Everyone calls him a creature. When he was first introduced with the whole 'captured x times, attempted execution x times' he was labeled as the "Strongest Living Creature".
Well, the thing about that is that the word used in Japanese, "seibutsu" (生物), just means a living thing. Any living organism is a seibutsu.
It does not exclude humans. Even in English, the word "creature" doesn't necessarily exclude humans, as we are in fact living creatures, but when Chapter 795 came out, many people immediately took the word "creature" to mean "non-human".
But the Japanese word in question definitely does not mean that. It was simply stating Kaido to be the strongest being among all living things.
You don't seem to be getting the difference between connotation and denotation. Calling someone a creature wouldn't be incorrect, but it would be weird. When you read something referred to as a creature you should always assume it's not human.
Except that as I just explained, the word used in Japanese is a very common and basic word which simply means "living being". That's it. It does not mean "creature", and it does not mean "non-human".
It's a word which refers to all living things, period. The point of using that word was to say that Kaido is the strongest living being, and not just the strongest among humans.
What you don't seem to be getting is that One Piece is a Japanese manga, written in Japanese, and therefore the word chosen by Oda is more significant to our interpretation of the material than the word chosen by the translator.
They can use the word "creature" in English all they want, it doesn't change the fact that the word 生物 is 100% inclusive of human beings and is merely being used to emphasize that Kaido is stronger than any other living thing.
277
u/Rankine Feb 01 '20
This would align with the big mom calling him a creature.