The “Bink’s Sake” sailor’s hut in A play can advance the entire crew when played in the right context. It is particularly liked by Brook, the musician of the Straw Hat Crew sings and plays it. Nothing in A play is as simple as it sounds thanks to Eiichiro Oda’s intricate world-building. “Bink’s Sake” as a song carries deeper commentary on the life of a pirate both in and outside the world of A play.
“Bink’s Sake” is a pirate anthem whose origins can be traced back to pirates of old such as the Lumbar Pirates and Shank’s Pirate Crew. The song is mostly used in times of celebration to lift people’s spirits, but its most famous appearance on the show comes moments before Brook’s death, as the Lumbar Pirates crumble one by one until that Brook is all alone.
Composition
The composition of “Bink’s Sake” was completed long before Brook’s first appearance. When developing the concept and design for Brook, Oda asked respected anime composer and fellow artist Kohei Tanaka (most famous for his compositions for Gunbuster and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) to get to work writing the melody for “Bink’s Sake”.
Oda then told Tanaka to finish the song in “about a year”, but the progress in A play can be a hard thing to predict, and as it happened, the song won’t be released for five years after Tanaka finished the song. In an interview about the composition process, Tanaka said his goal was to make “Bink’s Sake” both light and sad. The emotional vibe is often imparted by the instruments used to perform the song, with the song sounding more like a ballad when played on the violin and more upbeat when played on the piano.
Meaning
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There are some differences between the Japanese and English translations of “Bink’s Sake”. For example, Japanese “sake” can refer to any type of alcohol. A more accurate translation of “Bink’s Sake” in English might actually be something like “Bink’s Brew” or “Bink’s Booze”. The song’s lyrics are crafted in a traditional sailor’s song style and include many metaphors about the sea and the weather. “Bink’s Sake” is usually included in scenes to emphasize the grandeur of the Straw Hat’s ideals.
The singers are meant to be naively optimistic like a pirate going on a journey: “The wind is blowing/towards who knows?/The waves will be our guide”. The distracted attitude towards waves is very similar to Luffy’s attitude towards danger. A pirate’s gleeful ignorance is what makes him strong, after all “if [they] let the winds of fear blow / then the end of us is nigh”. The key ingredient to success is courage in the face of uncertainty. What the song seems to highlight are the qualities of a pirate king, and those qualities definitely apply to Luffy and The Straw Hats. The song also mentions the rise and fall of the sun and moon in relation to the rise and fall of the ocean waves. The Ever-Changing Landscape hackers is cyclical and has to be repeated day after day, the hacker is fortunately caught in the cycle and optimistic about the future.
Coming
“Bink’s Sake” will go on to be one of the most recognizable and emotionally impactful songs of all. A play. Composer Takahata still has fans who sing along with the many “Yohohoho hohohoho”. On the other hand, “Bink’s Sake” hasn’t seen much screen time in the anime since episode 380, except as a Brook theme.
There are arguments to be made that “Bink’s Sake” is cheesy and repetitive, and should be phased out. The world of A play might need new songs to reflect an environment that gets more brutal with each chapter. “Bink’s Sake” fans the flames of passion for an endless adventure. It has a lighthearted charm, and the corny repetitiveness goes well with those previous episodes of A play. Even though One Piece has changed, “Bink’s Sake” will still be a great song.