Reiju Vinsmoke (One Piece)

mix of manga and 99% headcanons

Trigger warnings:  her entire childhood is abuse after abuse, and of course the way she laughs at her little brother is also abuse, even if it's because she doesn't want to become a victim too. 

Canon divergences / my portrayal

First of all, due to my memory problems, I unfortunately can't keep all characters straight in my head, and I haven't read the arcs between Fish-man Island and Whole Cake Island yet so keep that in mind (I cannot EVEN REMOTELY remember names and powers of Big Mom's children besides Charlotte and Katakuri)! That said, I was too fascinated by her not to try to write her.

For the sake of our threads, when it became clear she was capable of having feelings and, on top of it, she disapproved of her family and didn't tell them about Big Mom's plan, she was forced to leave her father and temporarily took a ride from the Sunny. This ride will extend for a long while, because Reiju is curious about Sanji's new life and the way his crew seems to literally base every decision on feelings (plus, their fighting abilities were incredible regardless of this).
So she's hanging out, hasn't exactly sworn loyalty to anybody just yet, will initially choose self-preservation over "helping for no reason", and is dealing with having been raised by monsters to be one of them while still able to have emotions and all the ways she coped, including shutting down said emotions, and being now shown the complete opposite by the Straw Hats. She's also trying to learn how to be a sister. 

She's one of the few characters who aren't meant to be villains who chose not to "be brave and pay the consequences" and instead let her brother be beaten, but also risked being discovered every time she went to help him afterwards; she helped him escape and she clearly holds resentment over how her father's actions led to her mother's death, she is capable of feelings and judges her family harshly, rightfully so, and wants them all to die, believes she deserves it too, BUT will automatically fall in line and doesn't seem to have fully grasped how completely wrong her father was. 

She also really didn't need to kiss Luffy like that, and that's funny to me.

Note from the wiki:

"Due to genetic enhancements, Reiju possesses immense superhuman physical abilities that were additionally honed through a stringent training regimen from a young age. Like her brothers, she has an outer skeleton known as an Exoskeleton, which allows her to take more damage than a normal human. She is noted to possess an extraordinary recovery rate from injury." so she's basically overpowered and that's why I'll keep her out of fights most of the time.

Added: June 12th 2025