relationships of the Straw Hat Pirates in the One Piece Anime based on the Thoughts of John D. Zizioulas in ‘The One’ and ‘The Many’ was accepted by Faldy’s lecturers and he graduated UKI Toraja last March.
“I’m from the Faculty of Theology. Many of my friends at UKI write about Toraja culture and the likes, so I wanted to be different,” Faldy said on Oct. 17, as quoted by DetikSulsel.
“Then, I saw a friend at the Duta Wacana Christian University [UKDW] wrote a thesis on Batman films. I happened to like the anime One Piece, that’s why I tried to research it; so, I thought it’s interesting,” he added.
In his thesis, Faldy compares the characters of the Straw Hat Pirates who sailed the sea together to the fellowship of the church whose members support each other and unite in realizing their goals as members of the body of Christ.
“We indeed directed the research at the Faculty of Theology UKI Toraja to study modern theology as it is today,” Dr. Johana Tangirerung, vice dean of the Faculty of Theology, stated on the UKI Toraja website on Oct. 12.
“Modern Theology is closely related to pop culture,” she added, justifying Faldy’s research topic.
Written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda, One Piece is the best-selling Japanese manga series in history, setting the Guinness World Record for “the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author”. It is also one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
