How One Piece Film: Red’s Uta Makes Luffy & Ace’s Bond Even Better

An unexpected benefit of One Piece Film: Red is that Uta retroactively makes Luffy and Ace’s bond even better. Both Red and the One Piece anime’s tie-in to the movie established Uta as one of Luffy’s closest friends to the point that he refused to hit her even after her status as a villain is revealed, and he spent the movie simply trying to reason with her. Naturally, this extended into Uta’s death at the end of the film, as it’s made clear that he was nothing but distraught over her passing and was largely putting up a brave front to process it all.

Even without Uta’s influence, it can’t be understated how important Luffy and Ace’s bond was in One Piece. For Ace, Luffy was someone whom he could trust to never turn against him if he learned his father was Gold Roger, and for Luffy, Ace was someone strong enough to help him out in life but young enough for them to be able to do the same things. One Piece’s Luffy and Ace were able to give each other someone to rely on at a time when they were alone in the world, and that mutual trust never left them into adulthood all the way up to Ace’s death in the Paramount War.